EXCLUSIVE： Free parking for municipal employees & survivors of socialism
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the growing number of cities across Canada that are handing out free parking passes to municipal staff, including council members, in order to encourage them to reduce their carbon footprints. Is this a good or bad thing?
Transcript
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want to talk a little more actually on a couple of things as you know follow up a little more on
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your survivors survivors of socialism initiative because it's just fantastic uh but in the more
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immediate one is is that uh recent release you put out showing the amount of municipal employees
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who get parking passes i thought they were all green and they're supposed to ride bikes to take
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the train well that's a good point you know we saw a lot of uh cities across canada declaring
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climate emergencies and uh urging the phase out of fossil fuels in different ways in ontario a
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number of cities uh indicated that they uh they want uh no more natural gas powered electricity
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in manitoba the city council there and pardon me in winnipeg uh they passed a motion uh looking into
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how they can phase out natural gas in the city and of course winnipeg is one of the coldest major cities
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on the planet so a lot of people there use natural gas to heat their homes a lot of businesses use it
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and so forth so we saw these different motions happening across canada and we thought well
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wait a second let's take a look into how many of these cities are giving their staff and council
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members free parking passes because of course these cities are trying to get everyone else to stop using
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oil and gas products what about council are they making it easy for councillors to keep driving
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if you're giving someone a free parking pass you're certainly making it easy to do so and so we followed
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freedom of information requests with uh i think it was around 20 different cities or so in uh pretty
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much from ontario west and we got some pretty interesting responses yeah so i mean you would think
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in calgary i mean this was a crisis this is an emergency as you said i mean are our systems not
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adequate then for civil employees well i i think what we saw is council declared a climate emergency for
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you and i and your listeners uh but not for the city itself uh calgary's uh giving out over a
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thousand free parking passes to various staff uh including council members and council members not
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only have access to free parking at the city's parkade at city hall they also get a special pass which
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allows them to park at any metered parking spot in the city and one former city employee indicated that
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they can also park in loading zones so it's kind of interesting that the city hall makes it really
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really easy for councillors to park anywhere for free but yet the rest of us are are supposed to be
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you know riding bicycles and walking and and taking transit and that and so you know we're flagging
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this as an option for councils you know we assumed that they were just too busy figuring out how everyone
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else could uh reduce their carbon footprint that maybe they forgot about their own and so we flagged
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this in like say in many uh provinces and cities across the country yeah i appreciate you you know
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pointing it out i mean this is above and beyond uh you know like some businesses provide parking for
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your staff some don't would that be considered a taxable benefit though for city staff it is a taxable
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benefit yes but yeah i mean certainly you're going to pay less than um in your taxes on that benefit
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than if you had to straight up pay for the pass and you know one thing we noted when we put this out was
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that um we don't begrudge cities giving free parking to their council members even you know more senior
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staff it's a common perk in the private sector i think the problem is is when cities are declaring
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climate emergencies and telling everyone that hey we got to stop using uh co2 and it's an emergency
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well then why are you still encouraging council members to drive to work and so if council members
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had to do like the rest of society and and pay for parking then you might see some behavioral changes at
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the top well yeah and i mean uh again if they have access to transit you think they'd be able to lead
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by example we'll give a free transit pass then and then you know fair enough that's a benefit and
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it's following within the green ideals and you can ride the line but i got a feeling a lot of them don't
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actually want to ride city transit well i i mean i don't i don't have data on how many of them use
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transit how often they they do uh i know they they do actually get a free transit pass so they get the
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free transit pass they get the free park basically a free park anywhere pass and then a free pass uh the
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city's parkade so they get all kinds of options there and uh you know to go back to this point
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if you're going to say that there's a climate emergency then there's i think only really
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two options for you to consider and that would be transit or you know you walk around your bicycle
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but you know it wasn't just calgary that was doing this um we flagged uh or identified over 5400
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free parking passes that cities have been handing out um toronto was another big one they they also gave out
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over a thousand free parking passes there um victoria bc oddly enough i mean they're one of the
