True Patriot Love - March 25, 2026


The 4-Day Work Week Debate： Economic Reality or Dangerous Illusion？

Topics
economic decisions
Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Sri Lanka Doug Ford Mike
Norway's Oil Secret： From Embargo to $2 Trillion Empire! #shorts Did Trump Manipulate the Markets？ Inside the Timing That Raised Eyebrows

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

178.12

Word count

5,824

Sentence count

101


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

We ve all heard of the concept of a four-day work week, but did you know that it has actually become a reality in other countries? In fact, in some countries, like Sri Lanka and Thailand, they have already implemented a four day work week. Today, we talk to our very own Paul Mccartuccio about why this is a good idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 hi and thanks for joining us this is tpl media by the way you can go to tplmedia.ca where there's
00:00:10.240 all kinds of great content uh don't forget to support subscribe and be part of the community
00:00:14.960 that interacts now every day we love your comments in fact we react to your comments with new stories
00:00:20.960 and new topics and so we love that you're there please continue to do that you can download the
00:00:25.280 app for iphone or for android and we hope that you do that today we are talking about taking one
00:00:31.920 of the work days away all right we could use one more day off in a week and to talk to me about
00:00:38.480 that is uh our very own paul micucci are we really headed toward a four-day work week here paul
00:00:43.600 well you know mike it's it's it's kind of interesting because it's come back on the table
00:00:47.840 it was a those of you who are old enough to remember uh in canada it was uh not a four-day
00:00:53.920 Workweek, but it was 12 unpaid days that the Bob Ray NDP government decided to put into play under
00:01:03.200 Bill 48. So when this started coming up globally, it hit our radar because quite frankly, there's a
00:01:10.480 lot of online chatter about four-day workweeks, especially with the price of gas going up so
00:01:16.240 substantially. I was driving in today and gas went up overnight 10 cents. It went from 163 to 173,
00:01:23.440 which we did a show remember with dan mctagg and he said he said 170 he called it right on the nose
00:01:30.000 man then he went to 173 it's going to two dollars yeah so i'm going to talk about that in a minute
00:01:35.840 but it's going to two dollars and and the interesting thing that we took a look at what
00:01:40.320 i'll do the math i'm not going to bore you right now but before the show's over i'm going to
00:01:44.160 actually talk to you about how not only four-day work weeks are going to be talked about economic
00:01:51.760 migration is going to be a key issue coming up in the next few months if this if this uh war
00:01:59.080 keeps going if it doesn't get ended in some fashion or form we're going to see it and so
00:02:05.820 this came up in and we call it undeveloped countries third world countries yeah um it
00:02:10.880 came up right away in sri lanka yeah sri lanka india japan korea now in all fairness they did
00:02:21.280 call it for us almost at the beginning of the war if the Strait of Hormuz closes and by the way we
00:02:25.700 don't have any we don't have reserves already so they told us they were a few minutes away from
00:02:30.060 running out almost right away yeah well so Sri Lanka uh came up and the government stepped forward
00:02:38.180 and said everyone take Wednesday off so that's done they're already doing it so their their four
00:02:43.520 day work week is already happening so everyone there Thailand told people to stay at home and
00:02:50.660 work from home as much as possible. They shut down their elevators and they're making everyone
00:02:57.600 take the stairs. Now, I don't know if you've been to Thailand. I've never been to Thailand.
00:03:01.740 Okay. Thailand this time of year I have been is actually 40 degrees Celsius. Oh my God. So
00:03:07.620 everyone in Thailand who's working in an office building that's 10 stories or more tall is
00:03:12.940 actually taking the stairs to get to their office. Oh my God. India in 40 degree temperatures. Yeah.
