Western Standard - November 26, 2021


Cory Morgan Show: Speech from the Throne


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

188.4136

Word count

2,913

Sentence count

140

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of The Corey Morgan Show, Corey talks to Franco Terrazano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation about the federal government's Throne Speech and what it says about the direction the government is going to take in the next session.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.000 Thank you.
00:01:00.000 Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show.
00:01:08.460 This is my regular platform where I ramble about the issues that annoy me of the day
00:01:14.340 and I speak to guests who will give a more nuanced approach on those issues
00:01:18.220 and dig a little more deeper than just my raged rantings and ramblings.
00:01:24.800 I've got to always start, though, with the most important part of all this,
00:01:28.160 and it's by thanking our members with the Western Standard.
00:01:31.140 This is how we're able to do this, how we're able to get these guests,
00:01:33.680 how we're able to get these different perspectives out there,
00:01:35.740 points of view that the mainstream media typically isn't covering,
00:01:39.480 even though they get well-funded quite often by our federal tax dollars
00:01:43.560 or even provincial incentives.
00:01:45.140 The Western Standard doesn't take any of those tax dollars.
00:01:48.040 Nobody's telling us what we can write or what to do.
00:01:50.620 We rely on the members, and thank you very much for supporting us.
00:01:53.720 It's been going really well.
00:01:54.740 If you aren't a member yet already, go to the Western Standard online
00:01:58.060 online.com. Check it out. Take out a membership. It's only 10 bucks a month. You get a free trial
00:02:02.940 for a couple of weeks. So you can get behind that paywall, see what we show, look at those great
00:02:06.880 columns, look at those breaking news items. And we do break stuff before a lot of the other media
00:02:10.840 outlets get to it. And I think you'll find that that investment in good news is well worth your
00:02:16.500 while. I mean, we're talking, if we're going to use those cheesy old sayings, less than a cup of
00:02:20.740 coffee a day, 30 cents a day, you're going to get that sort of news coverage. So come on,
00:02:24.360 get out there, sign out, take a membership up, and then we can keep bringing you this content.
00:02:29.140 So the big news item this week was on the federal front, the throne speech. You know,
00:02:33.140 that's the annual, or I shouldn't say annual, whenever a new parliamentary session gets kicked
00:02:37.620 off, the Queen's representative, the governor general will give a speech that the prime
00:02:41.560 minister's office actually wrote for them, but it lays out the general plans and direction of where
00:02:47.400 the next government's going to go, what they're looking to do. So this was more of the same,
00:02:54.840 you know, big on promises, low on details, a lot more spending promises, not much detail on how
00:03:00.940 they're going to get the money to spend. So I figured the best person to talk to to break all
00:03:04.880 that down though was Franco Terrizano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He's the federal
00:03:10.040 director. He used to be the Alberta director. They transferred him out to Ottawa. Such a terrible
00:03:14.580 fate indeed, but he's continuing his important work out there. And he's actually back here in
00:03:19.020 Calgary visiting. So he came into the studio and we had a great conversation talking about the
00:03:24.180 throne speech, talking about the government policies and where they are going forward.
00:03:28.200 So without further ado, here we go. All right, Franco. Well, good to see you again. Finally in
00:03:32.600 person. I mean, we've been doing all these remote interviews. You've been doing nothing but remote
00:03:36.400 interviews. We can actually talk face to face, but on familiar subject matter as usual. So thanks
00:03:44.380 for coming into the standard studios hey my pleasure back in calgary and it's not too cold 0.66
00:03:48.620 out here for me no you got a good weather break this year coming from the evil east there where
00:03:53.020 you've been reassigned uh we've still have uh we'll forgive you yeah so i mean the the top subject
00:04:00.220 this week you know we've got federal politics going on you're the federal director now uh the
00:04:04.300 throne speech came out yesterday let's start with that what's your interpretation of what we heard
00:04:09.980 Well, Corey, as you know, a throne speech is really lays out the priorities for the
00:04:14.040 government over the next session.
