CMS： Trudeau’s desperation is crushing Canada
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of The Cory Morgan Show, I chat with the Taxpayers Federation's Franco Teresano about what we can look forward to on April 1st. I also talk about the Canadian housing crisis, and why we should all be worried about it.
Transcript
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Good day. Welcome to the Cory Morgan Show. Thanks for joining me on yet another, at least out here
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in Alberta, cold winter day. March is coming in like a bloody lion. Let's hope it goes out like
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a lamb. I can't stand winter. I really can't. I've been in Canada all my life and still I've just
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never learned to enjoy winter. Aside from the lack of mosquitoes, I really don't see a lot of good
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out of it. Either way, hopefully things thaw out pretty soon. That'll kind of tie into some talk,
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you know, about heating, energy, electricity, things like that. So a little later, I'm going
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to have guests on J.U. and James Walker of Nanonuclear Energy. These guys are a company
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that creates micro nuclear reactors and really portable. We're talking about something that
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to be moved on a tractor trailer in sea cans. So perhaps, you know, that's something in the
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energy mix that might be a bit of a game changer around the world as we all seem to try to scramble
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to keep our energy sources secure. As well, a little later on, I'm going to have Franco
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Teresano check in. We haven't had Franco on for a while. He's with the Canadian Taxpayers
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Federation. He's got a few updates on what we can look forward to on April 1st. That's the
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federal government's favorite time of the year to really make us bend over, lube up, and take
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our tax increases for the season. So we'll have Frank go on to talk a little later. I see Jordan
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and Mr. Stanley checking in on the comment scroll. Yes, if you're watching live, guys, be sure to
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check in, send me your questions, comments, chat with each other. Just keep it civil. That's all,
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you know, we don't have to be at each other's throats. We lost time for that, but I've only
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got 45 minutes with you today. All right. I'm going to get on with what's got me going though.
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I mean, I don't have to be too happy with everything I talk about. Let's talk some
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federal politics. I'm going to quote our leader, Justin Trudeau. In 2021, Prime Minister Trudeau
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infamously said, you'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy. Unfortunately,
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Trudeau in that case was actually being absolutely honest. He doesn't think about monetary policies
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and the cost for his willful ignorance is going to be borne for generations. And no, we shouldn't
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bloody well forgive him. We should be trying to find a way to get that incompetent, unprincipled
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boob out of office as soon as possible. The economic canary in the coal mine in Canada has
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been dead for years. The warnings were clear. Canada was on a path to economic catastrophe,
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but the Trudeau government ignored the signs and charged ahead with their agenda of mass spending
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coupled with mass immigration. I mean, this is a government on the ropes. Their popularity levels
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are rivaling the end of the Mulroney government when they ended up getting wiped out down to two
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seats under Kim Campbell. Instead of reevaluating what they're doing, they're doubling down with
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what they've already been doing, and it's making it worse. So, I mean, as the, you know, government
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continued with its policy of borrowing money and pouring it into the economy, guess what? Inflation
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followed. That's economics 101, but remember, Trudeau doesn't think about monetary policy.
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So, action, reaction, to try and counter the inflation problems, the Bank of Canada has been
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cranking up interest rates. And yeah, that does slow inflation, but that's because it slows the
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entire economy. As businesses defer capital investment and housing starts slow down. I mean,
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And to counter the economic slowdown and the risk of recession that comes with that,
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the government then has opened the floodgates to mass immigration.
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Sure, new immigrants bring skills and resources that do, in the short term, spur the economy.
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The influx of new Canadians has led to a housing crisis.
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Of course, with the interest rates rising and housing prices going through the roof,
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These are people about to lose the homes they put their lifetime of savings and investment into.
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Younger people, they can't even consider buying a home with current prices.
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Rents have been rising as fast as the home prices.
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People are being forced to bunk up or move back in with their parents.
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Between the skyrocketing cost of living and the addiction epidemic,
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In every province in the country as well, the health care systems are overwhelmed.
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Waiting times for hospitals and procedures are reaching new highs with every month.
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they're under pressure as immigrants pour into the system faster than the system can expand to
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accommodate them. And let's look at the business world. In January of this year, just a couple
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months ago, business insolvencies in Canada went up 129% over the January period of 2023.
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The taxes, regulations, interest rates, and anti-business climate in Canada is crushing
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our enterprises. Canada is becoming an investment pariah. While the prime minister might have no
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idea what he's going to do, you know, and what he is doing to the economy. Business leaders do.
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They won't put funding into the economic basket case of Canada. It's a global market and we're
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being left behind. It's not just bad monetary policies that are keeping investment out of
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Canada. It's the environment and attacks on businesses themselves. I mean, grocers and oil
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companies, executives, they've been dragged before parliamentary committees where they've been
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questioned on their business decisions. It's kind of Soviet-like and feel, but that's not surprising
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considering Trudeau partnered with a socialist to try and remain in power. How could any business
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leader want to come to Canada and set up shop in that sort of environment? Having the government
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constantly attacking and shutting down proposed resource development certainly isn't helping
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either. It doesn't matter if the nation sits on massive natural resource reserves if the
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government won't allow it to be developed. The most frightening indicator though of just how
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far up the economic creek Canada has gone is the GDP per capita ratio. To put it in lay terms,
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add up all of the economic output in Canada and divide it by the population.
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That's the ratio, and that ratio has dropped steadily for the last six quarters.