00:03:19.880 yeah india has rationed their liquefied petro yeah so they're already said listen you see the
00:03:27.560 pictures on tv and you see the pictures on the internet with the big lineups now and and remember
00:03:31.940 this is not something that's outrageous we we did a show about oil a few days ago and we were
00:03:38.760 reminding people in 1973 when the embargo happened um in the u.s used to drive through and you used
00:03:45.900 look at the gas stations and they'd have uh red yellow green uh flags on them and if it was red
00:03:53.660 there was no gas it was yellow it meant you could be pumping and you would run out of gas so it made
00:03:59.500 you make your decision which gas station you were going to so these are all things that are popping
00:04:03.900 up as we go through this and we're starting to see it go across so the four day work week is starting
00:04:11.580 to become a topic again yeah now it's interesting because uh it was brought up here in canada right
00:04:18.460 recently oh yeah as an economic measure yep who brought that up by the way
00:04:22.080 who brought it up i think it was the ndp was it not oh yeah so so bob ray well no we we actually
00:04:30.940 recently i mean it was oh yeah brought to the board sure yeah bob ray and that's that's what
00:04:35.540 just came to my mind and i thought to myself okay i can understand in oil strapped nations right
00:04:42.660 that are massive populations sri lanka india japan korea that are going to have to make moves
00:04:50.820 quickly yeah we don't have that kind of population and and and quite frankly i don't think that the
00:04:56.520 war was a consideration when we first heard this uh in recent days it seemed to be more of an
00:05:01.500 economic measure, not a petroleum based measure. No, it wasn't your bang on. And thank you for
00:05:07.940 that. Cause you're, you're kind of, uh, getting me to remind some things I don't want to think
00:05:14.040 about. I was alive. I was alive in, in 1990 and kicking and working. Um, me too. And by the way,
00:05:21.880 I was trying to pay off student loans at the time. And it was a little difficult to do it
00:05:26.060 the numbers at that time well remember like 1990 was a terrible recession that hit canada but we
00:05:33.100 were really hard hit um peterson had just lost the election to bob ray the ndp had taken over
00:05:39.900 they had won uh 74 seats um you know and they had 37 of the vote so they actually won by a fairly
00:05:49.260 stunning majority so they took over and they were union backed remember they were ndp was a labor
00:05:54.860 Party. But they had taken over in a time when the economy was so bad. And I had to laugh when I took
00:06:02.140 a look at this prepping for the show last night. They assumed a really, really bad situation in
00:06:12.980 the economy. The Liberal government had hired all these public service workers, had grown the public
00:06:19.460 sector to this immense crazy number so they were stuck with a huge union both on the public side
00:06:27.180 and on the private side auto workers you name it there was a ton of unions they take control
00:06:32.720 and next thing you know they're handed this deficit of 10 billion dollars people went
00:06:36.960 i laugh because today 10 billion dollars is like it's oh no it's a rounding error if you showed up
00:06:42.440 and said you had a deficit for a province of 10 billion dollars standing ovation aside from
00:06:46.860 alberta no one would even say anything right but nowadays so you know it went crazy and so he had
00:06:53.440 to make some strategic choices because people were going bananas like 10 billion dollars how did we
00:06:58.180 rack up 10 billion well you raise a good point because he had the unions that he had built
00:07:02.980 industries out of now moving against that government quickly exactly and the interesting
00:07:08.700 part of it was he had promised also on top of it that he was going to do uh public auto insurance
00:07:15.400 I don't know if you remember this, but some of the provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and BC had already went out, and they had actually done no-fault public auto insurance.
00:07:25.960 I remember no-fault insurance.
00:07:27.500 Bob Ray promised it in the election to everyone.
00:07:30.540 He got in power, and then he's like, oh, my goodness, look at the mess I'm in.
00:07:34.180 I can't meet that promise.
00:07:36.100 So everyone's like, well, where's my free auto insurance?
00:07:38.660 Well, that wasn't coming, right?
00:07:40.240 So now he had to go back, and he had to open up all these union agreements.
