Cory Morgan Show. Government theft and subsidies won’t save legacy media outlets
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.06302
Summary
In this episode of The Cory Morgan Show, I talk about Bill C-18, the carbon tax, and how to adapt to a changing world. I also talk about my own experience in the early days of the survey industry and how I adapted to it.
Transcript
00:00:30.000
Good day. Welcome to the Cory Morgan Show. Hey, we're getting into July now. It's my favorite month of the year. We're not crawling out of winter through spring and the leaves aren't quite turning yellow yet to warn us we're going into winter. Never learned to like winter. I just can't do it. Good on those who do. Lots to cover today. The politics aren't ending even though the legislatures and the parliament are all off for their summer holidays to go around shaking hands, kissing babies, attending barbecues, cutting ribbons.
00:01:00.000
Doing all that important stuff they do when we don't lock them in the parliament or at least on Zoom meetings now to try and tell us how to live our lives.
00:01:08.400
They're still managing to do it. They're still managing to make a mess and they're still managing to be a pain.
00:01:13.180
So, of course, I will call them out on it and complain about it today. Be sure to use that comment scroll over there, guys. That's what I like about being live. You know, I can see some of that stuff.
00:01:23.520
Good to see Jake and Paradoxy checking in there. If you're watching a recorded version, of course, I just don't pay any mind to my references to the comments.
00:01:32.240
And, you know, disgusting. Send questions my way. Send them towards the guests. I have Chris Sims coming on from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in a little while.
00:01:42.100
It's going to be a good conversation about our second carbon tax and how Quebec, of course, as usual, somehow has managed to get a better deal on it than the rest of the country.
00:01:52.340
As well, we'll be checking in with Dave in a little bit and doing some other good stuff. Just keep the comments civil with each other and we can all get along.
00:02:01.260
So, good to see you checking in, sharing, saying hello there and Kevin out in Lake Pelletier, Saskatchewan. I love messing up French names.
00:02:09.640
So, one of the things on the news, when I came into the newsroom today, I saw a conference with our heritage minister, Rodriguez, indignantly going on.
00:02:17.580
He's going to make Facebook and Google pay their fair share for doing a service somehow. Yeah.
00:02:23.560
And now they're going to pull the advertising, the government advertising, away from Facebook.
00:02:29.140
That's how they're going to bring Facebook to their knees. The government will not spend advertising dollars on Facebook telling us how good they are and what a fantastic job they're doing for us.
00:02:38.720
So, I want to talk about this, though. This problem. I mean, most of this, Bill C-18 is a solution looking for a problem, really, is what it is.
00:02:47.340
I mean, there's an issue, but the government can't legislate it away. And they won't, through theft and subsidies, save legacy media.
00:02:55.520
So, I'm going to, you know, talk about how that works with the changing world. So, I mean, I'll give some history on myself. I love talking about myself. We know that.
00:03:02.280
At the beginning of the 1990s, I landed a job with a survey company and they specialized in advanced work for seismic projects.
00:03:08.820
It involved travel and working in isolated areas. The starting pay was pretty modest back then, but I loved it.
00:03:14.060
Climbing the workplace ladder in the survey industry back then was a slow process.
00:03:18.740
I had to put in a few years as a rodman and a chainer before I was even allowed to touch a survey transit as a junior surveyor.
00:03:26.120
So, I had to take my lumps and abuse and learn.
00:03:29.120
I had to learn how to make solar observations to determine an azimuth out in the bush.
00:03:33.540
How to double angles in my head to ensure accurate measurements.
00:03:36.180
And I had to process my raw data and to finish survey at night in the hotel rooms or camps I was staying in.
00:03:43.000
Now, shortly after I became a junior surveyor, everything changed as real-time survey systems, GPS systems, came onto the scene.
00:03:51.500
Suddenly, with only a few hours of training, a person could navigate to a location, record the elevation,
00:03:56.200
just as accurately as I'd had to learn how to do with conventional surveying.
00:04:00.880
Demand for conventional surveyors dropped dramatically as fewer people with less training could cover more ground in staking out exploration programs.
00:04:09.600
It felt unfair and certainly annoying, to say the least, all that time I'd put in to find my job was obsolete.
00:04:18.100
I could stubbornly refuse to change how I work and slowly fade into unemployment, or maybe change trades even,
00:04:26.980
Now, many of the older surveyors opted for the first option.
00:04:29.720
I mean, old dogs can learn new tricks, but it is tougher for them as things go along.
00:04:36.800
I learned how to create maps using GPS data and took on more supervisory roles in the field.
00:04:41.980
And being flexible, I kept working and spent over 20 lucrative years working in energy exploration.
00:04:47.400
I left the field eventually as I got tired of being out of the country for months at a time,
00:04:50.780
and the feast or famine nature of petrochemical exploration started to wear on me.
00:04:54.760
But if I'd have wanted to, I could have stayed in the field.
00:04:56.860
I would have had to constantly adapt, though, to the changes in new technology and methods.
00:05:04.400
Changes in the media industry over the last decade have been no less dramatic than they were in the survey world.
00:05:10.820
Readership and viewership for conventional media platforms such as television and newspapers dried up.
00:05:15.740
Radio stations, they're going to be a thing of the past within a generation.