00:04:16.240 Now there's a lot to chew on that was in the throne speech, but really, what really
00:04:20.020 stood out to me was what wasn't in the throne speech.
00:04:23.240 So there wasn't a single mention of the deficit.
00:04:26.060 There wasn't a single mention of the debt.
00:04:28.400 And like, I understand, we all understand there's a lot of priorities right now that
00:04:32.300 any government is facing, but come on, this federal government is up to its eyeballs in
00:04:37.040 debt, more than $1 trillion in debt, which means that each Canadian is on the hook for about $30,000
00:04:43.220 each in federal government debt, massive amount of overspending, tons of government borrowing,
00:04:48.560 and not even a single mention of the debt or deficit. A word that I actually was kind of
00:04:54.260 surprised to hear, but it was mentioned at least, was inflation, which is a consequence of debt and
00:04:59.400 spending and so on. So they do know that it's a challenge. I mean, you think maybe there's a
00:05:03.720 glimmer, though, of economic reality is starting to come into some of the planners with the
00:05:07.260 Liberal government, understanding that they just can't carry on like they have been?
00:05:10.040 Well, I think it might be the key economic issue facing your average Canadian Joe like
00:05:15.640 me or you. And look, it doesn't really take a PhD in economics to understand how the government
00:05:21.420 is driving up these prices. We're seeing unprecedented amount of government spending,
00:05:26.380 massive amounts of government borrowing. We've seen the printing press on overdrive during
00:05:31.420 this pandemic where you have too many dollars chasing too few goods. Plus, we've also seen
00:05:36.160 tax increases during the pandemic. Now, Corey, you mentioned that they at least mentioned the
00:05:41.300 word inflation, but that's one thing. But on the other hand, they also talked about increasing the
00:05:47.320 carbon tax. So it's kind of weird to talk about reducing the cost of living and then also soaking
00:05:53.240 a family every time they go to the pumps. Yeah, well, climate was, I mean, and again,
00:05:57.460 not terribly surprising to be a large part of the throne speech. That seems to be where
00:06:00.780 Prime Minister Trudeau really wants to make his stance as a, where he's going to make his mark
00:06:05.680 as a prime minister is battling climate change and bringing on environmental controls. And I think
00:06:10.080 the emissions cap was mentioned within there as well. But I mean, so we're kind of chilling our
00:06:14.660 energy industry at a time when the world wants it really badly. There's going to be economic
00:06:19.620 consequences from his actions from that front as well. And consumers are paying the price,
00:06:24.680 right? We've already seen the carbon tax hike increase twice during the pandemic. We're set
00:06:29.240 for another carbon tax hike next April 1st. Yeah, the joke is on taxpayers again. But let's not
00:06:35.940 forget that Trudeau said by 2030, he's going to be increasing the carbon tax to 40 cents per liter
00:06:42.080 of gasoline. But the pain doesn't stop there. He's also going to impose a second carbon tax
00:06:47.740 inside of these fuel regulations, which could add another 11 cents per liter of gasoline.
00:06:53.980 So we're seeing this federal government under Trudeau move in the exact opposite direction.
00:06:58.500 What we should be seeing is them providing tax relief at the pump.
00:07:02.280 We saw that in South Korea.
00:07:03.720 They just cut their gas taxes by 20%.
00:07:05.940 We've also seen India reduce gas taxes.
00:07:09.060 So they're providing their citizens with relief.
00:07:11.680 And here we have the Trudeau government, Trudeau himself in Glasgow not too long ago,
00:07:16.880 bragging about soaking Canadians with higher gas prices.
00:07:20.700 Yeah, well, and in British Columbia, your compatriot, Chris Sims, has made it quite clear
00:07:24.640 because we've had a carbon tax there for quite some time.
00:07:27.980 and it hasn't high one it hasn't reduced people's usage of those products it's just cost them more
00:07:34.160 to do it well corey i mean can you fill up your car with rainbow dust absolutely not i mean people
00:07:40.280 especially people in rural canada i mean canada is a huge country we've got a lot of people living
00:07:45.080 in rural communities you need to be able to fuel your car last i checked canada is a really cold
00:07:51.360 time uh usually this time of year december january february you need to heat your homes and you know
00:07:56.780 as you pointed out, British Columbia shows that carbon taxes are all economic pain without
00:08:03.240 the environmental gain. Chris Sims has been doing a great job showing this. Highest carbon tax in
