Corey and Dave are live from the Global Energy Show at the BMO Centre in Calgary, where they talk about the water crisis in the city, the carbon tax, and much, much more. Plus, a special guest, Franco Tarzano, joins the show to talk about what's going on in the rest of Canada.
00:00:30.000Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show.
00:00:38.280You might notice something a little different in the background, not our usual backdrop of the City of Calgary.
00:00:42.780We're actually coming live from the floor of the Global Energy Show here in Calgary in the new BMO Center.
00:00:49.360This is a first for us. We haven't done this show from a live location before, and it's going great so far.
00:00:55.340Man, this setup is something else. There's 500 exhibitors here. The new BMO Center is massive.
00:01:01.660This is the first event it's held. Kind of, you know, brings about some of those discussions.
00:01:05.680I mean, whether subsidized infrastructure is worth it or if it's not worth it.
00:01:10.180Because when you have a center like this, of course, you can draw big events, you can draw international money, draw discourse even.
00:01:18.980If you don't have that set up in the first place, you miss out.
00:01:21.320But again, typically, though, when government gets involved, subsidized things, they can go bad as well.
00:01:27.540Anyway, I got a good show coming up today. I've got Franco Tarizano is going to talk in a little while.
00:01:32.500Lots to cover. We've got the capital gains tax is now official. Part of what I wanted to talk about, too, though, was that the Parliamentary Budgetary Office is not allowed to report on what the impacts of the carbon tax are.
00:01:46.220And I'm really interested in talking to Franco about that because, I mean, they're hiding their own information from us or hiding our information from us.
00:01:53.740That's the reality of what's going on with that.
00:01:56.460So Franco is going to lay out a little more of that and we'll check in with Dave and do a few more things.
00:02:00.760So let's talk about what I want to get on about today, too, though.
00:02:03.540So for people in the Calgary area that on the morning of June 6th, all of us probably remember, nothing huge and tragic, but an emergency alert came out.
00:02:11.960You know, that emergency sound comes on your phones. It's on the radio. It's on TV.
00:02:15.880Everybody. We're talking millions of people in Calgary and area.
00:02:18.460We're told that water supply levels have hit a critical level and people shouldn't wash dishes or even shower or try to even put off flushing the toilet for fear of running out of water.
00:02:28.760Yeah, that's what they were warning us in the emergency alert, because there was a water main break in North Calgary.
00:02:33.500And apparently it was so bad that even outlying towns from the city were placed under emergency water restrictions.
00:02:39.420Now, questions were quickly asked, of course.
00:02:41.960I mean, how is it that over one and a half million people are dependent upon a single line for their water supply?
00:02:48.880How long is it going to be before people could use their water normally again, which they still aren't by now?
00:02:53.080The city of Calgary didn't have too many details to offer.
00:02:56.480And then ever wanted to try and expand upon her already massive personal unpopularity among Calgarians,
00:03:02.960Mayor Jody Gondek came on out and held a press conference that offered few details on what happened.
00:03:08.160But she took the opportunity to try and blame the mess on Premier Smith.
00:03:11.860Gondek, of course, was slammed by the local media and other people and citizens on the weekend because, I mean, it was just beyond the pale.
00:03:18.520But on the weekend, she did something really rare for Gondek.
00:03:21.080She offered a rare apology for her terrible communications at a time of crisis.
00:03:25.020Gondek's not much one for apologizing.
00:03:27.240It really wasn't a time when Calgarians wanted to hear the mayor trying to take cheap shots at the provincial government.
00:03:33.380It doesn't help that whenever Gondek does anything, it looks like she's got a mouth full of poop.
00:03:36.940She really despises talking to you guys, and it shows.
00:03:39.900So either way, whose fault is the water crisis?
00:03:41.960Well, Mayor Gondek isn't directly and personally responsible.
00:03:45.340But this mess lands fully in the lap of Calgary City Hall.
00:03:55.720And Gondek, for better or worse, usually worse, is at the helm right now.
00:03:59.980The city of Calgary, I mean, they've had surpluses over $200 million a year.
00:04:04.040Yeah, they've been overtaxing everybody by that much.