00:05:18.800
Advertising dollars have followed audiences and headed to platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
00:05:24.640
Every major media outlet's been forced to heavily cut back on staff and resources.
00:05:31.520
But the Canadian government has responded by directly subsidizing media outlets.
00:05:35.440
And now they're trying to extort funds from social media platforms to try and prop up these legacy media sources.
00:05:41.980
Now, not only will the efforts to bail out obsolete media outlets inevitably fail, but it'll also actually hurt them.
00:05:49.480
I mean, if I, back when I was surveying, had a subsidy lifeline tossed to me while my trade was evolving,
00:05:55.300
I probably would have desperately grabbed to that at the time, too.
00:05:58.160
It would have been easier than changing how I do things, and I could have stuck to the form of the trade I had trained for.
00:06:05.140
No amount of bailout dollars could have saved my job in its original form in the long run.
00:06:09.680
I mean, for perspective, the first program I ever worked on in the survey field had a crew of about 40 people,
00:06:16.240
A job that size today would take eight people about two weeks to do.
00:06:23.040
If I'd have been protected from change, though, as GPS came along,
00:06:26.240
I would have been employed for perhaps a couple more years,
00:06:28.580
but it would have left me even more vulnerable and unskilled when the dollars dried up.
00:06:32.220
I wouldn't have been inspired to learn modern methods, nor would the companies in the industry have been.
00:06:37.760
We would have been left behind and perhaps would have been replaced by foreign workers who kept up with new technology.
00:06:43.860
Subsidies actually would have stunted the evolution of companies and workers.
00:06:47.460
Now, the same thing's happening with legacy media.
00:06:50.320
Instead of griping about new upstart outlets and journalists,
00:06:53.420
the old guard and conventional media should be looking at how to emulate them.
00:06:56.940
I mean, if they hope to remain gainfully employed in the field of journalism, they need to accept change.
00:07:02.880
Newspapers are little more than flyers now, and TV news ratings are never going to recover.
00:07:07.620
And the infrastructure required for those old dinosaurs, those models, is too expensive to maintain.
00:07:12.760
A new company, like the Western Standard, can build a studio or create an online publication
00:07:17.080
for a tiny fraction of the money it would have required 20 years ago.
00:07:20.180
The government right now is keeping a corpse on life support and is doing a disservice to both journalists
00:07:29.040
New outlets are being choked off, while legacy outlets are creating products modeled for a market
00:07:38.020
Legacy media dinosaurs are going to go extinct, no matter what the government does.
00:07:42.140
When that happens, the information gap will be much harder to fill, though,
00:07:45.400
due to the efforts to fight change and innovation.
00:07:48.820
Demand for news and information isn't going away any more than demand for petrochemical products is.
00:07:54.500
But the way we produce and deliver those products has changed.
00:07:57.420
And unless we let companies evolve and stay out of it,
00:08:00.360
we're going to lose our domestic producers to innovative foreign ones or chat GPT,
00:08:06.500
things such as that are going to actually replace a lot of people in media.
00:08:09.940
And artificially trying to hold it together like this guy is,
00:08:12.600
it's only putting off the inevitable and causing more harm.
00:08:18.440
Let's see what else is happening out there in the world and check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor.
00:08:33.580
Are you all ready for the stampede this Friday?
00:08:37.820
I mean, next week I get my one day of the year when I can, you know, wear my jeans and, you know, cosplay a cowboy for the show.
00:08:45.220
And the missus is going to be heavily involved this year, too, right?
00:08:50.060
She's got some stuff on display at the stampede grounds this year.
00:09:02.400
You know, these quilts, her business has really been taken off.
00:09:07.160
And, yeah, you know, thousands of people are going to see that one barn quilt that has the four strong winds tribute to Ian Tyson and the cowboy hats around it.
00:09:14.660
She's got quite some talent, and I'm lucky to have, you know, she has bad taste in men.
00:09:20.680
Well, yeah, I encourage everybody to go by and take a look at it.
00:09:27.900
I understand you being more cougar problems out at your ranch, Corey.
00:09:35.340
But, yeah, we had one run through the yard there the other day, and in mid-daylight, and it was really on the move.
00:09:40.740
Yeah, you can see with that video, you know, usually the cougars aren't uncommon, but they only come by at night, and they usually come by a little slowly.
00:09:47.960
We haven't seen one in a while, and this fella came trotting right through in broad daylight there.
00:09:51.860
So, well, I might have one less dog if it keeps hanging around.
00:09:57.560
I don't know how you sleep at night, Corey, with all those things in the forest watching you.
00:10:06.600
Well, let's go on in the news quite a bit, Corey.
00:10:11.880
Our real estate expert, Mike Thomas, is leading off the website at the moment with a story on the still red-hot Calgary real estate market.
00:10:20.260
In June, it's at a second consecutive record, so sales are high, and the prices are even higher.
00:10:30.920
Columnist Herb Binder has got a look at the Alberta oil economy and what's going to be happening in the uncertain future.
00:10:39.300
Two Alberta cabinet ministers have written to the feds urging that they recall parliament to end that, I guess it's three or four-day long strike now by B.C. port workers.
00:10:54.080
Alberta ships about $12.5 billion a year, or 9% of the provincial economy goes through the B.C. ports.