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You know, the banks are calling it out, economists are calling it out,
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the only ones who seem unconcerned about it are the morons in government under Justin Trudeau.
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The GDP per capita in the USA is about $70,000 American dollars.
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In Canada, it's $52,000 American dollars and falling.
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The entire nation is becoming poorer, and quickly.
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Trudeau's been on a mass hiring binge of civil servants,
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Civil servants don't contribute to the economy, they drain from it.
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I mean, Canada's faced depressions and recessions before.
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Hard times have come and gone, but what's happening right now is different.
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Canada's economy is being dismantled and destroyed
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by the most incompetent and ideologically driven government we have ever seen.
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The only question we have now is how long are we going to let this go
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before somehow finding a way to pressure that administration out of power?
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I mean, in other countries, people will be out in the streets by now,
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but in Canada, we seem to be still stuck on watching reality TV.
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Trudeau and I not like to think about economic policies, but I guess he's not alone.
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Canadian citizens don't like watching it either, but it's going to catch up with you.
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Let's get that boob out of office sooner rather than later, because it's going to take generations
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All right, that's what's got me ranting and raving to start the day off.
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Let's see what else will get me pissed off today and check in with our news editor, Dave
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nailer and see what else is going on in the big bad world hey dave how's it going good well i hope
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i'm not responsible for pissing you off cory no just the news copy you put out there that's all
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that's good like you though i am getting fed up of uh february weather in march so uh apparently
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there's uh hope coming for the weekend so not above zero for the weekend but uh gotta gotta
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tell you a fun story uh from earlier this week i was uh having a beer at my local pub the wink and
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now uh best wings in the city by the way uh cory then i was chatting with a woman and i'd introduced
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myself as dave earlier on and she says what do you do and i said well i'm a journalist well who
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are you with well i work for the western staff you're dave naylor i listen to you on every
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morning when i'm doing my makeup on the podcasts so yeah well at least one person listens to us
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cory and uh either this or the uh the the pipeline in podcasts and doing it every morning while she
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puts on her makeup so uh i was very chuffed well good a shout out to her then i hope the makeup is
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going well uh exactly so hopefully she'll be listening tomorrow but uh yeah speaking of weird
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stuff uh we've got uh one i've got a few weird ones uh going on at the moment cory got a story
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on a guy in germany i'm assuming there's got to be some mental illness going on with this guy but
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in the space of two years he had 217 covid vaccination shots uh you know he was going
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around all over the country being injected every three or four days with uh with a with a covet
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shot 217 now the good news is he didn't get covet uh but uh you know i guess they're kind of
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studying i'm going to see whether he's going to start growing uh you know arms out of his forehead
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or something like that our lee hardings got a story out of saskatchewan in which
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the opposition is up in arms because a cabinet minister was spending hundreds and hundreds of
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dollars a day being chauffeured around paris as he attended a conference i've got a story on david
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parker you remember the uh leader of take back alberta went on a bit of a unhinged rant a couple
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weeks ago attacking Pierre Polyev's wife. He says he's taken time to reflect and he says he was
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wrong and promises never to personally insult anybody yet in the future. Speaking of weirdos,
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Doritos. I don't know why these companies aren't learning the mistake of Bud Light. Bud Light lost
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billions in stock value with Dylan Mulvaney and now Doritos has done it. They've partnered with
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a transgender man, woman, for two days before they discovered disgusting text messages he
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had put out on things he wanted to do to young girls in the middle of the street.
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So his time as a Doritos spokesman ended fairly quickly.
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Our Dave Makachuk, a military expert, has got a column on Canada's attempts to send
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A Rivecan accountant said in testimony to the Commons, yeah, we knew something was going on here in this $60 billion boondoggle.
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We knew something was going on, but we were too afraid of committing a career suicide by reporting it.
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And the Bank of Canada today held their interest rate at 5%.
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So any hopes for those people getting a bit lower or a bit of a break in mortgages if it drops, we're dashed today, but they'll be looking at it again in April.
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So that's what's got our attention right now, Corey.
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It is pretty sad that it's hard to keep track of which wars we're funding at which given time.
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I'll let you get wrapped up with your news so you can rush down to the Wink and Owl for your
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next round of fan adulation down there. There you go. Got to do the pipeline with you first.
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Oh yeah, we still got that other show. Thanks, Dave. Take care, Corey.
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That is our news editor, Dave Naylor. And yeah, you can see the stories again. They're always
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coming hard and heavy, lots of stuff going on out there. And this is what I like to remind
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everybody. The reason we have those stories, the reason we have the staff and we're as busy as we
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are is because you guys have been subscribing. So thank you very much to subscribers. We get 10
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bucks a month, $100 for a year, good bulk deal. And you get past that pesky paywall and it keeps
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us independent. We aren't tax funded. We don't want tax funding. We stay independent. That makes
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us answerable to you, not to the government or any of the other areas like other media outlets
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have been lately. So if you haven't subscribed yet, get on there, westernstandard.news slash
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subscription. Nag your friends to get on there, subscribe. It's really important to keep our
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news independent as things change. And if you've already subscribed again, thank you very much. I
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appreciate it. You know that go woke, go broke story. It just keeps going on. So now we got
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Doritos into it or whatever it was. I mean, come on guys, you're into Mexican food. Tacos. If you
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sell tacos, don't switch to sausages. Your customer base won't appreciate it. Sports Illustrated
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figured that one out as well, the hard way. Just lay off, just stick to your products. How many
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businesses really, by embracing these woke ideals and things have seen an increase in sales? How
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many have actually had a good outcome from it. Just get out of it, guys. Stick to plain vanilla
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celebrity endorsements. I mean, you're just, you got to get these DEI nutcases out of your
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marketing departments and get back to reality. It's not doing yourselves any favors. I don't
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care about it. I just want a taco chip or a nacho chip. Or, you know, back when I used to drink,
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yeah, I didn't really care about the virtue signaling of the beer company. I was just looking
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at price and flavor. Whatever. They keep going down that road. You know, interesting. So yeah,
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that was brought up on the cabinet minister. I don't talk about Saskatchewan enough. And I'm
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getting a little worried about the Saskatchewan party. They've been in power for 17 years,
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you know, and we, when parties are in for too long, whether they're conservative or liberal or
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NDP, if they're in too long, things go bad. We're certainly seeing it on the federal front.