00:07:43.740 so now he's he's in this huge deficit he starts opening up uh all these agreements the deficit's
00:07:50.620 growing right and so it's growing to a crazy point like uh you know 10 million it grew to 15
00:07:58.620 10 billion it grows to 15 billion and he's saying what do i do now so he starts opening up the
00:08:04.060 public service agreements the government agreements with the unions and he's saying
00:08:07.340 and he's had to do it they didn't agree to open them up i was going to say i think it was it was
00:08:11.980 forced move right he's canceling their agreements he's and he's asking them to make concessions
00:08:18.860 and one of the concessions he comes to him and says i need you to take 12 unpaid work days
00:08:25.900 they went bananas it splintered government government literally government fell apart
00:08:31.020 uh the unions uh went against him the the public of course middle uh middle income earners in
00:08:39.260 canada were affected the most yeah this wasn't you know the guy who was the high income uh wage
00:08:45.260 earner didn't really care and and for the most part it was public sector employees who were hit
00:08:51.020 with the 12 days well i remember people comparing it to uh he literally took a mortgage payment
00:08:57.100 away from everybody who had to take the 12-day deal he did yeah and and you know it's interesting
00:09:02.940 because i where i was working at the time i was asked and this was crazy at the time i was asked
00:09:08.780 to go to a four-day workweek so i was in the private sector and i was asked to do four-day
00:09:15.020 work weeks so and to go to 32 i had to think through it last night because i thought i was
00:09:20.780 getting paid for 40 but then when i actually went back and thought about it they asked us to go to
00:09:26.460 uh 32 hour work weeks so we took eight hour cuts and it was all this whole movement across canada
00:09:33.100 wherever a lot of businesses because of the slowdown because of the recession were asking
00:09:38.460 people to keep their job but to work fewer days it was terrible it gave me a lot of time and uh
00:09:45.020 i was kind of smart enough that i had already secured a second job so it didn't really matter
00:09:50.780 to me because that that it was kind of the birth of the gig economy i remember uh yeah the beer
00:09:56.620 store cut our hours yeah i took hours waiting tables yeah exactly so i i picked up other work
00:10:03.500 and extended the second job i had so bob ray it's over like you know by 1995 uh you know
00:10:14.700 he's gone you know whatever happened to bob ray well bob ray did a high profile and then
00:10:21.420 for several years he just vaporized from public view so i took a look from 1995 to 2006 he
00:10:30.780 basically disappeared off the radar yeah i i was gonna say i don't recall anything any news with
00:10:36.220 him and he and you know i i you know he came back as a uh liberal right and he did very well he got
00:10:44.300 in yeah yeah he had a very good political career in the end and uh foreign affairs and he did some
00:10:49.340 amazing i think recently they took his post away uh again um but but he did have a great career
00:10:55.980 with the liberal government and he did a lot of great things so i think bob ray was uh uh
00:11:02.700 really the it was impacted by a really poor economy that then uh and uh just a groundswell
00:11:09.580 of decisions that almost he was forced to make to try to curb crazy deficits so now deja vu we're
00:11:18.300 talking a lot about deja vu and then it does kind of feel like trudeau handing it off to
00:11:23.180 Kearney, doesn't it? Well, even on the provincial level, you're starting to see a lot of
00:11:28.100 premiers coming out and saying, hey, I can't do these programs anymore. Yeah. Right. Whether it's,
00:11:35.060 you know, Doug Ford in Ontario and his crew, whether it's Daniel Smith in B.C., you're starting
00:11:41.980 to see a lot of this kind of come on the radar. And they're saying, well, time out. I'm tapped out.
00:11:47.540 i'm i'm incurring these huge deficits and you know from a federal perspective uh we're gonna
00:11:54.660 we're gonna eclipse our 78 billion dollar projected deficit that we're we're getting
00:11:59.620 conditioned a little to be told that right now so as we do this it's wild that you point out yeah
00:12:05.220 daniel smith alberta coming out and saying look we can't we can't support this anymore was pretty
00:12:12.020 shocking i think to canadians not to albertans but to canadians yes it gave us a it gave us the
00:12:18.020 temperature pretty quickly on the rest of the nation yeah so now are we you know are we in the
00:12:24.120 same situation as 1990 right or worse i think it feels worse to be honest with you i mean sure it
00:12:31.880 does we have a much larger population we're supporting at the moment than we ever have before
00:12:36.920 Unemployment has reached record highs.
00:12:39.540 So, yeah, it is worse because we've reached new record highs of unemployment.
00:12:44.360 Therefore, and inflation is on the rise.
00:12:47.020 Gas is out of control thanks to the war.
00:12:48.780 We're in a worse situation now.
00:12:50.320 We have budgeted for a 10% unemployment rate.
00:12:53.840 We haven't seen a 10% unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
00:12:58.840 So that kind of gives you a feel of kind of where we're at and where we're projecting.
00:13:02.880 And that's actually in this year's budget.