00:11:02.640
So anything that drags on, Corey, is going to be a bit of a disaster for not only Alberta's economy but across the country.
00:11:12.040
You've mentioned the Liberals out waving their fists at Facebook today.
00:11:17.260
They've cut their $10 million worth of advertising on Facebook, so don't know how we're going to hear about what kind of job they're doing now.
00:11:29.160
And I think you also mentioned Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Association.
00:11:34.040
They've put out a release today showing why Quebec is getting the lowest rate of carbon tax in the country, where they're paying $0.04 less a leader than anywhere else, Corey.
00:11:48.020
So what Quebec has done to deserve that, you and I can only guess.
00:11:52.520
But that, lots of other stuff, our legislature reporter, Arthur Green, is currently covering a Danielle Smith press conference at the moment out at the Sutina Nation,
00:12:04.200
and they're talking about building drug recovery centres on nation land.
00:12:09.720
So that's obviously an important issue as we're trying to battle the addiction problem in the province, Corey.
00:12:15.000
Yeah, well, it's good to see that kind of innovation.
00:12:17.900
You know, they're building that surgical facility up on the Enoch Reserve, and they're putting something in down in the Sutina.
00:12:23.980
Look forward to finding out what the details are on that.
00:12:37.420
This is the part where I nag you guys to help us pay our bills.
00:12:42.180
It might be harder to find us on Google, on Facebook, sites like that.
00:12:48.080
You'll be able to see what's happening, see the stories as they're breaking, and, of course, subscribe.
00:12:55.240
We rely on you guys, and we're accountable to you guys.
00:13:02.300
Get past that pesky paywall and see the full stories, the columns.
00:13:06.360
As you can see, the stories are breaking all the time.
00:13:10.120
We are blowing the legacy media out of the water, and it's thanks to you guys.
00:13:13.680
If you're subscribed already, we really appreciate it.
00:13:16.080
If you haven't yet, westernstandard.news slash membership.
00:13:20.800
This is the kind of outlet that's going to keep hanging in there while the other ones are falling by the wayside.
00:13:26.660
So, yeah, you know, the big issue with this, it kind of ties into what I was ranting about before with times changing.
00:13:33.100
So, the longshoremen, the guys who work in the docks and the facilities on the west coast are on strike.
00:13:40.920
These guys, they've gone on strike and been legislated back to work.
00:13:45.700
Let's see, in 1995, 1994, 1991, 1988, 1986, 1982, 1975, 74, 72.
00:13:53.340
These guys are serial strikers, and they have us over a barrel.
00:14:01.880
I mean, you know, it's a much larger conversation, I guess, to be had on how you deal with that.
00:14:07.000
Because organized labor, it's a right, you know, to be able to do that.
00:14:10.540
But just to bear in mind, these guys are making, on average, the median salary is $136,000 a year.
00:14:16.040
I'm sure it's hard work working on those ports, but they're not starving, guys.
00:14:20.380
That's some pretty good coin for a longshoreman.
00:14:23.860
And the union says the key points, though, right now, their gripe is the devastation of port automation.
00:14:30.480
You see, again, we're getting back to that fighting change.
00:14:36.480
They're unloading those C-cans, loading those trucks, dealing with inventory management, things like that.
00:14:44.080
But rather than striking and just paying these guys more to do a job that's becoming obsolete,
00:14:56.160
And the chances of them being forced back to work are a little tough this time.
00:15:00.060
Because Jagmeet Singh holds the balance of power, and he's saying, no, we aren't going to do that.
00:15:05.740
So I suspect the liberal government's going to cut these guys a big settlement or encourage one, I guess.
00:15:12.060
Either way, we're going to see more costs due to it.
00:15:14.940
You know that when you hold up product and delivery, the costs go higher.
00:15:18.260
So let's talk to somebody who specializes and talk about all the other stuff that's nickel and diming us to death.
00:15:22.640
And that's Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, so we can chat about and celebrate our second carbon tax.
00:15:31.620
So, yeah, happy second carbon tax, happy Canada Day, right on July 1st, too.
00:15:38.820
And, I mean, you know, you've been warning us about this for quite a long time.
00:15:45.120
But, I mean, once they start seeing it actually hitting their wallets, maybe they start to realize that, yes, all these initiatives cost us.
00:15:55.140
So the first carbon tax is still going to be there, and it is still going to triple within the next seven years.
00:16:01.800
So as of right now, it's $0.14 a litre for gasoline, $0.17 a litre for diesel.
00:16:07.480
So on average, you're paying around $15, $16 extra every time you're filling up even a light-duty pickup truck.
00:16:16.020
This new carbon tax, the second one that's being layered on top, it's actually fashioned after British Columbia's second carbon tax.
00:16:24.900
Anybody who's ever driven across the Rockies over to B.C. and looked up at the gas pump has gone, holy crap, why is that so much more expensive?
00:16:35.840
So Premier Daniel Smith gives us the provincial fuel tax discount here.
00:16:42.300
Two, they have a second carbon tax over there, and it's a big one.
00:16:46.020
It's like, you know, $0.15, $0.16 per litre extra.
00:16:49.880
So Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, not kidding, took a look at B.C. and said, huh, that's super awesome.
00:16:58.460
And so as of July 1st, he's now imposed this government fuel regulation, which penalizes companies for the carbon content of their product.