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And on the provincial front, we're starting to see those cracks showing in the Saskatchewan party.
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And it worries me because they've kind of got a two-party system on the go.
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I know they've got some other parties trying to get going.
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I think the Saskunity Party or something like that.
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But it's getting reminiscent, I guess, of the Redford years with the progressive conservatives in Alberta.
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And the waste and the arrogance was getting out of control with them.
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You know, they'd lost track of why they were there.
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So when you see a minister going, and you see, it's the minor things.
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I know it doesn't break the budget, but this is what sticks in the mind of the public.
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Because they've got a close election coming this fall.
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And when you got a cabinet minister going to Paris and touring around, and then it turns out
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that he spent thousands on a private chauffeur service, $3,500 to go tour things around Paris
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that had nothing to do even about what he was supposed to be there for. He was supposed to be
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for a nuclear exhibition, and instead he was touring other things. Like, I don't mind multitasking
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with these politicians. Okay, you go over there. If you've done your business part over on whatever
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you had to, met the people you had to, and you want to run around and do some touring? Fine,
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take an Uber. Take a taxi. Come on. We're not talking about the prime minister here. We're
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not talking about even a premier. Look, nobody knows who Dustin Duncan is outside of Saskatchewan.
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He didn't need extra security. You can jump in an Uber or a taxi, go see those things and come
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back. But instead, no, he thought he would expense $3,500 to the taxpayers and go touring. Dude,
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this is the sort of crap that gets you thrown out of office. This is the sort of thing that
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sticks in the voters' minds. I know the voters should be thinking about the billions rather than
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the thousands, but it's the thousands that resonate with other people, people who can't afford
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their bills, their rent, their mortgage payments, and then they see this sort of arrogance being
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used with their money. That's what gets you in trouble. Another area that's showing that the
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Saskatchewan party's been in a bit too long was a recent release too. It sounds like municipalities,
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their donation system. Most provinces have closed up this loophole. Alberta used to have it,
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but municipalities can actually donate to political parties, which is not good because
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the municipalities, of course, I mean, it's an instant conflict of interest. The provincial
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government transfers funds to the municipalities, of course, for infrastructure projects and things
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such as that. The municipalities shouldn't be able to donate to the political parties then
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because of course they're looking to buy favor. And again, even if it's not been abused, this
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voter sees it as abuse. And it sounds like tens of thousands of dollars have gone from municipalities
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towards Saskatchewan party fundraisers. These are the cracks that are showing, guys. And you've got
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to be careful because this fall, if this sort of thing keeps up, this kind of arrogance, you don't
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understand why the voters are getting turned off you. They're going to be replaced this fall and
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they're going to be replaced by the NDP. And again, you get to a cure that's worse than the
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disease. Alberta learned that lesson the hard way already once. I'd hate to see Saskatchewan
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have to learn to do so as well. All right, let's get on to the subject of our guests here. I've
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been looking forward to this, again, energy. Energy has been a huge, huge news story and issue. It's
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going on. We're, as in Alberta, supposed to be an energy capital of Canada, yet we have shortages,
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we have instability, and we don't hear about nuclear enough and the developments within it
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and where it's coming along. And these guys with nanonuclear energy sound really exciting,
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actually with some of the stuff they've been developing with with micro nuclear technology
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and i've got james walker and hopefully jju coming on soon to discuss and expand a bit on
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that so we got james for now and uh let's let's see what they got going hey james how's it going
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hi there cory i'm not too bad good well i i appreciate you coming on to join us today as i
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kind of said in in the intro you know we're we're in a energy producing province we've talked about
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nuclear for decades, but it just never seems to actually get off the ground around here.
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Part of it is it's such a long game too. When you're playing with the applications and development
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and building something of that scale, it just never quite makes it. But you guys are a little
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different. I mean, this is very portable, very quick and can be applied a lot of different ways.
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Can you kind of expand on what your company does? Yeah, of course. So you're absolutely right about
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those long lead times for those big civil power plants and traditionally that's because these are
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very large installations where all the fuel that's going to power in this thing for the next few
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decades is all up front but the reason why there's big emphasis on smr's micro reactors
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is because if you shrink down the reactor and it uses less fuel and it's less complex then
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the time to actually launch these things is theoretically a lot faster the capital cost
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comes down, the financing costs related to capital costs comes down, and that's where
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the US and Canada are beginning to look towards being the future of the nuclear industry.