00:04:05.940They have a contingency fund of over $4 billion.
00:04:08.980So how is it that a city awash in so much money can't fill the bloody potholes in the streets or maintain a reliable source of water?
00:04:17.900Well, it's because Calgary, like most other cities, has allowed their politicians and administration to drift way out of their designated lanes.
00:04:24.680Cities are wasting time and resources on countless projects that aren't within their jurisdiction,
00:04:29.140while they ignore the obligations that land within municipal jurisdiction.
00:04:32.480I mean, Calgary's wasted time and money on everything, from, what, failed Olympic bids, subsidizing ridiculous business startups.
00:05:16.080It's happening in cities and towns across the province and likely across the country.
00:05:19.920That's what inspired Premier Daniel Smith and her government to create legislation giving the provincial government more powers to intervene when a municipal government goes off the rails.
00:05:29.700The province always had those powers, but now they're more clarified.
00:05:33.120Now, the overreach of municipal governments shouldn't be brought into check for expanding the reach of another level of government, however.
00:05:39.880The only way to correct, actually, the bloated, large, inefficient civil governments is for citizens to get off their asses at election time and start firing their mayors and councils.
00:05:48.520Part of what created the apathy and cynicism among the electorate has been what they fire one mayor or councillor who misrepresented themselves on the way into the office.
00:05:57.220They end up electing another one who misrepresents themselves on the way in.
00:06:00.920Well, with the political party system coming into place, it's going to be harder for faux conservatives and faux common sense people to slip by the electorate as they used to be because they're going to have to go through a nomination.
00:06:09.280Nobody in Calgary campaigned on a massive climate change plan, paper bag bans, and spending millions on three-word slogans.
00:06:16.380Yet that's what the city got when this latest crop of councillors came in with Mayor Gondek.
00:06:20.540The mandate for municipalities is pretty basic.
00:06:23.440They exist to provide road and water infrastructure, some policing, fire services, taking care of the trash, and a small degree of municipal bylaws and zoning to ensure neighbours get along.
00:06:32.840So far, the city of Calgary is doing a terrible job on all those top priorities, even though they're constantly increasing taxes.
00:06:38.760The mayor and council, they're constantly distracted with personal vanity projects and virtue signaling while they ignore the basic needs of the city.
00:06:45.840Meanwhile, the civil service continues to bloat while delivering worse services every year.
00:06:53.340Calgary and other municipalities have to replace their mayors and councillors with common sense candidates, and they get the chance in a little more than a year.
00:07:00.560The contenders need to campaign on going back to the basics.
00:07:04.180Unlike their predecessors, though, they have to mean it.
00:07:06.680Citizens have the power to reduce the taxes and reduce the overreach and improve their basic services, but they need to exercise it and effectively.
00:07:13.880So yeah, with political parties holding candidates to account before they even reach a ballot,
00:07:17.460I'm tentatively optimistic that municipalities in Alberta are about to experience a mass change, and hopefully for the better.
00:07:23.700Either way, everybody, you've got to put off washing your privates for at least another week in Calgary, I guess,
00:07:28.980because they still haven't figured out exactly how long it's going to take to get the water back to normal.
00:08:42.920350,000 square feet is the size of the exhibition area, and it's beautiful.
00:08:47.540You know, great lighting, tall ceilings, everything's new.
00:08:50.580And I'm walking in circles wondering where the washroom is.
00:08:52.800You have to leave the exhibition area, go into the concourse, do whatever you have to do, and then bring out your ID and wait in line and get back into the exhibition area.
00:09:03.340I mean, for half a billion dollars, I would have thought they would have considered putting a place where somebody could pinch a loaf.
00:09:12.660Yeah, we got some good stuff on the website this morning.
00:09:16.800We're leading off with an interesting story.
00:09:19.580You remember last week, I believe it was, or late this, early this week, excuse me, former Premier Alison Redford was appointed to the board of Invest Alberta.
00:09:30.160Daniel Smith today said she got the appointment because Alison Smith couldn't find a job, sorry, Alison Redford, I'm sorry, couldn't find a job in Alberta, interestingly enough.
00:09:41.140And you'll remember her scandal-ridden premiership, what with the Sky Palace and all the government flights she took her daughter on.