00:17:08.360
Now, we don't know how much it's going to cost right out of the chute, right?
00:17:17.300
Some of them might use more ethanol for a little while in their blend, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:22.300
Eventually, though, that cost is going to trickle down to you and me at the gas pump, and we're going to pay for it.
00:17:28.040
So within the next seven years, the parliamentary budget officer says the second carbon tax is going to cost around $0.14 extra per litre of gasoline, around $0.17 extra per litre for diesel.
00:17:40.740
Long story short, Albertan families are going to get hit the hardest.
00:17:45.500
Within the next seven years, Corey, we're going to be out around $3,900 per Alberta family.
00:17:58.840
But, I mean, they're giving it back to us, right?
00:18:00.440
We get rebates, and they just announced, you know, they're going to give us a bunch of breaks on our grocery bills, right?
00:18:04.740
Like, it just cycles through the government, and we all win.
00:18:11.780
It's almost insulting for the federal government to think that people are silly enough to think that the government is a magical wealth-producing machine.
00:18:21.660
All it does is take your money, run it through a bureaucracy, and spit it back at you sometimes.
00:18:27.640
So, number one, that cost I just listed was net.
00:18:36.900
So you're out that amount as an Alberta family.
00:18:39.640
Two, just don't take the money in the first place, right?
00:18:44.180
If this is all supposed to make you magically more wealthy, then why are they doing this?
00:18:52.000
They want gasoline and diesel and natural gas and propane to be unaffordable.
00:18:59.380
So every time the politician at the federal government level opens their mouths and says, oh, you're going to get more back than you pay in.
00:19:06.740
Number two, that contradicts their entire purpose of their carbon tax, which is meant to punish you for using oil and gas.
00:19:17.000
I mean, B.C. has been carbon taxing for a long time.
00:19:25.320
If a carbon tax was going to work, it would have started working by now.
00:19:30.380
So this is where, you know, as somebody, I grew up in the interior mostly, but I spent some of my formative years on Vancouver Island.
00:19:40.440
I would describe myself as a small e-environmentalist.
00:19:43.140
I pick up litter every time I'm walking near the river.
00:19:48.660
Like, to slow that down, British Columbia has had the two highest carbon taxes in North America for years.
00:20:04.580
Now, apart from when people were locked in their homes and stuff at the beginning of 2020 where you saw a dip, other than those weird moments, it goes up and up and up steadily.
00:20:14.940
Because, like you know and all your viewers know, people need to drive to work, they need to heat their home, and they need to eat food.
00:20:22.020
They don't have an affordable, alternative, dependable energy source to switch to.
00:20:33.920
They have to drive to work, and they usually use natural gas to heat their home.
00:20:38.440
And truckers use diesel, and farmers use diesel and natural gas and propane to both heat their barns and to dry their grain.
00:20:46.780
So, if you increase the cost of that element, of those fuels, you increase the cost of everything, because people can't opt out.
00:20:55.680
And so, this is why this is such a brutal punishment for people.
00:20:59.060
And what really gets me going, Corey, is that the parliamentary budget officer themselves, an independent government watchdog who keeps an eye on the budget, says,
00:21:08.840
This hurts low-income people, like single mothers, and fixed-income folks, the worst.
00:21:17.660
Because for folks who don't remember what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck, that literally means your paycheck's out there paying for stuff.
00:21:31.880
You increase the cost of one of those essentials, and you're cutting into their food budget.
00:21:36.880
You're making them have to find a cheaper place to live.
00:21:40.560
So, that's why it's hurting those folks the most, even with the rebates factored in.
00:21:45.400
And this is where I can't understand why the feds aren't listening.
00:21:49.280
Well, and part of it, too, and you sort of touched a bit on that, is the indirect costs.
00:21:55.640
But also, the delivery of a lot of products and services to us.
00:21:59.560
So, retail brick-and-mortar places, they're all paying that as well.
00:22:03.880
And, of course, they have to incorporate that into the prices of the goods and services they provide.
00:22:07.740
So, you still end up paying it down the road for the other consumers of it in the business world.
00:22:15.100
And so, just imagine you are, you know, a store.
00:22:20.100
You have to keep it cool in the summer and heat it in the winter.
00:22:23.540
Most companies would use natural gas to do that.
00:22:28.500
All those trucks that deliver all the stuff that we eat and use that are backing into their loading bays,
00:22:34.180
those are running on diesel, those get a carbon tax.
00:22:38.260
And a lot of folks forget, too, that most of our locomotives in Canada run on diesel.
00:22:43.780
It's around $2,400 extra per fill-up of one of those diesel locomotives in the carbon tax alone.
00:22:53.680
For a big-rigged truck, like if you've got, you know, a Peterbilt and you've got a couple of those diesel cylinders,
00:22:59.220
that's around $160 extra just in the first carbon tax on diesel.
00:23:04.900
So, that one's going to triple in the next seven years, plus the second carbon tax is going to add more pain.
00:23:12.040
And so, this is where we're, every time a politician opens their mouths about affordability,
00:23:17.300
you should really question them and ask them how seriously they're taking affordability
00:23:21.480
when they're making everything more expensive through the carbon taxes.
00:23:24.140
So, something Dave mentioned before, and then what you and your organization just put out in a release,
00:23:30.800
though, is this carbon tax isn't being applied equally across the country.