00:08:08.360 Canada. And what is going on with emissions? They keep going up. So you're gouging, the government
00:08:15.080 is gouging consumers at the pumps and emissions continue to go up. Well, that's it. I mean,
00:08:19.280 if they could point at it and say, well, look, it worked. The emissions came down,
00:08:22.020 but we're not talking about an unproven theory anymore. I mean, the carbon taxes have been tried
00:08:25.200 and they failed.
00:08:26.320 So, I mean, it is just a tax grab.
00:08:29.180 What about some other areas now
00:08:30.520 the government talked about?
00:08:31.960 They stayed away from saying
00:08:33.120 that they're going to start backing off
00:08:34.520 on some of the pandemic programs
00:08:37.740 and things that they've been doing
00:08:39.120 to stimulate the economy,
00:08:39.940 but they didn't talk about
00:08:40.640 spending more on it either.
00:08:42.000 Do you think maybe they're going to start
00:08:43.160 moving towards bringing back
00:08:45.140 some of those policies
00:08:46.500 because we can't afford them much longer?
00:08:47.660 Well, we certainly can't. 1.00
00:08:48.920 This was always sold to Canadians
00:08:50.840 as being temporary spending measures
00:08:53.760 key on the temporary.
00:08:56.040 Now, we have heard from Freeland that they are trying to target these massively costly
00:09:02.740 subsidies.
00:09:03.560 So a more targeted approach is obviously a good step in the right direction, but we
00:09:07.300 need way more to be done on raining this massive overspending.
00:09:11.020 Now, you mentioned spending, and I actually got a laugh out of one part of the throne
00:09:15.400 speech when they said something to the effect of spending money prudently.
00:09:19.440 I laughed. In what world is the Trudeau government spending money prudently? And if this is Trudeau
00:09:25.040 spending money prudently or managing it wisely, then I would hate to see the bill for his
00:09:30.020 reckless spending. Now, let me just dive into that a little bit more. We all know that the
00:09:34.880 government has massively increased spending during the pandemic. But even in 2018, the Trudeau
00:09:41.580 government was spending all-time highs, which means that before the pandemic, the federal
00:09:46.880 government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was spending more money than, than during
00:09:51.800 any single year during the second world war.
00:09:54.780 So we saw massive spending before the pandemic.
00:09:57.780 We're seeing massive government spending and borrow borrowing during the pandemic and not
00:10:02.440 to be the bearer of even more bad news here.
00:10:05.200 But the last budget that we saw from the finance minister, Christia Freeland, her plan was
00:10:10.580 to increase permanent federal government spending by a hundred billion dollars by 2026.
00:10:16.600 Well, and the throne speech, again, was a reiteration of the campaign promises and kind
00:10:21.780 of the last mandate of the government. So nothing new is coming. And we were seeing a great spike
00:10:26.180 in spending. So we're not seeing any intention or indication that they're going to rein that in.
00:10:31.340 In some of the areas we're talking about, government efficiencies, all of the CERB payments,
00:10:36.140 things like that, we're starting to see the consequences as they're realizing a lot of
00:10:38.660 people were improperly collecting or they lost other benefits because they didn't realize that
00:10:42.500 would apply to those benefits. I mean, we've got an administrative nightmare really looming as they
00:10:47.780 try to catch up on what they actually did with all that money they tossed out there. Do you suspect
00:10:51.780 they're ever going to actually collect on payments that went out or they're just going to kind of
00:10:55.540 let that fall by the waste? You know, I don't have the crystal ball there. It's tough to say,
00:10:59.860 but let's talk about another impact of all these CRB payments or the CERB payments that were going
00:11:05.460 out. And you know this as a former small business owner, but it had massive economic impacts,
00:11:11.540 Right. Because guess what? When you pay people not to work, you're going to have fewer people
00:11:16.660 showing up for work. And, and we've really seen the federal government create the perfect storm
00:11:23.060 for inflation. Because on the one hand that we've seen the bank of Canada,
00:11:27.300 the federal government central bank print money like crazy $370 billion printed, um,
00:11:33.380 during the pandemic, a large bunk bank, a large bulk of what the bank of Canada has in assets is
00:11:39.940 is of course, Government of Canada debt, right?
00:11:43.300 So on the one hand, we're seeing a bunch of new dollars
00:11:45.820 and when the central bank prints more dollars,
00:11:48.880 your dollars buy less.