00:13:05.180 so you know i the reason i bring it up because when i say is it worse it is worse because we
00:13:12.860 were a productive country i think and we were having this discussion i think roger and i were
00:13:17.440 talking before the show in 1995 right uh up to 2002 we were on pace or average with respect to
00:13:32.060 productivity compared to developed nations so there's 32 developed nations as they categorize
00:13:37.580 them in the world we are in that category right now right now we are one of 32 developed nations
00:13:42.740 right we were uh we were right in the middle so we were at one point we were number five in the
00:13:49.140 world right we were the fifth yeah and we always were kind of between five and 16 we kind of
00:13:55.420 went back and forth only up until 2014 so then we get to 2014 and we start to see this
00:14:04.680 productivity slide so we slid um up until today now uh we're the last place well we were 26 then
00:14:15.000 before the show you said no actually we're last place we are and this is the scary part that i
00:14:19.800 know you know in our own government you know i i do the liberal government um has said and i
00:14:25.000 mentioned it on lots of shows this is a big concern this isn't something that uh minister
00:14:31.240 freeland we haven't we've heard it before uh in budget speeches we got to get our productivity up
00:14:37.240 we got to get and and the big reason you know you've you know i've talked about this before
00:14:43.160 we could slip potentially out of the category of developed nations so we could slip out of the 32
00:14:50.320 and then we wouldn't be classified as a developed nation if your productivity is so low per capita
00:14:56.100 how okay so you cannot maintain not producing something and stay on this list in the top 30
00:15:06.240 there's no way yeah there's just no way and then so one of the calculations that i went out there
00:15:10.860 to try and find. And an economist in Norway, funny enough, put out the data that Canada
00:15:17.660 specifically, to get into the top 10 again in the leading world nations, we would not have to take
00:15:25.160 one workday away, but we would have to add seven workdays per person, per working person in Canada.
00:15:30.440 We would have to add productivity days of an entire other week, not strip us down one more
00:15:37.580 day and that was my concern hearing a four-day work week wow okay i understand the fuel situations
00:15:42.560 but come on we've all worked from home apparently that's what canada does now take a look at any
00:15:47.740 city every office tower is basically empty i don't care what they're saying out there in the real
00:15:52.920 estate markets you can take a look at commercial real estate everywhere people are still working
00:15:56.960 from home it's true it's a gig economy more than it's ever been here in canada the unemployment
00:16:02.500 is up. We need productivity. We don't need to reduce a workday. We need to find our way through
00:16:08.320 and find things that we can participate in, manufacturing, distributing, becoming a hub of
00:16:15.460 something right now, not taking away from that, not diminishing that. I mean, there has to be a
00:16:23.020 better way. Raid days was a disaster, as you pointed out. I don't, and there must be a better
00:16:29.160 way look fuel economy we've all been told to use better fuel economy in our lives so if we have to
00:16:34.040 work from home for a period of time that the war is on or whatever the case is i'm sure we'll figure
00:16:38.180 it out yeah but you know what happens with a four-day work week paul we jam six days into
00:16:44.080 four days because we're currently jamming six days into five days yeah we are but mike can i
00:16:51.020 throw something this is we did some quick math before the show and this is what i mentioned to
00:16:56.040 earlier and i wanted to walk through with you so we this is where i end up upside down on these
00:17:01.160 shows every time no no i have a very strong opinion it's about to change watch this no no
00:17:06.060 no and i'm not i'm not it's okay i'm good for it no so if you're driving so the guys drove in this
00:17:13.380 morning that work here with us and i said to them i said okay what are you driving and they're all
00:17:17.660 driving small suvs yep and i said okay let's take your gas mileage let's take what was gas what was
00:17:24.820 gas when we started this so they said gas was a dollar 30 per liter i said okay gas goes let's
00:17:30.980 take the assumption that gas goes to two dollars it's okay gas goes up 70 cents i goes so what does
00:17:37.700 that mean to you and they're like so they all started doodling and they're yelling out numbers
00:17:43.060 and half of them are wrong because quite frankly no offense guys but you're from a generation and
00:17:47.620 none of you can multiply or divide right just get your iphones out we'll wait exactly so so i i'm