00:23:35.400
It appears that we've got a special province that, unsurprisingly, to be honest, is getting a break on it.
00:23:45.720
I know, your viewers are shocked, I can tell, at the Western Standard.
00:23:49.420
So, what's interesting here, Corey, is that this is now getting really highlighted.
00:23:55.640
Because up until July 1st, Atlantic Canada had a cap-and-trade deal.
00:24:02.020
So, they were paying a much lower carbon tax, I think it was around $0.02 per litre of gasoline,
00:24:11.520
Well, they have a more energy-intensive economy for heating, blah, blah, blah.
00:24:16.500
Whatever reason they had, they had a cap-and-trade deal so that they had a slower roll into the mandatory minimum federal carbon tax.
00:24:28.160
Overnight, their cost of their carbon tax went up $0.12 a litre on gasoline.
00:24:42.280
And so, that got a lot of news out that way in Atlantic Canada.
00:24:47.080
And now, it puts into sharp relief the fact that Quebec is the last one standing.
00:24:52.740
They're the last ones that have a cap-and-trade deal.
00:24:55.320
Now, they don't have as good a deal as Atlantic Canada had going for a while.
00:25:02.480
This is all to say, there should be one rate for the carbon tax across Canada.
00:25:10.040
I mean, we could all agree that that would have an equal impact upon every province in
00:25:19.140
Let's assume emissions are going to cause the world to continue burning and somehow Canada
00:25:25.240
has to do its part in reducing these emissions.
00:25:33.280
I mean, that's a fair question that people ask.
00:25:34.980
If they're concerned about the problem, carbon taxes aren't working, then what should the
00:25:41.740
And a lot of people care about the environment, myself included.
00:25:49.460
I buy almost all my stuff used because it reduces the impact on the environment.
00:25:54.220
And it doesn't use up resources that don't need to be used.
00:26:02.140
If that's your issue, if you wake up at three in the morning worried, oh my gosh, global
00:26:10.100
The Canadian carbon taxes aren't making a dent in that.
00:26:14.540
Actually, it was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it back in 2018, I believe, in French.
00:26:20.580
He said it on the very popular Quebec talk show, Tout le Mans en Parle.
00:26:24.360
And in translation, he basically said, we could shut down everything tomorrow.
00:26:29.820
And what he meant is trucking, heating, eating, like, go die in a cave.
00:26:34.620
We could shut down everything tomorrow, and it wouldn't really make a big difference.
00:26:38.760
Interestingly, the parliamentary budget officer said mostly the same thing.
00:26:43.800
That Canada, and I'm paraphrasing, Canada's emissions are not significant enough to make
00:26:54.160
Even with the carbon taxes, even though British Columbia is one of the most unaffordable places
00:26:58.040
to live on Earth, they're punishing their people.
00:27:00.640
It's still not making a dent, and it's not working because our emissions keep on going up.
00:27:04.280
Two, even if it did, our emissions in Canada don't do enough to really move the needle on
00:27:21.760
But it kind of seems a little obvious to look at the big end of the arithmetic problem.
00:27:27.180
So, there's about a few hundred million people in India who burn things like wood and animal
00:27:36.000
This is according to the Indian government saying this, that this is their fuel source.
00:27:39.740
And they apparently want to switch to cleaner burning sources of energy, like natural gas.
00:27:49.260
So, why doesn't the government look at doing that to really tackle the big end of the arithmetic
00:27:54.440
problem when it comes to global emissions and heavy pollutants?
00:27:58.560
Why not ship them cleaner energy instead of punishing people here in Canada for driving
00:28:08.700
And if we exported some nice, clean, liquid, natural gas and increase that, they could get
00:28:13.600
some tax revenues and they could apply that to, say, the unclean drinking water on First
00:28:17.420
Nations reserves or planting more trees in areas where the fires did burn things.
00:28:23.400
But, I mean, they still can't seem to get off the idea that taxes can actually fix things.
00:28:31.680
We were warning them years ago that this wouldn't work.
00:28:35.560
We have a perfect lived example in British Columbia that this does not work.
00:28:41.880
Even if they try to trot it out and say it'll be revenue neutral, governments are going to
00:28:45.980
government and they're going to cook the books, which is exactly what they did in British Columbia.
00:28:50.320
It was only revenue neutral for a few years before they started skimming.
00:28:58.460
We know it's driving up the cost of living and we know it's not helping the environment.
00:29:06.300
We need a different approach and taxes are not it.
00:29:09.620
Well, I knew you guys wouldn't support taxes as an approach.
00:29:12.640
Any raiser is pretty unlikely, but all the same, I do appreciate the work you guys do
00:29:18.460
and bringing that to light because Canadians don't necessarily see how they're getting it.
00:29:21.680
And I noticed actually a side note, I threw that out on Twitter.
00:29:25.580
I see another outlet in Canada labeled you guys as an anti-tax organization.
00:29:30.680
So you're anti-taxers and boy, the games they play with the terminology.
00:29:43.000
And I think I can't remember if it was because of the carbon tax or because of the so-called
00:29:47.580
media bailouts and the government funding the media that we got that label.