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So Alberta is actually a great state for industry, and already there's quite a lot of industries
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there that are looking at powering chemical operations, oil and gas operations, remote
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Nuclear is the only solution really for those things because wind and solar can't be put
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any way you want. They are only intermittent energy sources, and they need big storage
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facilities, they need big land areas. And really, if you're looking to try and nuclearize
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and power these remote industrial projects, nuclear is the only alternative to sort of
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The number one question I'm certain you get, I mean, people have had a very negative interpretation
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or impression of nuclear, I mean, since the China syndrome, you know, way back when I
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was just a child, it was coming out on there, but the safety, I mean, it's important. People
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should be, you know, at least asking about that. These are presumably very safe reactors
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Yes. You know, we have to contend, of course, quite often with safety questions being asked,
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but it's very easy for us because all we can do is just dispense the facts about nuclear.
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And we can say to people, look, if you look at just take the big civil power plants, even
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if you look at deaths per gigawatt hour generated, nuclear beats out wind, solar, everything
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and orders of magnitude safer than all the fossil technologies anyway.
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So it's nuclear is already the safest form of energy.
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When you shrink the reactor down to an SMR and then a micro reactor, it gets safer still.
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So we have the safest form of energy getting even safer.
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I think nuclear has always suffered from misconceptions and bad PR and obviously we're
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trying to change that and obviously we're doing things like talking to you to try and explain to
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people that you know the safety concerns you have might be a bit of a misapprehension about
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the technology itself and the dangers at play but we we just need to get that message out there
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and public sentiment is improving we are seeing gradually more acceptance of nuclear power and I
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think once we can couple that knowledge about how safe it is with decreased energy costs for the
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consumer, then the public support should really balloon. So these generation sources are very
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portable and can be moved quickly. I saw one of the applications proposed, isn't it actually in
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the case of an emergency, if there's a natural disaster or something has happened that the
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regular power grid has been knocked down, these sorts of reactors could be brought into place to
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bring supplemental power during that emergency period. It's a very interesting
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application for it then. Yeah, absolutely. And look, it doesn't
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stop there. I mean, the potential market here is a trillion dollar industry.
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Like it's mining sites, oil and gas sites, remote habitation,
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maritime vessels, just like aircraft carriers and submarines
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currently use nuclear, charging stations, freebie vehicles, data
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centers, AI centers, Bitcoin mining, if you really want to go
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that route um you know so even if even in remote country uh countries with um remote communities
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that are cut off from the larger grids um desalination plants medical facilities all of
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that can be powered with micro reactors it could be a very transformative technology just for the
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world yeah well in isolated areas like alberta where we have the oil sands developments up north
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We burn a lot of natural gas to get, you know, SAGD and things like that going on.
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I would imagine if you moved a nuclear, you know, a modular nuclear facility in,
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you don't have to build that electrical transport infrastructure as well.
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Like you could run it for the project and then deactivate when the project is finished.
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I mean, that's the big incentive here is that, you know, a lot of these projects do run on fossil fuels.
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and that means that there's almost a daily importation of diesel or or fuel that you need
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to do this but with a nuclear with a microreactor all your fuel is there in one place for the next
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15 years of operation so all of your logistical concerns can be dispensed with um and when you
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are finished with it the thing can just be decommissioned and moved out i mean this is
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this is where we're trying to get to almost like a nuclear battery on a truck it can insert and
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And once it's inserted, you run it just for how long you need.
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And we don't even necessarily need to sell you the reactor.
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We could just sell you the energy that you need over the period you weren't for.
00:22:51.500
So going further into that, what about the waste issue then?
00:22:55.280
I mean, when the fuel has been spent, it still leaves a product that has to be safely handled and disposed of.
00:23:07.120
And I think the waste issue is almost similar to the safety issue in a way.
00:23:11.260
But I think the scale of it is not really appreciated.
00:23:13.980
So if I just say, like, if you were to take all of the reactors that have ever operated in North America, including the States, all the way back to the 50s, and that includes all the aircraft carriers, submarines, all the big civil power plants, and you were to collect all of that waste in one location, it wouldn't fill a football field.
00:23:31.020
It produces an amazingly small amount of waste.
00:23:34.740
and that's because the energy density of uranium is just so huge.
00:23:38.680
So a microreactor, if you can imagine it, it operates for 15 years
00:23:42.140
and you're producing less than a golf ball of highly irradiated waste.
00:23:45.940
It's not really going to be much of a waste issue.
00:23:50.240
because the power output is so much lower than a big civil power plant,
00:23:53.900
the burn-up of the fuel is less than 1% after about 15 years of operation.
00:23:57.900
So it's almost new fuel after over a decade of use.
00:24:01.960
And so obviously we don't want to throw that away.
00:24:04.180
we want to take that back and refurbish it and then put it back in the reactor and ship it out
00:24:08.820
again because it's essentially new. That's how energy denseness stuff is. Okay. I've got a
00:24:13.380
commenter with a question, Peter LaFontaine saying, are these small modular reactors available now?
00:24:19.380
And what sort of price point are we talking about? I mean, are they within reason?
00:24:24.580
So they're not available now and we still need to go through the licensing process. And that's the
00:24:29.860
big lead time operation because the regulatory process for getting a nuclear energy system
00:24:37.300
license is a lot longer than for anything else and it's it's mostly to do with the how technical
00:24:44.660
the facilities are attached to this but we've got to go through that process
00:24:50.180
we'll begin seeing microactors before the end of this decade we'll see smrs before the end
00:24:55.140
of this decade as well a bit bigger than a micro reactor and those could power chemical plants oil
00:25:00.980
and gas um oil sands all those kind of projects as well um but yeah so you we they're in they're
00:25:09.460
coming and all the infrastructure is being built up accordingly and it's not just canada that's
00:25:14.020
looking at this too but the united states and the department of energy there is throwing
00:25:17.860
a huge amount of money um at the big infrastructure projects to build back
00:25:22.420
their capability to mass manufacture fuel, deconverted fuel and build these things.