00:11:50.320 But on the other hand,
00:11:51.240 a lot of these subsidies were paying people not to work,
00:11:53.760 right, so you're propping up demand,
00:11:55.880 but you're also disincentivizing supply.
00:11:59.000 So you go back to the old saying,
00:12:00.800 what is inflation?
00:12:01.780 Too many dollars chasing too few goods.
00:12:04.680 Yeah, well, and I got into a,
00:12:06.160 well, I always get into the heated online discourse
00:12:08.940 people but you know a subject that came out because the restaurant i used to own i was talking to the
00:12:12.380 owners and they had to raise their menu prices they were talking about you know there's no sense
00:12:15.660 even going to permanent menus like we had because it's too expensive to keep reprinting them because
00:12:19.180 the inputs are getting so expensive and they're raising so fast particularly in food items
00:12:23.820 that and fuel surcharges from delivery that that they might as well just keep on the paper
00:12:28.380 disposable ones it doesn't have anything to do with the pandemic it's because you got to change
00:12:31.020 it so much but another aspect was it's terribly difficult to get staff to come back so they're
00:12:34.940 doing as people say well if you can't be in business without paying a living wage you don't
00:12:38.140 don't deserve to be in business. Well, they're raising it, but then they had to raise the prices.
00:12:41.420 And then the people online got upset. These restaurants are gouging. They're raising the
00:12:44.060 prices. They don't understand this natural. There's an economic reality. Yeah. You got to
00:12:48.160 pay the bills somewhere. You got to pay the bills. And Corey, I think Canadians right now are
00:12:53.580 learning, especially with this massive or with these huge price increases, right? We just saw
00:12:59.140 4.7% year over year increase in consumer prices, the highest annual price increase in almost two
00:13:06.060 decades. So with this type of inflation, I think Canadians are really realizing that there is no
00:13:12.220 such thing as a free government lunch. You have to pay the piper eventually. And that's why we've
00:13:17.980 always been saying that it's so important to make tough decisions today before even tougher decisions
00:13:22.860 are forced on us tomorrow. Now I talked about the trillion dollars worth of federal government debt
00:13:28.380 that break that down. And that's about $30,000 that each Canadian is on the hook for. And Corey,
00:13:34.780 I mean, I don't have tens of thousands of dollars lying around.
00:13:37.620 I know many, many other Canadians don't.
00:13:39.720 And that's why we're pushing so hard for the federal government to rein in this massive amount of spending.
00:13:45.560 Well, you always do say you tend to be the bearer of bad tidings.
00:13:48.960 Is there any silver lining?
00:13:50.100 Is there some good things you've seen in Ottawa?
00:13:51.900 Any indications?
00:13:52.720 You know, let's maybe try and end on a, there's got to be some positive glimmers hiding out there somewhere.
00:13:57.080 Well, we mentioned the fact that Freeland said that she was trying to move towards more targeted COVID-19 subsidies.
00:14:04.360 her, she herself actually said that this is supposed to be temporary. So, so that's a bright
00:14:10.280 spot, but you know what I think is a real bright spot is that we're really talking about the Bank
00:14:15.480 of Canada. Now that this inflation is going on to really talking about how if the, if the federal
00:14:20.920 government is printing all of these new dollars through its central bank, that that is a huge
00:14:26.360 factor that causes prizes to rise. So I do think that just having more of a discussion on monetary
00:14:33.560 policy could be a bright thing just to have a fuller discussion in the public the inflation is
00:14:38.440 absolutely not a good thing for so many canadians but the fact that now we can have this conversation
00:14:43.480 about the bank of canada i mean cory when was the last time anyone has had a conversation about the
00:14:48.360 bank of canada before this so we're gaining in economic literacy if only the hard way but it
00:14:53.240 could perhaps benefit us in the long run trying to find a bright spot yeah well there we go so well
00:14:57.960 thank you very much for coming in it's good seeing you back out here in the west uh and uh where can
00:15:02.920 find more information on what you guys are doing what you're up to well thanks for having me and
00:15:06.200 please head over to taxpayer.com for to see the work that we're doing check out our newsroom you
00:15:11.480 can sign some petitions on there and you can you can help join us and stick up for taxpayers great
00:15:17.640 Well, thanks again. I look forward to chatting again soon. Hey, my pleasure.