00:29:53.440
Uh, but either way, uh, taxes, either if it's either the media bailout that they're trying
00:29:58.240
to do and they keep fumbling really badly like today or, uh, doubling up on our carbon
00:30:08.960
Well, where, where can we, uh, continue to, to follow you guys and, and, uh, you know,
00:30:12.840
keep up with, uh, what you guys are putting out there and how to support you.
00:30:19.480
Why it shouldn't fund journalists or we can save that for a rainy day?
00:30:35.040
And it's well worth going into, cause that's just a whole new absurdity that the whole C-18
00:30:39.460
and the way they're trying to put the screws to, uh, uh, social media, uh, platforms.
00:30:45.540
So speaking of, you know, not working, like we pointed out, the carbon tax isn't working
00:30:51.960
Um, and the, the whole media bailout thing isn't working either.
00:30:55.700
Uh, Black Locks reporter, great folks over there.
00:30:58.300
Uh, they pointed out that the rate of attrition and newsroom shutdowns didn't abate.
00:31:04.140
It didn't stop with the so-called media bailout.
00:31:07.260
Uh, that's the one where it's around half a billion dollars and it was supposed to be
00:31:11.100
a, a cluster of subsidies and tax credits, blah, blah, that was going to other media outlets
00:31:21.940
Number two, that's a waste of taxpayers' money.
00:31:24.720
You shouldn't be spending taxpayers' money on news media, period.
00:31:28.220
And number three, this is a huge conflict of interest.
00:31:32.300
You cannot hold government to account if you're counting on the government for your paycheck.
00:31:39.640
So if you say are a reporter and $13,000 of your paycheck, your salary is coming from
00:31:46.860
the government, from Justin Trudeau's government.
00:31:52.440
You're part of the parliamentary press gallery.
00:31:54.540
One guy gives you 13 grand towards your salary.
00:31:58.540
It might be the deciding factor whether or not you got that job.
00:32:01.680
If it exists, the other guys in opposition want to scrap that program.
00:32:07.560
How on earth are you supposed to call that game straight?
00:32:11.240
You're, you're not, even if you tried, if you knew, even if you did yeoman's work to try,
00:32:16.740
you're a human being and the perception of bias is going to tarnish it.
00:32:24.920
Not all media outlets took government money, but most of them get accused of doing so.
00:32:30.160
And this, as a longtime journalist, is what upsets me personally, is that now there's a major survey that
00:32:44.460
So a couple of years ago, I was shocked to see it was over 40% of Canadians think that
00:32:49.340
journalists are actively trying to mislead them.
00:32:52.660
Not a typo, not a flub or a mispronunciation, not innocent mistakes, actively trying to mislead
00:33:01.800
It's over 60% of Canadians now think journalists are trying to actively mislead them with statements
00:33:15.420
It's just such a snowball effect because then people stop tuning in.
00:33:19.300
The advertising revenues drop and on and on we go.
00:33:23.780
And what's insidious about this social media shakedown they're trying, this is just their
00:33:28.340
way of not reaching into the government coffers to try and bail these guys out.
00:33:32.620
They want to reach into private industries coffers to do it.
00:33:38.300
The government, of course, are the ones who will say whether or not you qualify for those
00:33:42.080
dollars that they're going to steal from Facebook and Google on your behalf.
00:33:45.180
So again, you end up, even if unconsciously, you're going to be leaning away from holding
00:33:50.460
the government to account because you don't want to lose those dollars.
00:33:53.060
It is a terrible, terrible mess we're getting into.
00:34:00.120
I'm surprised that more journalists aren't just saying so.
00:34:09.060
It's awful to have something shut down around you like a media company, but it's not working.
00:34:14.940
It's actually having, you know, a tightening effect because like we just said, look at that
00:34:22.060
Like if the audience doesn't trust you, even on basic W5s, who, what, where, when, why,
00:34:31.200
And so they're going to have to figure out something else.
00:34:33.520
Like you explained, they're going to have to do their own models.
00:34:35.840
They're going to have to do their own subscriptions.
00:34:37.860
They're going to have to take donations, something like that.
00:34:40.160
They're going to have to shift their model of how they interact with their audience and
00:34:43.780
how they generate revenue, but they can't take it from the government.
00:34:47.380
They can't take it from taxpayers because then they're going to have the perception of
00:34:54.820
It's, it's a major lose-lose situation and we're imploring the government and mainstream
00:35:03.600
Well, and they seem to just keep doubling down.
00:35:05.860
It's almost absurd, bizarre watching Rodriguez kind of fumbling around, throwing out threats
00:35:12.100
I mean, this, this bill is failing, but the government will not quit.
00:35:15.940
And that's where we're wincing and bracing ourselves because the Google Facebook thing
00:35:23.200
But the band-aid solution, if it fails from what he said last week was really concerning.
00:35:28.600
He said something to the effect of, we need to make sure these newsrooms stay open.
00:35:35.380
The federal government needs to make sure a newsroom?
00:35:39.540
And basically said, we will make sure they have the resources they need.
00:35:44.160
Resources in government speak usually means taxpayers' money, which is worth saying no, no.
00:35:58.720
Well, either way, we'll see what's happening as this unfolds over the course of the summer.
00:36:04.260
It gives us something to watch while Parliament's out of session, even if it's the darkest of
00:36:09.160
So I guess one more time before I let you go, where can people find out about what you
00:36:19.940
The best way is to actually go through our petitions list.