00:09:50.160It seems to have Albertans have not forgotten.
00:09:52.720And she's apparently having trouble finding work in the province that she was premier in.
00:09:58.720The wacky story of the day, so, you know, something you never thought you'd write a headline for.
00:10:03.000But we've got a biological male who wants to have a uterus implanted just so she could have an abortion, so she could be the first biological male to have an abortion.
00:10:14.440Yeah, why she's not locked up in the loony bin is beyond me.
00:10:19.700Intrepid Oilers reporter up in Edmonton, Jonathan Bradley, has his latest notebook out there.
00:10:25.460You remember last week the anti-Israeli graduate at McGill walked across to get a diploma and spit at all the deans because of her anger over Israel.
00:10:39.500Now a petition started to try and get her charged with assault, which spitting certainly is, and have her booted from McGill.
00:10:49.000Speaking of education, our columnist Lucek has got a piece on what he thinks of the education system and what kind of products it's spitting out at the end.
00:11:01.560Our Linda Slabodian, while battling an abscessed tooth, has come out after the guilty verdict on Hunter Biden.
00:11:09.700And she says we should not be having any sympathy for this crackhead whatsoever.
00:11:15.600And one other thing I'll mention is the Kenney-era war room, $30 million.
00:11:23.320Launched a couple of years ago to battle false narratives in the energy industry and started with a bit of a flop because their logo was copyrighted to somebody else.
00:11:35.140But that's now being disbanded and most of the staff laid off and the war room itself is being absorbed into a regular government of Alberta department.
00:12:16.100So that is our news editor, Dave Naylor.
00:12:17.720As you see, yeah, there's still a few people running around the newsroom.
00:12:20.100We've got a whole bunch of them running around here down on the convention floor.
00:12:23.760And, yeah, this is where I kind of remind you, though, the reason we're doing this live hit, the reason we've got all those news stories, that unique content.
00:12:31.080We are the biggest newsroom in Western Canada these days, I guess, is because you guys are subscribed.
00:13:35.300I believe we might be streaming some of her press conference a little later today.
00:13:39.460I love a lot of what Premier Smith does, but I'm not sure about this one.
00:13:42.960And it's not just spite for Premier Redford, though I kind of admit, you know, the Queen of the Sky Palace, I don't have a lot of use for her as a public figure.
00:13:58.900I mean, I had to bring my own sandwich here today.
00:14:02.200You know, if you really want, you can buy a bigger advertising contract with the Standard.
00:14:05.360Maybe Derek will buy me a lunch for one of these broadcasts, but giving Ellis and Redford a job, that's something I never expected or thought I was going to see coming from the Smith government.
00:14:15.140I guess trying to build a broad coalition, that's one way to do it.
00:14:18.840I'm just not sure if it's the right broad to do it with.
00:14:21.340But that's where we're sitting on that one.
00:14:41.580I know you guys are running off in all directions.
00:14:44.360The one I first, you know, when I contacted you to come on, I want to start with that at least.
00:14:48.460So the Parliamentary Budget Office came up with a report on what the carbon tax is costing people, but apparently they're not allowed to release it now.
00:14:56.360Well, so what happened is that, and this was confirmed in the Finance Committee, is that the government, I believe it was the Department of Environment, gave the PBO its own economic analysis of the carbon tax.
00:15:10.140And the PBO used the government's own analysis to inform its own report.
00:15:15.160But now what is breaking news in the Finance Committee is that apparently the government has put some sort of gag order on the PBO, saying that the PBO cannot release the Department of Environment's own analysis on the economic cost of the carbon tax.
00:15:29.920So, I mean, par for the course with the lack of transparency, unfortunately, coming from this government, I think I'll just state the obvious.
00:15:38.340Taxpayers paid for that analysis to be done within the Department of Environment.
00:15:42.580We sure have the right to see what those economic costs are.
00:15:47.780Yeah, I mean, it wasn't supposed to be an internal study, but I guess they just didn't like the outcome.
00:15:51.760So if they don't like the outcome, they say, well, we'd just rather not let people know.
00:15:55.680I mean, how much longer can they keep the lid on this bottle?