00:17:53.700 like no wrong wrong so finally uh sandip yells out he says it's a it's a dollar it's a it's an hour
00:18:02.260 right and i go yep you're you're right so i go okay so is it exactly an hour a week that you're
00:18:09.380 going to spend more on gas to get here right so you know assuming and and we used uh we used in
00:18:17.300 just to be fair because not everyone's you know making 40 an hour and not everyone's making minimum
00:18:22.500 wage we use 20 an hour right as the kind of benchmark so for those who are on the lower
00:18:29.060 spectrum and we said okay 20 an hour let's do the math it's a hundred dollars a month
00:18:37.220 at 70 cents that they're going to pay more to get here and get home to work every day
00:18:44.740 right so now that's the direct cost of their gas right that's not repairs on the vehicle that's not
00:18:51.380 the increased maintenance the cost that because all these other indirect costs and i said okay
00:18:56.580 now let's put a food factor in there fifty dollars more a month yeah because food costs are going to
00:19:02.180 go up so we were doing all this and they're like and so they're doing their budgets and they're
00:19:06.180 like oh i go so now you got to find another 150 bucks a month just to get here for five days right
00:19:14.820 and like oh so they kind of they're like oh that so that's what this is going to mean to me i said
00:19:18.820 yeah that's going to mean and they so and then they said well i know but but you know we're gonna
00:19:24.660 we're gonna have to get paid more i said i know but but businesses quite frankly are then going
00:19:31.540 to make the decision if they want to move somewhere with a lower cost base so that's going to start to
00:19:37.460 cause economic migration oh my god i hadn't even considered that but that is a good point so so now
00:19:44.100 you're gonna have a bunch of companies saying well i don't blame the people but i can't have
00:19:49.140 unhappy and unsustainable employment because they can't live yeah you know think about it all the
00:19:55.300 guys drove here this morning all walked in with a tim hortons coffee the first thing they said to me
00:20:00.580 is i'm gonna have to cut out my tim hortons coffee because i'm gonna have to find that 150 bucks
00:20:06.820 right right because i gotta pay rent i gotta pay my mortgage i gotta pay all those fixed costs
00:20:10.580 so they're all kind of so it was interesting we did the we did the math this morning we're trying
00:20:14.740 to figure out what what happens so this is going to cause a domino effect that's going to roll down
00:20:20.420 but to your point and this is you know it's not just exacerbated by the war it's not caused by the
00:20:28.660 war it's not the imp it is part of it the gas prices are yeah but we've put ourselves in this
00:20:34.900 situation regardless of whether it was a war or just a bad economy we've left ourselves vulnerable
00:20:42.260 to this and that's where we kind of have to dig ourselves out well that's that's the thing there's
00:20:47.300 so many i just can't understand how we ended up in a position where reserve gas would have an
00:20:55.140 effect on our economy on our food on our living this is the moment where a nation like canada
00:21:01.060 rises above because we have our resources we have a national treasure that is being untapped
00:21:09.780 unused it's not being processed we could have an entire oil to gas system for diesel in this
00:21:16.820 country now but we don't instead we're thinking okay how can we reduce one day of work per week
00:21:23.460 when we need to be highly productive exactly well we can't we can't you know and it's interesting
00:21:30.740 Some, you know, when we were doing the calculations before the show, someone yelled out, this is why we need universal income.
00:21:42.920 And I said, what?
00:21:45.480 I said, okay.
00:21:47.060 I said, let's investigate that for a minute.
00:21:49.360 Because I hear that on a lot of, you know, younger podcasters, you know, talk about universal income.
00:21:56.740 it's been talked about you know all these crazy uh 15-minute cities universal income
00:22:03.620 i have to explain something to you guys you have to be productive to do that so we're not we don't
00:22:12.020 have the we're not a potentially a developed country we are not productive enough to pull
00:22:17.460 that off because that can only work if the government takes control of your industries
00:22:22.740 and makes money to pay you, it doesn't work the way you think it works.
00:22:28.180 So that works in countries like Russia or Korea.
00:22:33.360 That could work there.
00:22:34.620 It could never work in Canada.
00:22:36.880 I'm sorry, guys.
00:22:37.660 For those of you who think that is a shot, you are so out in left field, it is insane.
00:22:44.340 You're not even close, guys.
00:22:45.760 Okay, don't get mad at me now.
00:22:47.220 I've got to ask.