00:36:24.580
If you want to defund the media, like we were just saying, if you want to scrap the carbon
00:36:28.240
taxes, if you want to scrap the gun grab, there's all sorts of stuff on there.
00:36:33.320
Sign those specific petitions, and that way you're now part of our taxpayer standing army.
00:36:39.040
And the next time there's a big bill or a piece of legislation or something to do, we
00:36:43.360
will send out a major email blast to you and let you know what we can all do.
00:36:47.500
And by all teaming up and speaking up at the same time and pushing back, we have a much
00:36:51.940
better chance of making the changes that we want to see in the government.
00:37:04.080
Well, as Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, it's true, it was worth going a
00:37:07.580
little longer because there's just so many things to cover.
00:37:15.620
This government has no interest in trying to do better.
00:37:18.900
It's not interested in trying to come up with nuanced policies or actually solve problems.
00:37:26.420
And then tax is the hammer they love to use to achieve the first thing.
00:37:30.500
But of course, it irreparably, I should say irreparably, things recover, but it damages
00:37:36.320
And then with this media mess, yes, it's damaging trust.
00:37:39.140
If nobody trusts what the media puts out there, they won't tune in.
00:37:45.340
If I kept feeding you a bunch of BS on this show and kept lying to you or just putting
00:37:51.760
out shaky things or if Dave was doing so with the news copy, things like that, our subscribers
00:37:57.120
are going to say, I'm not paying to get this garbage fed to me.
00:38:01.340
If we're accountable to them that way, and that's the only way you can do it.
00:38:07.260
But when you force everybody, you force the whole country to contribute and put money in,
00:38:17.060
And I mean, as we said, some of them might be very honest goods, journalists and stories,
00:38:21.100
but once the trust's lost, they all get labeled as the parasites taking subsidies and things
00:38:30.000
And that's the final part of every story we keep talking about with these things, whether
00:38:33.340
it's the carbon tax, whether it's these media ballots, they aren't working.
00:38:36.580
They aren't doing what they told us they were going to do in the first place.
00:38:46.860
Yes, some other folks talking about a number of things.
00:38:50.320
Somebody mentioned UBI and was asking about it.
00:39:01.740
It's saying we're going to set a bar and everybody will make this much.
00:39:05.240
And anything, you know, the government will fund you at a base level and anything you
00:39:09.300
want to make above and beyond that is it's a pie in the sky dream.
00:39:12.880
Other countries have tried experiments with it.
00:39:15.140
But if they tax us deeply enough, you can get into that situation.
00:39:19.500
So let's talk about a few other news stories here while we're going into things.
00:39:23.040
Here's something because we're talking about the cost of living, cost of rent.
00:39:26.280
Of course, we get the people coming out of the woodworks again, screaming for rent control.
00:39:36.320
But some of the other areas for landlords, people wondering why there isn't enough rental
00:39:44.560
If there's not enough places, the rents are going to go up.
00:39:50.320
And if you control the rents, you put a cap on it, you do things like that.
00:39:53.640
Well, then people don't get into the rental market.
00:39:58.640
They don't put their houses or apartment buildings out for rent.
00:40:01.520
And you reduce supply and everybody gets screwed.
00:40:04.580
But the other part is our lack of property rights.
00:40:09.260
And you know, landlords have been demonized for a long, long time.
00:40:12.060
I mean, the old silent movies with the mustache tweaking guy, throwing the little old lady
00:40:21.500
Somebody has to find the renters, manage all that.
00:40:24.960
So when you don't have property rights, though, then you start seeing why you don't want to
00:40:29.320
So we got a story in Calgary, a Calgary landlord.
00:40:34.580
He figures it's about $100,000 in property damage got done by a group of squatters who moved
00:40:42.500
There are nine people, it turned out, were stuffed into that house up in Temple.
00:40:49.800
But then they never paid rent ever again after that.
00:40:52.240
So he had to go in himself and evict them, kick them out after months.
00:40:57.860
But now, now they're all camped on his front yard.
00:41:04.360
There's mattresses and furniture and appliances.
00:41:07.120
And there's nine of them squatting in the yard of this house.
00:41:18.640
He's had, you know, he's gone through the system.
00:41:23.260
And there doesn't appear to be anybody willing.
00:41:26.140
I mean, they can keep giving him notice and keep handing him pieces of paper and threatening
00:41:30.540
So this guy's home is getting completely destroyed and he can't throw them off of there.
00:41:37.740
Angry Canadians say, my grandfather would walk in with his buddies and physically chuck them.
00:41:43.280
But now with these controls and everything, it's almost impossible for landlords to get
00:41:47.780
rid of these guys when they do something like this, which again, compounds the problem
00:41:52.820
when other people considering getting into the rental market, like, you know, providing
00:42:05.400
And meanwhile, our supply continues to crater, uh, angry Canadians didn't drag him out.
00:42:15.380
The property owner will be the one who gets the crap for grabbing these bums and throwing
00:42:21.800
And let's go all the way farther back to Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
00:42:25.440
That massive, nasty, nasty man whose second biggest crime after the national energy program
00:42:30.800
was spawning Justin Trudeau, or some people think it might be somebody else who knows.