00:15:58.700Canadians realized, I mean, the Prime Minister got booed by mayors in Canada when he tried to make that claim that, you know, most people are benefiting from the carbon tax.
00:16:08.400They're really willing to die on this hill, aren't they?
00:16:20.240Like, if you actually think the government can impose a tax, then charge its sales tax on top of the tax, then skim hundreds of millions of dollars off the top to pay for bureaucrats to administer the tax and somehow make you better off with rebates, then I've got some Ocean View property to sell you, Corey, in Lethbridge.
00:16:39.100Yeah, well, I think we're kind of already buying it, but we're doing it through our taxes and we don't get to enjoy it.
00:16:45.060So moving on beyond that, though, I mean, there was the capital gains tax.
00:16:50.020That's been formally entrenched by Parliament yesterday, was it?
00:16:53.240Well, so what happened is essentially is that Parliament voted on the motion.
00:16:59.100To their credit, Mr. Polyev and the Conservative Party, they voted against Trudeau's capital gains tax hike.
00:17:06.000So they decided to stick up for taxpayers and fight the capital gains tax increase.
00:17:11.620The bad news is that the motion passed because the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc supported the capital gains tax hike.
00:17:18.580Now, folks, this is such a disastrous tax.
00:17:20.720It's going to impact a lot of Canadians.
00:17:22.220You've already heard the doctors warning about this, how they're going to be impacted.
00:17:26.460You have many small businesses that are going to be impacted by this.
00:17:29.620People preparing for the retirement are going to be impacted by this.
00:17:33.020And also, too, like this capital gains tax hike, it's going to discourage that young, smart tech entrepreneur who just graduated from a computer science degree.
00:17:42.360It's going to discourage that young individual from setting up shop in Canada, maybe producing the next Amazon here in Canada.
00:17:48.700And instead, this capital gains tax hike is going to push entrepreneurs like that to leave Canada and to take their investment dollars and jobs with them.
00:17:58.720There's some of the real misinformation coming out of, I would say, you know, Chrystia Freeland the other day speaking and the messaging they're putting out, which I still don't care for with those, the class warfare and the politics of envy.
00:18:09.420But, hey, we're just taking a little more from the ultra, ultra rich.
00:18:12.180But the reality is we have over, what, I think, 300,000 incorporated businesses, most of them small and medium sized.
00:18:20.640They're getting hit by this, every one of them.
00:18:23.140And that's going to cost us in the end.
00:18:26.760Well, and, Corey, it only takes you two seconds to really think about the government's spin to see right through it.
00:18:31.660I mean, first of all, if the government wants the rich to pay more, how about the government just makes rich multinational corporations pay for their own factories?
00:18:42.480Like, how about you stop giving billions of dollars to these multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Salantis and Northvolt to build these EV battery factories, right?
00:18:53.240But the second type of spin I see coming from the finance minister and Trudeau, which kind of makes me laugh, is this whole notion that they had to bring in this tax to help the next generation.
00:20:24.160The government doesn't deserve a single penny more from any Canadian, whether it's taking it directly from your pocket or directly from someone else's.
00:20:32.340Like, all it's going to do is encourage this government to blow even more of our money, right?
00:20:36.140We don't need to give the government, you know, a single penny more.
00:20:39.420But even more to the point, like, even if your listeners are saying, well, you know, I'm not going to be impacted directly.
00:20:45.140Well, here's why you should care about this.
00:20:47.860If Canadians do not push back, if we let Trudeau and Freeland off the hook on this capital gains tax increase,
00:20:55.100you can be sure that they will continue to look for more ways to take more money from you, okay?
00:21:01.520The next scheduled election is October.
00:21:34.840Well, we give a little credit to the Conservative Party for at least coming out and seeing they're opposed to the capital gains tax increase.
00:21:41.040But unfortunately, when it comes to corporate welfare, almost every party tends to get guilty of that when they get in office.
00:21:46.920Have we heard from the opposition saying they would consider rolling back any of the corporate welfare or at least not giving out as much if and when they form government?
00:21:56.700Well, I interviewed Mr. Paulyev for an interview piece in our magazine, The Taxpayer.