00:22:47.980 So what you're saying is for a universal income, right,
00:22:52.740 yeah industries produce the industries take the product to the market yes the industries are owned
00:23:00.820 and managed mainly by the government like like china oh so is this communism kind of it is a
00:23:08.420 form now it can be listen i'm not gonna i don't want to get that's a whole other show it can be
00:23:13.620 democratically it can be democratically monitored right so it can be a democracy but quite frankly
00:23:20.820 you can't do it with low productivity you can't be an undeveloped nation which where we're slipping
00:23:25.780 into by our productivity levels we can't be there and do that it wouldn't work because the same
00:23:33.060 companies that are going to economically migrate because they can't make it here in a private
00:23:37.780 scenario will not be better run by the government so they're the therefore the government uh deficits
00:23:44.420 will be massive which is unsustainable for a country so it it is not sorry guys you know any
00:23:51.860 economist who says differently i'd love to get on debate so if you're out there let's let's get
00:23:56.900 together and talk about it because quite frankly that could never happen i do love the challenge
00:24:02.740 so please in the comments if that's you let us know we'll reach out to you and we'll pair you
00:24:07.540 up with paul for a good old debate uh i made a list of reality checks paul just this four-day
00:24:13.300 work week made me i told you i was this morning this morning over breakfast i was talking about
00:24:20.340 four-day work weeks with my lovely wife who thought it you know might be uh an applicable
00:24:25.620 idea okay i was told then to save my comments for my show with paul later today uh i think we need
00:24:32.180 a little bit of a economic reality check it's a it's a paycheck illusion a four-day work week
00:24:36.820 promises the same pay for fewer hours but that money doesn't come from nowhere as you point out
00:24:41.140 we need to be productive the cost of everything will go up well of course it will you know you're
00:24:48.260 in a recession when it occurs four day work weeks are the result of an economic downfall so it's not
00:24:54.180 that one gives the other it's just that you're in the same place at the same time for the same reason
00:24:58.740 uh fewer jobs means more competition oh yeah i guess we better take this to another country
00:25:04.420 where we can get more productivity in a week exactly you're gonna you're gonna find a lower
00:25:10.340 wage rate more productive place to run your business so you can increase your profitability
00:25:16.820 uh services get worse remember ray days go and get your license renewed good luck yeah well there
00:25:22.340 was a you know think about the morale remember and you remember that it was awful you know for
00:25:27.140 those of you i'm glad if you didn't live through it you know you trust me you didn't don't let it
00:25:31.460 happen again you didn't miss a lot because we frankly going to any uh government-run uh private
00:25:37.780 or government run agency and trying to get anything done was a nightmare they were very
00:25:43.540 unhappy the unions were massively pissed off because not only did their union dues go down
00:25:49.620 because fewer people were still employed within their groups and quite frankly they had to go
00:25:56.420 back to their constituency and tell them that they were being represented by unions but losing it a
00:26:02.180 day right so they were like what do you mean i i get completely agitated with the union the
00:26:06.660 the government i have to pay union dues they're taking and you supported the ndp who put that
00:26:13.080 government in place and now they're taking a day off me and i still have to pay union dues no there
00:26:18.920 was an awful situation yeah no there was outrage oh you're right i remember uh many of the unions
00:26:24.120 were just uh inside out about it you know and it raises a good point because it creates and we
00:26:29.680 didn't talk about this a lot at the time but we can look back on it now and i can assure you this
00:26:34.380 is true it created a two-tier society you know oh yeah like laborers workers uh health care workers
00:26:42.660 uh cops and ambulance and all the services out there lost 12 days meanwhile the same group of
00:26:50.480 people in the same industries at an executive level well they got a long weekend it didn't
00:26:55.240 really affect them too much oh yeah it was created terrible animosity yeah it was known it was known
00:27:00.720 as a middle income tax so that's how it got defined people looked at it totally like it was
00:27:07.200 and we don't talk about it a lot but the erosion of the the middle income you know the our middle
00:27:14.660 canadians our middle income earner canadians uh the middle class is basically something that is
00:27:20.480 eroding already as we as we look at sort of the well the wealth distribution every province is
00:27:25.720 starting to report back that the middle class is disappearing entirely winnipeg we just did that
00:27:30.460 remember that story on winnipeg and and what's happening there yeah it's uh okay the other things
00:27:35.660 that i'll point out uh yeah more more work gets piled into less days that's how society works
00:27:41.020 small business gets crushed in this some of the large corporations are okay small business cannot
00:27:46.620 afford to do this as you point out if you have four people that you've got to pay uh whether
00:27:52.780 they're there or not or you're going to lose productivity in those days whatever arrangement
00:27:57.820 you have to make in a four-day work week in a small business is different than that in the
00:28:02.080 government or in large corporations. The small guys are going to feel it the most, I think.