00:25:29.540
So we've got a lot of companies operating in Canada and I can certainly see why they'd be
00:25:35.300
interested in it. Have any started the process and working towards this? Again, we always hear
00:25:39.060
talk of it, but we just haven't quite seen it come to fruition yet.
00:25:42.420
Yeah. So Canada's nuclear industry is actually really good.
00:25:45.380
it um like they obviously they went the can do reactor route but that gave them a lot of expertise
00:25:51.220
in particular in that particular region and they obviously have to build up a lot of expert
00:25:56.100
personnel and infrastructures to support all that so they're well placed to actually slide into the
00:26:00.900
new generation of smrs and there are there are a number of um smr companies being built up in
00:26:07.380
canada even um canada westinghouse um they're looking at um building an smr and deploying to
00:26:13.860
power a lot of infrastructure within Canada so it's happening we don't know
00:26:20.580
whether the first reactors to commercially launch will be from the
00:26:24.480
States or Canada but either either way I think Canada will eventually produce
00:26:29.620
its own SMR and micro reactors that can deploy around the country it's you know
00:26:35.160
obviously Alberta is going to be a big focus mix it's very industry focused and
00:26:38.700
these big industries have a lot of mandates to bring in alternative forms of
00:26:43.320
power um other than fossil fuels but even even in the north of well versus so um northwest
00:26:50.280
territories you come we've got a lot of remote communities up there um it's enormously expensive
00:26:55.640
to power those places and to deploy a micro reactor up there where you've got say a community
00:27:00.920
of only 800 on a yearly basis that could be over 10 million dollars in just diesel costs alone just
00:27:06.360
to fuel that those costs would essentially half go to a tenth of what they would be
00:27:13.320
because you have a micro x to power it for 15 15 years so with with this kind of reactor to
00:27:20.120
generate power like one of the issues we have with renewables alberta in a lot of areas have
00:27:23.880
put in a lot of windmills and a lot of solar projects and things like that but the problem
00:27:27.400
is if the wind doesn't blow the sun doesn't shine you've got to go to your backup sources
00:27:31.880
We could turn off and on our natural gas-fired power, though we've had challenges now.
00:27:36.800
It's getting to the point where we're kind of maxing it up, but we can do it quickly if we need to.
00:27:41.460
With nuclear ability, is it able to really bring it on stream quickly and bring it off for on-demand sort of use?
00:27:48.420
So the terminology they use in the energy industry is capacity factor, and that's essentially almost a percentage of how consistent the power is.
00:27:57.260
So if you look at solar, it would be about like a 15% energy capacity.
00:28:08.060
It actually is a higher capacity factor than gas or coal or any other form of energy.
00:28:15.860
That means it is the most readily accessible amounts of energy for when you need it.
00:28:21.260
And you can ramp up and ramp that down very easily.
00:28:23.920
It's just a matter of control or insertion and extraction.
00:28:28.160
So not only is it the cleanest and safest form of energy, it's going to be the most consistent form of energy.
00:28:35.500
And it won't suffer from, unfortunately, what wind and solar need to do is install big storage facilities that are very expensive
00:28:41.720
and occupy big amounts of land mass to install and then still not be able to be consistent in their power up.
00:28:49.840
Yeah. And finally, I guess, as we kind of wrap up, that's been a big issue.
00:28:53.680
and in Alberta, we've had some battles was the amount of footprint that a solar or wind
00:28:57.940
generation facility takes up. I mean, with agricultural land or even just the visibly
00:29:03.020
is not necessarily aesthetically all that good. These modular plants are very, very small.
00:29:08.180
They're very, very small and they occupy a very small footprint. And look, we realized when we
00:29:14.460
launched the company and we were trying to identify how to design our reactors, what the
00:29:18.920
markets would be, we saw that actually, you know, the carbon, people complain about carbon
00:29:24.400
footprints, but the carbon footprint of actually occupying huge amounts of land with wind and
00:29:29.780
solar farms actually was quite significant. And so you can actually end up being quite a
00:29:33.800
polluting source of carbon emissions by installing these big facilities there that then aren't
00:29:39.840
consistent, that then need storage on top of that too. And the costs can run away with you,
00:29:44.260
Not just the land use can run away with you, but you end up needing to use, say, three or four times the land that you would think you would need for wind and solar because it's got to make up for that inconsistency and the intermittent power.
00:29:58.620
And so you've got to produce more and store it to make up for the fact that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine.
00:30:04.580
Yeah, well, with the portability, the lack of emissions and the lack of intermittent
00:30:10.020
issues, I mean, they all sound to solve a lot of the challenges we've got going with
00:30:14.060
energy generation right now. I appreciate you coming in to talk to us today. And as
00:30:17.600
you pointed out, I mean, a lot of what we've got in our heads, I mean, they're legitimate
00:30:20.400
concerns on safety, but statistically, actually, yeah, they've always been quite safe. Where
00:30:24.940
can people find more information about your company and what's been going on with it?