00:22:02.300And, you know, with a couple of the interviews that we did, he did say that he would cut corporate welfare and use that to reduce taxes, I believe, for small businesses.
00:22:12.160You can you can check out some of the interviews on the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on YouTube to hear from for yourself.
00:22:17.620But Mr. Paulyev is on the record saying he would cut corporate welfare, which is good.
00:22:32.660Like if these politicians and bureaucrats knew which business was going to be successful, they wouldn't be politicians or bureaucrats, right?
00:22:39.720They'd be using their own money in the market.
00:22:42.600But the second thing, too, here is you got to remember these are all about political incentives, right?
00:22:56.500At best, you're just taking money from taxpayers and other parts of the economy and giving it to select corporations that have armies of lobbyists.
00:23:06.840Yeah, I mean, it's sad, but it's coming to the point where effective lobbying is more important than actually effective business practices.
00:23:12.940Another area, though, where there's certainly a lot of room, I think, to cut and nobody really wants to say those words out loud, though, is that civil service.
00:23:21.180I mean, it's been massively expanded since the Trudeau government got into power and is costing a lot of money.
00:23:28.680And they're putting their feet, their heels in because they might have to show up for work three days a week in the office.
00:23:35.860Again, do you think, though, that's always a touchy area.
00:23:38.340Do you think the government would have the courage to start shaving that back if they got in?
00:23:43.340Because, of course, the union terrifies most politicians of every stripe.
00:23:46.660It's going to come to the point where the government will have no choice, right?
00:23:49.880Kind of like what happened in the 90s, right, under Ralph Klein to tackle the deficit.
00:23:53.580He brought in the union bosses and he's like, hey, look, either you take a 5% pay cut or we lay off 5% of people, right?
00:24:00.560You go back to your members and you tell them what you want to do.
00:24:02.880But it's going to come to that kind of point here.
00:24:04.760And the reason I say that is because already, right now, more than half of the government's day-to-day spending is consumed by the bureaucracy.
00:24:13.120So if you want to tackle a $40 billion deficit, a $1.2 trillion debt, you've got to tackle the big side of the arithmetic here, right?
00:24:21.720And let's not forget that the federal government has increased the number of bureaucrats by 100,000 people since Trudeau has taken office.
00:24:30.020Trudeau, or sorry, I should say the government, has handed out $1.5 billion plus in bonuses since 2015.
00:24:37.640Corey, just over the last four years, Trudeau has rubber stamped more than a million pay raises.
00:24:43.340Okay, so we've paid for hundreds of millions in bonuses, hundreds of thousands of pay raises, tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, and we're still getting bad services from the feds.
00:24:55.780Well, and that's another point that's difficult because we tend to rely on anecdotes.
00:25:00.680But, I mean, pretty much anybody who's dealt with a government service knows you're not dealing with efficient workers and efficient offices.
00:25:09.000It's very difficult to get anything done.
00:27:26.960That's what we want the government to see.
00:27:28.440But I actually have a bit of an ask and an urgent, you know, update for your supporters.
00:27:33.860And that's like, hey, folks, if you're watching the Western Standard and if you're upset with what's going on, to Corey's point, right now is the perfect time to take action and to, like, you know, reach out to these parties, reach out to these members of parliament and tell them what you want to see.
00:28:12.020And that's certainly what you guys have been doing with the Taxpayers Federation effectively for years.
00:28:15.480I really do appreciate the work you guys do.
00:28:18.140You know, you dive into a lot of dry data and put it out into a digestible thing for people who are, they're just busy paying the bills and working.
00:28:26.620They need that point form thing to understand it.
00:28:28.720And I like that advice because, again, the day after the election is the time when the politicians are the least receptive to you.
00:28:34.660So you've got a window of opportunity coming up ahead.
00:28:37.580And so where I see you get the Taxpayer Magazine and where else can people find out what you guys are up to and what you're doing out there?
00:31:58.260Well, what happens when you give them money?
00:31:59.620Well, again, they're scared to tick off the government.
00:32:02.160So when we've got a story that should be one of the biggest stories of a generation, up to 10, 11 spies in our parliament, it's not making headline news.