00:42:35.240
But one of the things he also pointedly did with the charter was make sure we don't have
00:42:38.780
property rights is this man who's having his home, his property, his investment, his life
00:42:51.000
He would have much more strength going to the course.
00:42:54.480
He wouldn't have to in the first place because this is my property.
00:43:06.520
They said the media camped out and watched this place.
00:43:09.900
And they watched the addicts coming and going into this.
00:43:13.040
It's just a crack house on the front yard and he can't get rid of it.
00:43:17.420
So who who's going to get into the rental business?
00:43:22.720
I mean, I know the vast majority of renters aren't like these people.
00:43:29.580
But everybody hears the horror stories and things like that.
00:43:32.440
This is, you know, I don't know what sort of financial position this man's in.
00:43:37.280
But I mean, that's a big chunk of money for anybody.
00:43:40.800
It's, again, something he was hoping to invest in.
00:43:43.100
What's it going to be worth by the time he finally gets those bums out of there?
00:43:56.260
There's people who do want to have that sort of monthly income going on.
00:44:01.660
But they need to know that their investment can be protected.
00:44:04.960
They need to know they have some rights as a landlord.
00:44:07.520
We always talk about tenant right, tenant right, tenant right.
00:44:11.060
They shouldn't have any bloody rights to this man's property.
00:44:14.180
But welcome to the backward world of Canada, right?
00:44:19.380
This is similar to how we blaming Facebook and Google, calling them bad, calling them nasty.
00:44:24.540
Well, because they were providing a service to the media.
00:44:27.860
They want to steal money from social media providers because they were providing links to media.
00:44:36.120
This guy was a guy who invested his life savings, probably bought the house, got it up to a point.
00:44:42.120
He looks like he's a new Canadian, and he's trying to make it out here like everybody else is.
00:44:46.500
And instead, he's stuck in this living, waking nightmare of trying to protect his own property.
00:44:56.600
The people who invest and take the risk, start the business, try to provide the things, are demonized.
00:45:03.320
They're the ones who are saying everybody's, you know, we should cap the rent they can collect, and we should gouge them.
00:45:08.060
They're just going to get out of the market, guys.
00:45:14.320
And when they get out of the market, nobody has anywhere to live.
00:45:17.660
And then, you know, the progression of fools who go down that road, because, well, if private industry won't provide rental housing, we should get the government in on it.
00:45:27.440
You should travel a little more and see just how nice government-built housing is, how good it looks.
00:45:37.500
I had the opportunity to go to Moscow back in 87.
00:45:46.240
Bland, basic apartment buildings as far as the eye could see, run down in poor condition, because nobody owns them, right?
00:45:55.440
So they're falling apart, yet they're still paying for these.
00:46:01.740
We need to reward our producers instead of demonizing them.
00:46:06.260
We need to let them earn money and provide things for us rather than stealing from them.
00:46:12.580
We're in this world where we're playing the politics of envy, where we are stepping on those who go out of their way to make things, yes, better for themselves, good for them.
00:46:24.040
There's nothing wrong with investing for yourself.
00:46:27.880
It makes things better for others when you let them do it.
00:46:30.260
We've got a whole mentality, a philosophy, a nasty anti-success mindset that's really sinking in, a sense of entitlement.
00:46:45.840
All the government owes you is providing the environment for you to be able to get up and get those things for yourself.
00:46:58.060
I want to see some degree of government, but we need less and less, not this constant controlling and everything, and everything's the government's responsibility.
00:47:16.180
A lot of you guys, it's mom's basement is what it is for you.
00:47:19.520
And you've grown dependent on it, and you're not letting yourself find the ambition and work ethic to get out of it.
00:47:24.840
Well, that's your own fault, and demanding more government is not going to fix the problem, guys.
00:47:32.100
That was enough ranting and raving and pissing and moaning out at me for today.
00:47:39.280
We've got a nice summer ahead of us for most of Canada here.
00:47:44.880
When you get off the show, get outside, get some sunshine, mow the lawn, do it while you can,
00:47:52.520
And I will be back next week at the same time with a whole bunch more stuff to go on about.
00:47:57.880
Maybe even I'll come up with a few solutions for problems.
00:48:02.800
The current Lethbridge feed grain prices are as follows.
00:48:05.540
Cash barley's at $4.15, feed wheat's at $4.05, and corn's down $5 at $3.85 per metric ton.
00:48:13.060
In the milling wheat markets, September Minneapolis future jumped $0.42 at $8.51.
00:48:18.800
With local hardware at spring vids for July movement at $10.65 per bushel.
00:48:23.680
In the oilseeds, nearby canola futures gained $10.50 at $7.49.90 per metric ton,
00:48:30.720
with delivered values for July movement at $17.23 per bushel.
00:48:35.200
In the pulse markets, nearby red lentils are trading at $0.33 a pound,
00:48:43.260
In the cattle markets, August live cattle lost $0.80 at $1.76.03 per 100 wave.
00:48:50.960
For more information on grain marketing, call me at 403-394-1711.
00:48:56.340
I'm Sean Smith of Marketplace Commodities, accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.
00:49:02.220
Canadian Shooting Sports Association, without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.
00:49:09.100
These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada.
00:49:16.320
And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
00:49:22.080
We've become a member. It's absolutely worth every penny.