00:30:29.140
I would go to nanonuclearenergy.com. You can sign up to our mailing list. We are on Twitter
00:30:36.020
and we do have Facebook, and you can follow us there too. But yes, please reach out to
00:30:40.740
us anytime. And look, anybody who does reach out to us, we will get an answer back to you quickly.
00:30:45.140
Great. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. I look forward to
00:30:49.860
seeing these new forms developing and moving in up here. I really do feel that we need to
00:30:54.420
start seeing some of that type of energy getting going up here instead of us keep spinning our
00:30:58.500
wheels and some of the less than reliable ones out there. Agreed. Thank you very much for having us
00:31:03.380
on, Corey. All right. Thanks again. So yes, check them out, guys. Nanonuclear energy. You know,
00:31:10.260
we really got to start thinking outside the box. And this is, you know, nuclear is not new, but
00:31:14.980
getting it down to this micro level, this portability. And as he said, you know, and
00:31:19.460
I noticed one of the commenters brought up Fukushima. Sure. But again, when we look at
00:31:23.620
a world with billions of people, when we look at thousands and thousands and thousands of means of
00:31:29.960
generation, whether it's coal, whether it's gas, whether it's nuclear, whether it's wind,
00:31:34.840
statistically, you know, the ones that cause the least amount of harm are still actually
00:31:38.360
nuclear. Yeah, we saw Chernobyl. But I mean, you got to think about that. That was during the
00:31:43.080
Soviet era. I mean, the Soviet Union couldn't even make a good alarm clock back in those days. I'm
0.85
00:31:47.760
surprised they only had one reactor meltdown. The world is lucky for that. We've gotten much better
00:31:52.800
since then. And that was the worst. I mean, when you think of thousands of reactors around the
00:31:56.460
world. So we, you know, we should open some of these discussions. I love Alberta being an energy
0.86
00:32:01.660
powerhouse. And, you know, instead of jealously guarding ourselves from other forms of energy
00:32:06.640
coming in, we should be looking at other ones we can embrace and small modular nuclear generation
00:32:11.600
could be most definitely another one of those ways. But of course, and I'll segue that in,
00:32:16.540
we got to watch for a government that taxes these businesses into oblivion or makes things
00:32:20.400
unviable up here no matter how optimistic we might be on that and uh we've got a government
00:32:26.240
that really is just determined to crush our economy as i sort of ranted about to kick off
00:32:30.800
the show so we're going to talk to somebody who specializes in all those taxes and goodness because
00:32:34.640
we've got our annual april first kick in the pants coming from the federal government and
00:32:39.040
franco tarazano of the canadian taxpayers federation is going to tell us all about it
00:32:43.200
hey franco hey cory great to be talking to you man hope you're doing well yeah good good yeah
00:32:48.720
it's been a while since you've been on it has yeah too long man too long since i've been back
00:32:53.120
in calgary as well yeah so the april 1st you know i know everybody jokes about being april fool's day
00:32:59.920
but it is also the day that the federal government really likes to kind of lay on the bulk of their
00:33:05.360
increases they kind of hit us i mean my theory has always been people are in a good mood winter's
00:33:09.360
melting off you know summer's approaching they're planning their vacations they got their tax return
00:33:15.120
perhaps and they might not be thinking about it as much so the government times that that real
00:33:19.200
swift kick at that period of the year uh what do we got going on this april well april one carbon
00:33:24.880
tax up alcohol taxes up and mp pay member of parliament pay you guessed it folks also going
00:33:31.600
up isn't that nice hey on the very same day that they take more money out of your wallet they're
00:33:37.040
going to be stuffing more money into their own now happy to break it all down but let's just start
00:33:42.960
with the member of parliament pay raise so right now you have a back a backbencher who's collecting
00:33:49.520
dust in the house of commons is also collecting 194 000 salary you have trudeau that's collecting
00:33:56.480
a salary about 389 000 bucks well the april one pay raise will range from an estimated extra 8 000
00:34:05.520
bucks for a back venture to an extra 16 000 for trudeau so let me just tell you what that salary
00:34:12.240
will be after the raise. Backbenchers, $202,000. Ministers like Freeland or Guibo, $299,000. Now,
00:34:22.780
I don't know why Freeland would get a raise when she can't balance the budget of a lemonade stand,
1.00
00:34:27.080
but that's another conversation. And the Prime Minister's salary after the raise, $405,000.
00:34:35.600
Do you guys do any comparisons with, say, other comparable countries to ours? Like,
00:34:40.040
Is Canada on the high side of compensation when it comes to our elected officials?
00:34:44.040
Yeah, I do remember even seeing the Hill Times do a comparison about this just after last year's
00:34:48.820
race, and Canada was, if I can remember correctly, one of the high ones among the G7.