00:28:08.580 And then just overall, and maybe this is the purpose, I don't know, maybe as an economist,
00:28:13.800 as an accountant, you can answer this, the economy slows down. Is that the purpose of a
00:28:19.360 four-day work week? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question, Mike. I'd have to think through
00:28:25.540 then is that the purpose of the economy slowing down yeah is that is that the reason we want to
00:28:29.980 slow the economy down for a period of time so that it operates you know a straighter uh more even
00:28:38.140 keel uh float rather than spikes and dips throughout that recession well listen you know
00:28:45.760 we're talking only about canada today right now so we we have a number of things colliding right
00:28:51.740 We had an overstimulated real estate market that was growing too fast.
00:28:57.840 We started using residential real estate as a trading chip.
00:29:02.920 It became not only about shelter and security.
00:29:06.900 It then now became part of an industry that people were using it to swap, buy, sell.
00:29:14.340 That's crashed out.
00:29:16.000 It's disappeared.
00:29:16.980 Even those margins became finer and finer and finer up against that moment at which it just didn't make sense to be a developer.
00:29:25.460 Exactly. And manufacturing, quite frankly, is slowed. That's the productivity crunch.
00:29:30.520 So, you know, we've seen a bunch of these things collide together and we're seeing a slowing of the economy.
00:29:35.060 So, yeah, I guess, you know, did we want it to happen? Was it self-fulfilling?
00:29:39.640 yeah i guess it was in a way we you know we stimulated things that we knew were going to end
00:29:45.160 that couldn't sustain population growth is declining now we've cut back on immigration
00:29:50.360 so that's kind of slowing down more and more so yeah i think there's a bunch of um
00:29:56.360 economic and and social decisions that we made as a country that are starting to collide and you know
00:30:03.000 we did that show this week on oil which we went back to 1973 and we've showed sort of the impacts
00:30:10.920 of policy decisions by the different governments conservative and liberal that have now are
00:30:15.160 impacting us today so you know we started the show talking about the impacts of oil
00:30:21.160 on people and how that kind of instigated the discussion on the four-day workweek
00:30:25.000 well we never we haven't once since the war in iran started gone back and talked about
00:30:34.480 why we're paying what we are for gas we're just assuming we pay for gas what we've put a great
00:30:41.700 point yeah we haven't talked about we're not part of opec we're not part of opec we're you know we
00:30:47.000 basically x we're a net exporter of gas we price against texas crude we we price against texas
00:30:53.360 crude we take a significant discount for the type of uh heavy oil that we actually do we have
00:30:58.520 export yeah so we and you know we've seen the faults of that we haven't got to electrical and
00:31:07.300 evs fast enough so we're in the middle so we need now to have that discussion on what to do next
00:31:14.080 that strategy right to avoid the four-day work week to increase our productivity those are the
00:31:20.820 discussions that have to be on the table now and canada still want to hear a four-day work week
00:31:25.140 they want to hear there's overtime yeah yeah unfortunately with you know uh the recession
00:31:32.340 and everything happening in our our economy today we can't talk about overtime anymore we have to
00:31:39.700 start talking about other factors and that's why it's so important right now to start to make those
00:31:46.900 policy decisions that increase our productivity what do you think we've taken tomorrow off no
00:31:53.220 okay back to work tomorrow we'll be here and i hope you will be too thanks for joining us
00:31:57.140 uh tplmedia.ca uh we we love that you're there comment share it with a friend we'll see you next
00:32:02.980 time patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is
00:32:16.740 Being in a country you love, surrounded by people you love, and great weather.
00:32:20.660 Being a patriot is being a part of your community and caring for it.
00:32:23.620 It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from.
00:32:26.180 Patriotism is the one thing we all share.
00:32:28.900 It's okay to be critical of government and still be a patriot.
00:32:33.060 It's gratitude to your country.
00:32:34.740 Of course I'm a patriot. I'm Canadian. It's my home.
00:32:37.940 Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.