00:34:27.260This is where the world of information, you see this government focused on control, focused on misinformation, focused on misdirecting you from everything.
00:34:35.300Yeah, from, you know, their bad tax policies to spies in the government, literal spies.
00:34:40.460They are paying, or CRA, the Canadian Revenue Agency, everybody's favorite, paid employees up to $1,000 an article.
00:34:48.160Yeah, they're employees to produce fake news stories published by Canadian newsrooms.
00:34:52.520Yes, they paid $233,000 to BlackRock's reporter report on this.
00:34:59.940By the way, independent media, these guys are fantastic.
00:35:02.660They paid News Canada, which is like a press service.
00:35:22.660Either the Lethbridge Herald was one of them and a few others.
00:35:26.100Really, this is where your tax dollars are going.
00:35:28.340Hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the people who steal your taxes through the CRA, who are overpaid, who don't want to come in more than two days a week, to give fake news to you.
00:35:57.980If you want to really get a scrapping with me or commenting or whatever, my favorite place is X, formerly Twitter.
00:36:04.220Well, you know, because right now what I've been hitting the politicians with all the time, whenever I see a liberal pop up there and say something on Twitter, I respond with, what nation are you beholden to?
00:36:14.220Because, you know what, until they release the names of who these compromised MPs are, we have to suspect all of them.
00:38:34.500Guess how much of the national social and media engagement this $1.4 billion behemoth has managed to buy over the years with all that money?
00:39:55.460If you were going to give a million-dollar grant per year to little media outlets, just think, a little media outlet, for a million a year, you could do pretty good local coverage.
00:40:06.560You could build quite a good little outfit.
00:40:08.960We could build 1,400 independent media outlets with a base budget of a million a year for what we give the CBC.
00:40:20.500Even if half of those outlets went broke after a year, which I don't know how they could with a million-dollar budget like that, you'd still have 700 independent media outlets reporting on things on the ground, doing things, covering the news.
00:40:33.440It's for the price that we're giving the CBC that only 11% is even engaged with.
00:41:11.500It's just a big, bloated, pocket-padding government organization that Catherine Tate is terrible, and they've been taking massive bonuses for this junk, and nobody's watching.
00:41:22.540I still don't believe in a subsidized federal media.
00:41:24.760And I don't believe, by the way, I don't want to see 1,400 subsidized outlets out there.
00:41:28.520I just want to see taxes cut and get them out of the advertising market so that the other independent media outlets can compete for that advertising.
00:41:36.320But it would be more comfortable if at least they had a viewership.
00:41:56.300Well, because when the super boxes were coming along, efficiency, trying to streamline things, Prime Minister Ding Dong didn't want to get in trouble with the Postal Union because we have all those mail monkeys out there making a hell of a lot of money to work four days a week.
00:42:36.040So, you know, when we're talking about where to cut, where to cut, because that's one of the responses people come up with when we talk about cutting taxes.
00:43:22.280So they've dumped $8 billion, $8 billion of your dollars, the money you're working for while you struggle to pay the bills, into these companies, which we know are a cesspool of patronage, probably corruption like the ARRIVE scam and other things like that.
00:43:34.280And they can't even tell you what kind of results they were.
00:43:37.820Again, if it was a private company, you're putting massive amounts of money in your shareholders to say, let's see the output.
00:44:22.860Look, the role for defending the energy industry should be the energy industry.
00:44:27.420And here's, again, back to the federal government making it illegal or trying to make it illegal for energy companies to defend themselves.
00:44:33.900500 companies are displayed on the floor here at the Global Energy Show in Calgary.
00:44:38.120These are the people to defend this industry.
00:44:46.000We should get better communications from industry organizations.
00:44:49.400They should be speaking up, not the government, because the government's incompetent.
00:44:51.980And unfortunately, when industry gets big enough, it often becomes incompetent, too.
00:44:56.200So that's why we've seen such a limp-wristed approach coming from a lot of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and other industry associations.
00:45:03.460When they should be speaking up on behalf of this industry a heck of a lot more vehemently.
00:45:08.000Hopefully, there's networking happening at events like this.
00:45:10.540So this is where the heavyweights are.