00:34:54.180
I know for a long time we've also been quite high among Commonwealth countries, but what
00:34:59.800
also is unique, if I could use that word, about our federal government is that while
00:35:07.140
many other countries around the world saw politicians cut their pay during the lockdowns,
00:35:12.680
the pandemic years, like remember Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand blast from the
00:35:18.640
past, sorry folks, but she took a 20% pay cut when the pandemic happened. Her, her ministers
00:35:24.260
and her top bureaucrats, but every single year since the beginning of 2020, since these tough
00:35:29.960
times, MPs of all political parties have taken a raise every single year. So this April will be
00:35:36.320
their fifth pay raise since the beginning of 2020 so lockdowns pandemic job losses business losses
00:35:43.440
inflation housing crisis record number of canadians going to food banks didn't matter to mps they just
00:35:49.680
took another raise how about some of our other high profile people like our governor general
00:35:55.280
and such i imagine they've got some built-in uh lucre coming in for the year yeah well we haven't
00:36:00.960
released numbers on the governor general salary yet but in previous years yeah pay keeps going up
00:36:07.280
um another thing too right top bureaucrats they get bonuses almost every single government executive
0.99
00:36:14.000
is taking a bonus every year it's like 90 of government executives taking a bonus so you know
00:36:19.680
we hear these politicians all the time like to say we're all in this together we're all in this
00:36:24.800
together but they're not talking about you and me no no no no they're talking about all 338 of
00:36:30.720
of them up in Ottawa. That's who's in this together. Because look, folks, all political
00:36:35.780
parties, the deafening from every political party about the upcoming pay raise, or sorry,
00:36:42.240
the silence from them has been deafening. Look at me stumble over my own words here, folks.
00:36:47.060
But look, here's the thing, right? MPs could stop the pay raise tomorrow. They did so with
00:36:53.920
relatively simple legislation back in 2010 to 2013. All that's lacking now is just the political will
00:36:59.940
to actually stop taking more money. Well, that's it. And it gets me with some of those high
00:37:05.080
positions. I know we should pay them fairly well. I mean, we want to draw people from professions
00:37:09.840
that are, you know, they can bring that skill and apply it to an elected position. But boy,
00:37:14.280
some of the ones, especially in the high profile, like the prime minister or the governor general,
00:37:17.720
because they live lives that are practically expense-free. They're housed, their travel is
00:37:23.300
covered. They can expense virtually everything from meals to you name it. So, I mean, their
00:37:28.280
compensation is practically going straight into the bank uh you know on top of everything else
00:37:33.000
it's such a slap in the face when they're always telling the rest of us why we got to tighten our
00:37:36.360
belt well cory you know let me break down why this mp pay raises so bad even just beyond the
00:37:42.580
symbolism which is important you need leadership but even beyond that so number one you're talking
00:37:47.520
about attracting better people into government well we've been giving them raises every single
00:37:53.140
year for how many years now uh doesn't feel like government's getting any better but look
00:37:57.900
at the heart of it, I might say something controversial here, but at the heart of it,
00:38:01.540
I don't think we need better government. I don't think we need more elitists trying to control
00:38:06.780
Canadians' lives. We need less government. We need less government. That's what we need. Cut
00:38:11.820
taxes. Stop spending so much. Stop doing so much that you're doing that's creating all these
00:38:16.680
hardships. But number two, all these pay raises, you know what's happened? Our members of parliament,
00:38:23.320
The people in the House of Commons who are supposed to represent us common people, they've
00:38:29.120
become financially divorced from the reality that we live in. So no wonder they're raising all these
00:38:34.880
taxes, printing all these money, having these huge deficits that drive inflation. They don't feel it
00:38:40.440
like we do. But number three, if you want to balance the budget, you've got to take air out
00:38:45.900
of the ballooning bureaucracy in Ottawa. Okay. And before the major union went on strike last year
00:38:51.820
in ottawa they were pointing to member of parliament pay raises as a reason why the
00:38:57.300
bureaucrats should also take more money from taxpayers so look these mps they need to cut
0.80
00:39:03.680
their own pay so they have the moral authority to force the departments to actually find some
00:39:09.700
savings as well well yeah and you mean you brought up even new zealand i mean you're talking about
00:39:14.400
somebody who's certainly not a conservative who at least led by example in that front i'm going way
00:39:18.820
farther back for some of the folks I guess but that was one of the first things the Ralph Klein
00:39:23.560
did before he cut and he cut the civil service but he cut MLA pay first and they were still well
00:39:30.400
compensated but at least it showed hey we're taking our hit before we put it on to others
00:39:34.580
and if this federal government is showing no interest in trimming their own compensation
00:39:38.660
then yeah it doesn't look like they have any interest whatsoever in trimming the expenses
00:39:42.980
of the bureaucracy. And they don't. The Trudeau government has added, what, like 98,000 bureaucrats
00:39:50.600
since it came to power, a 40% increase. I think the total increase in payroll for the federal
00:39:56.900
government has gone up by more than 60% since 2016. Bonuses, pay raises, tens of thousands of
00:40:04.920
additional bureaucrats. And we wonder why our tax bill keeps going through the roof. And it's not
00:40:10.520
even just taxes that are going up, the debt is ballooning. The Trudeau government has essentially
00:40:14.980
doubled the entire federal debt since being in office. Okay. And what does that mean? Well,
00:40:21.880
let's look at interest charges. This year, interest charges on the debt will be $52 billion.