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the most uh aggressive when it comes to green policies they like to think of themselves as
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a green city and a green province and so forth um they actually were arguably one of the worst
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offenders they gave out 179 free passes which isn't that high but they gave out a hundred and
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pardon me 97 free passes for local politicians and you know that's there's not 97 politicians on
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victoria's city council there's there'd be a relatively small number but they were giving
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them out to all kinds of other municipalities in the victoria region all those municipalities
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were getting free parking passes to come and park in victoria so it was pretty bizarre they even gave
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uh federal mps free parking passes elizabeth may got one um and so yeah there were a couple other
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jurisdictions where they would do that they would give it out to other levels of government but nothing
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like victoria where it was seemingly they were giving out these free parking passes to politicians
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in every direction as far as the eye can see it was it was pretty strange uh nice work if you can get
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it i guess uh getting on i guess i'll segue you know with the old do as i say not as i do and that's a
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common thread in in uh socialist regimes and places like that where some bureaucrats could live in
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very large places and drive uh very nice cars while the the commoners are typically in row housing and
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and uh using transit uh your survivors to socialism series uh how's that been coming along
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uh it's been coming along pretty well thanks we actually um the canada strong and free network had
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their annual conference at the beginning of may and i had the honor of uh speaking with yunmi park she
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is a pretty well-known uh young lady who escaped from north korea at the age of 13 and uh she didn't
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just quietly become part of the western world she's been a vocal advocate for for her people drawing
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attention to the atrocities that have occurred in in north korea and so i had the opportunity to
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uh interview her on stage ask her questions and that and it was a real honor and we've uh got that
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video posted on our survivors of socialism page if anyone wants to watch it but uh it's pretty
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incredible you know we're still looking for more stories we're trying to talk to people from different
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countries to get this information out there so people can hear those perspectives and one of the big
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research components of that project was that we were asking people from uh socialist and communist
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countries canadians who came from those countries um what policies of any concern you about what
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you're seeing in canada today because they remind you of the countries that you fled and uh the number
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one concern that we heard about was uh actions by governments to try and restrict freedom of speech
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and many people noted uh to the uh the federal pieces of legislation that we're we're looking at
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doing that so it's pretty interesting that people that have come from these countries where they're
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they've had very little in the way of human rights where people you know often get killed because
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they're a political opponent and people who speak out and protest get thrown in jail
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um it was interesting to hear that people that came from those countries are concerned about
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just restrictions on freedom of speech in canada i don't think anyone would say that we're
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we're close to a uh venezuela or a communist china or something like that but it is concerning that
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um we're seeing these uh movements on restricting uh freedom of speech yeah well it's worth knowing
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you know that we might be moving in that direction and i mean most of canadians we are living under some
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great freedoms and it's not so bad and i think that's some of the risk that comes a lot of young
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people don't really understand i mean socialism communism hold a fantastic appeal uh when you look
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at uh just the basics and the theory and so on and in a simple way but you're very hard-pressed to find
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anybody who's actually lived through it who says yeah that was a really good idea and i think we
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should go back to it yeah that's a key problem because we see this all the time in canada where
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you have university professors or politicians or activists talking about yay we got to embrace
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socialism it's like okay well have you tried living under that that regime and inevitably the answer
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is no because when you talk to people that have lived under those structures whether it's
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venezuela china not not so much china today but china in the past where there was more of a
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collective state-controlled uh economy now it's much more entrepreneurial they still have that
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overarching lack of uh freedoms and democratic rights uh in china but um you know it's a good
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example from the past of sort of that collective approach to to government you look at the former
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soviet union other places in central america and so forth and uh the results are not good and they're
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pretty clear that that structure does not uh work well for citizens inevitably you see poverty and
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human suffering and venezuela is a great example right now the united nations has noted that uh i
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believe it's over six million people from venezuela have fled the country simply because of uh significant