00:40:27.780
That's the same amount of money that the federal government sends to the provinces
00:40:32.060
in health transfers. In 2028, interest charges on the debt will be more than what the government
00:40:39.780
collects through its gst so every time you go to the store you buy that product you pay that gst
00:40:47.700
every penny they take from you will be from from the gst will be going just to pay interest charges
00:40:54.500
on the government credit card but but the taxes are good for us right i mean prime minister trudeau
00:40:59.460
just the other day said if he could just sit down with every canadian for five minutes he'd make us
00:41:04.340
understand why the carbon tax is actually good for us i maybe you can explain it because i i'm
00:41:09.860
not sure how he could convince me in five minutes to do that yeah as if like like it's almost
00:41:15.140
insulting to our intelligence it's not almost it is right it's it's almost like they think like
00:41:20.020
oh the rubes just don't understand our infinite wisdom and how good they've got it it's like no
00:41:25.220
no no we do understand that the carbon tax makes it more expensive for us to fuel our cars to get
00:41:31.060
to work we do understand that the carbon tax makes it more expensive for us to heat our homes during
00:41:36.260
winter we do understand that the carbon tax makes every trip to the grocery store more expensive
00:41:42.100
it's the politicians with these inflated salaries the inflated pensions the inflated perks who don't
00:41:48.340
understand what they're doing to the people and you know the carbon tax guess what folks going up
00:41:53.380
april one uh going up april one again uh it'll cost 17 cents a liter of gas about 21 cents per
00:42:00.180
liter of diesel and about 15 cents per cubic meter of natural gas and for the average alberta family
00:42:06.420
well the carbon tax will cost the average alberta family about 900 more in a year than what they get
00:42:13.380
back in rebates and that's funny we just can't afford to keep pumping out well all we can do is
00:42:19.220
keep shouting i mean i i know that trudeau is not going to convince us the carbon tax is good but
00:42:23.060
maybe you can convince enough elected elected officials that it's bad i appreciate you guys
00:42:28.020
of the federation holding their feet to the fire where can people find more information on what
00:42:31.700
you're up to franco hey if you guys like uh what we're doing head over to taxpayer.com sign a
00:42:36.500
couple petitions uh you can follow us on essentially all big social media platforms
00:42:41.780
just type in canadian taxpayers federation if you want to follow me just type in at franco
00:42:46.900
underscore nomics and corey thank you so much for having me on today uh i hope you have a great rest
00:42:51.540
of your day yeah you too thanks franco good to see you again cheers man all right so yes just
00:42:57.300
Just a reminder, guys, it's Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:43:11.840
so you can see just how badly you're taking it.
00:43:15.160
So check out their site, guys, the Taxpayers Federation.
00:43:21.260
the media certainly doesn't seem to be holding government
00:43:26.440
like the Taxpayers Federation and Franco to do it.
00:43:28.840
I'll kind of close off with one other spending thing I, you know, we saw recently.
00:43:33.080
So the Liberal government has decided they're going to fund the UNRWA again.
00:43:42.240
I don't think we should be giving any money to the entire organization.
00:43:46.100
But of all of them, the UNRWA, I mean, even they had to admit, most developed countries,
00:43:53.460
As soon as they found out that that group, and again, it doesn't matter where you are on the Israel-Palestine issue or whatever's happening over there, that group was corrupted.
00:44:03.280
That group was funding, their employees were taking part with Hamas.
00:44:13.820
And most of the countries in the world said, we're not giving you any more money to fund terrorist activities over there.
00:44:20.000
That was supposed to be helping people on the ground.
00:44:28.440
Canada jumped on and said, yes, we're going to cut the funding.
00:44:34.060
And then basically yesterday they said, yeah, we're going to keep giving them money again.
00:44:41.580
When we're tight on money in general, and this is when the government starts, you know,
00:44:47.200
again, no matter what side of that conflict you're on, is this where our money's supposed to be
00:44:52.000
going? Or if you really want it to be humanitarian, there's better humanitarian groups than that
00:44:58.060
corrupted pile of crap Hamas funding group, the UNRWA. I mean, they were tied to Hamas. It sounds
00:45:06.180
like they were teachers, of course, which were teaching children about the evils of Jews and the
1.00
00:45:10.040
usual crap. That was through that same UNRWA group. This government is taking our money and throwing
00:45:15.180
it all over the place on interests that are not serving us whatsoever. That's just the latest.
00:45:21.220
It's just the latest. We've got to get it under control. I started the show off by kind of
00:45:25.040
going on about, you know, again, our GDP per capita ratio, which really indicates how badly
00:45:32.280
down the economic toilet we're going right now. And then we see this government that's out of
00:45:36.240
control, just throwing our money away left and right. As Franco said, they're borrowing us over
00:45:41.300
a trillion dollars. We're talking billions of dollars. I hate that in my household budget when
00:45:45.580
you see money going away to interest payments, right? That's borrowed money. That's just money
00:45:49.180
flushed away. Well, we're getting that money flushed away now. More than we're bringing in
00:45:52.820
in GST is going out in interest. And there's the irony of the left. Oh, we hate big corporate
00:45:57.380
entities. We can't stand those corporate folks. Well, what do you think? It's a mom and pop lender
00:46:02.720
on the corner that's lending the federal government the money to do all this crap? No,
00:46:05.920
that's just the big financial institutions and your money is going to them in interest rather
00:46:09.620
than healthcare or any of the things you feel government should be spending money on. We've got
00:46:13.560
some serious problems, folks. But hey, you guys who've been tuning in, you're keeping up with it.
00:46:18.160
You know what's going on. I like trying to keep you up to date on it. I have run out of time to
00:46:22.960
twist your ear for today. I'm sure we'll make things positive somehow in the long run. We just
00:46:27.180
got to keep at it and keep on them. So thank you very much for tuning in today, guys. Tune in
00:46:32.020
tonight. The pipeline will be on. I'll be hosting that with a panel of a couple other folks. And
00:46:37.440
we will see you all again here next week at this time to dive into a whole pile more issues. Thanks
00:46:43.480
again. Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have
00:46:49.280
been taken long, long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and
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intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada. And more importantly, educating the
00:47:01.160
public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people to become a member. It's