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poverty the average person has lost something like 20 pounds because there's not enough food and that's a
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country that's blessed with great natural resources there's lots of oil there nice beaches and so
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forth but i can't make a go of it because of the the government structure is uh socialist in nature
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and um inevitably it's it's led to a lot of human misery yeah well i mean there's a lot of i think you
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know you don't see it as much as you used to and i think it's because people got called out on social
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media by people who've been there and that's with cuba i mean a lot of people i remember 20 years ago
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especially in canada and professors and others and they had point to saying look at this example
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of a beautiful workman's paradise it's it's fantastic down there they got great health care and
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all this until you could start hearing the voices of the cubans who escaped there the ones who got here
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and they get upset they don't blame them they say guys i had to get on a rickety raft and and and and
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cross the ocean to florida to get away from that hell uh you you're you're quit portraying this country
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that put my family through that misery as some sort of paradise it's anything but
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and uh you don't hear that as much anymore i think open communication from people who escaped those
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countries is part of what brought that down yeah no i think you're exactly right and that's always
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the great test is there are people trying to get into those countries and like you say with cuba
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uh if it's such a paradise why i'll put paradise in air quotes why is it that cubans have been
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creating these little rafts and climbing onto tiny fishing fishing vessels and doing everything
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they can to escape the country in cuba there's even been cases where people have climbed into the
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wheel wells of airplanes where the landing gear is they they run onto the uh uh airfield and they
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climb up into these airplanes and you know if you think about it these airplanes get really really
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high up into the atmosphere there's a lack of oxygen they can die from not getting enough air
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uh they can die because it's extremely cold they can die when the plane starts to come down and the
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landing gear opens up at a very high height and people can fall out and and die so i mean you've
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got people risking their lives to get out of cuba we know what happened during um after world war ii
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when germany was split between east and west germany it was people on the eastern side the communist
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side they were trying to escape to the west uh you look at north korea like i said yunmi park she escaped
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from uh north korea to try and get away from that that uh country so time and time again you look at
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whether or not people are trying to get into these uh socialist paradises and the answer is no um and
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you know one thing i would just add is we talked about this on our site and in some of the videos
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that we have is that people often say well scandinavia is a socialist uh a part of the world and they're
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doing extremely well but this is the claim and the fact is is that scandinavian countries are not
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socialist countries they are market-based economies that use the wealth created from those markets to
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pay for generous uh social welfare programs so it's fundamentally a market-based economy not a socialist
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economy and if people want to advocate for the scandinavian model by means go for it but just don't
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don't call it a uh a socialist economy because that's not accurate yeah well and again we can't
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pretend we shouldn't be able to pretend that we don't know any better and that's
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where it's it's great to see it documented it's fine if you're raised here and you talk to students
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and you grew up and you're young and but i mean now you're growing you can listen to some of the
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people who actually lived through it and i appreciate you guys getting that up there so people can hear
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those voices directly it's not your opinion as a website uh or an advocate or an author it's just
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straight up you know conversations from people who actually had to experience it and people can take
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from it what they will yeah and that that's the beauty of it i think is that people can hear directly
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from individuals who lived in in those regimes so whether it's uh cuba or someone who uh escaped
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from venezuela like i said north korea we talked to someone from latvia uh romania uh china and so
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forth we're looking to talk to more people so if uh anyone's watching and they they've come from a
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socialist or communist country we'd be interested in hearing your experience great well and before i wrap
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up then yeah so they can find you at at secondstreet.org i believe it is and and have you got other
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initiatives you want us let us know about before you go or uh you know that's a good question we've
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got lots of stuff in the works we've uh got our policy brief coming out on healthcare in the near
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future with an idea that we think can help uh patients and governments uh with uh long waiting
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lists so so that one's coming up we've got some research coming up on uh housing and uh lots of other
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fun little projects that uh are underway excellent well i look forward to talking to you when those come out
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as well and uh i guess you know keep up the good work out there and thanks for coming on the show