Western Standard - Hit the brakes on electric buses!

00:00:00.000 Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. Last one of September. Where's the time going?

00:00:07.840 Lots to cover today. I got a boondoggle theme going on. I like that word. It's just an odd

00:00:12.440 word. We get to use it so often, unfortunately. It wouldn't be sad if I never had to use it,

00:00:17.460 but I'm going to speak on one boondoggle that's kind of local in a moment or two. And I have a

00:00:22.400 guest author, David Sabine, who's going to talk about the Phoenix Payroll System boondoggle as

00:00:27.020 well. You hear about that now and then. It's a big one and it really needs to be followed up on.

00:00:31.760 I mean, payroll systems, who wants to talk about that? Well, a lot of the civil servants who are

00:00:36.060 trying to get a correct paycheck would like to talk about that. As much as I'm hard on them,

00:00:39.660 they do deserve to get their paychecks right. And of course, us as taxpayers who are paying for these

00:00:43.620 systems would like to talk about that, or at least we need to talk about that. So we'll get to that

00:00:48.100 in a little while as well. I see a few of you checking in on the live scroll already in the

00:00:52.580 comments. Paradoxy, Mr. Stanley, A-E-R-E-P. Oh my God. You guys got to make easier names for me

00:00:59.060 and Jordan all the other though. Good to see you in there. Use those comments, girls. Discuss

00:01:03.220 things with each other. Send comments my way. It can be interactive and it can be fun. So make use

00:01:09.300 of it. Just stay somewhat civil to each other. We don't have to be nothing but sunshine. I know

00:01:13.580 I'm not, but you know, we don't have to be at each other's throats either. All right,

00:01:17.220 let's get onto the first boondoggle, which is locally and in Calgary, but it still, it impacts

00:01:22.340 everybody because these are happening in cities across the country. Municipal governments, they

00:01:27.540 love to throw away the hard-earned money of taxpayers with wild abandon. I mean, the stories

00:01:32.100 of waste and corruption from local governments seem to have no end. And Calgary City Hall has been

00:01:36.360 working hard to outdo itself with their boondoggles and waste. I mean, on the low side, Calgary blew

00:01:42.440 4.8 million tax dollars and it took them four years to come up with a new slogan for the city.

00:01:48.600 The slogan was Blue Sky City. Yeah, almost 5 million for that, guys. There should be a forensic

00:01:54.600 audit of that ripoff. And then on the high end, Calgary spent 1.4 billion dollars in nine years on an

00:02:00.760 LRT expansion without laying an inch of track. By the time the government finally stepped in from the

00:02:07.000 province and pulled the funding from the project, the projected cost of this train line had ballooned from

00:02:11.240 $100,000 per meter to $600,000 per meter. If left alone, Gondek's Council of Clowns and

00:02:17.640 an inept city administration probably could have pushed the cost of that plan to a million dollars a

00:02:21.160 meter. It's now going to cost another $700 million just to get out of that mess with the contracts.

00:02:27.160 Now we've got a new disaster looming on the horizon and that's with electric buses.

00:02:31.400 Like most progressive mayors, Jody Gondek has a climate change obsession and one of her first acts

00:02:36.280 as mayor was to entrench an insane, and it is insane, 87 billion dollar climate plan for the

00:02:41.800 city of Calgary. Yeah, that wasn't a mistaken number. Her plan is to blow 87 billion dollars

00:02:46.760 just in the city of Calgary. Changing Calgary's bus fleet to electric buses is presumably part of that

00:02:52.600 plan. A pilot project was embraced by city council to purchase 14 electric buses for a cost of about 14

00:02:59.000 million dollars. The pilot was set to begin in 2022. Well, it's 2024 now and getting here towards the

00:03:05.720 tail end of it. The problem is no buses have arrived. The city has constructed charging stations

00:03:11.080 and made plans, but the buses are nowhere to be found. If you look on the city website, a short

00:03:15.240 terse statement statement was made in August saying the buses are delayed for now. There's some little

00:03:19.800 utterances about supply chain issues. Yes, indeed, there's a supply chain issue. The buses aren't here.

00:03:25.400 This bus supply seems to have collapsed. If you look at the company the city bought the buses from,

00:03:29.880 it's not hard to see where there's a delay. Vicinity Motor Corporation appears to be on the brink of

00:03:34.120 going broke. Their shares have dropped to penny stock value, and they've only managed to make 11

00:03:39.000 buses in the last quarter of 2023. They haven't responded to press inquiries, and they're heavily in

00:03:44.360 debt. The odds aren't looking good for the city in getting either of the buses. Of course, a refund on

00:03:49.640 whatever they've spent so far. But oh, it gets worse. In December 2022, the city announced they

00:03:55.240 would go ahead with a $489 million plan to buy and equip 259 electric buses. I mean, when questions

00:04:02.840 were asked why the city's moving forward with this massive purchase despite the pilot project not

00:04:07.080 having started even, people were told, well, the electric bus program in Edmonton was so successful,

00:04:11.480 they decided Calgary didn't need to wait for the pilot to finish. Edmonton's electric bus

00:04:16.280 program has been a complete catastrophe. The buses cost a fortune. There were 60 of them. They were

00:04:21.560 found not to work in cold weather. Diesel upgrades had to be added to the buses to heat the motors to

00:04:26.280 make them work at great expense. And then the buses began to break down en masse. But the city couldn't

00:04:30.280 repair them because the company that manufactured them had gone bankrupt. So now they can't get spare

00:04:35.400 parts and two thirds of the buses are out of service. $60 million, folks. Now the first of Calgary's

00:04:41.480 259 electric buses is supposed to be in service in a year or two, I believe. They're all supposed

00:04:46.680 to be in use not too long after that. But when you consider the pilot program buses have been,

00:04:51.080 they've been lost in the mix somewhere after years, it comes hard to believe that this larger order is

00:04:55.240 going to be arriving anytime soon. So where's the city at with the procurement of this massive electric

00:05:00.680 fleet? What's the progress been to date and how much has been spent already? Well, they're not telling

00:05:04.520 anybody. As with the green line, the city's keeping the information hidden as deeply as possible.

00:05:09.000 Citizens, you've got to get up and demand a progress report from the city for this half

00:05:13.640 billion dollar bus program. And if the city can't demonstrate it's moving along smoothly,

00:05:17.640 it must pull the plug on this thing immediately. These things only get worse with more time and

00:05:22.120 sinking more money in. Have they spent the money already? Have they already equipped bus barns with

00:05:27.160 259 charging stations to languish empty waiting, you know, as the pilot program has been going?

00:05:33.480 I mean, we likely won't get answers until the program implodes and most of the current council along

00:05:37.400 with the mayor have probably been replaced by then. We've got a chance to stop this train wreck or

00:05:42.120 bus wreck, if you want to call it that. Either way, when the time comes, nobody can pretend we didn't

00:05:46.600 see it coming. I'm warning you now, guys, and don't act surprised when this falls apart in a year or

00:05:51.960 two or whatever it might be. All right, that's what's got to be going. That's boondoggle number one for

00:05:55.960 today. Let's check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor, and see what else is going on in the big bad world

00:06:00.040 out there. And there he is from the newsroom, Dave Naylor. How are you doing? I'm missing you,

00:06:04.760 Corey. Normally I'm sitting right beside you. I know, I know, but we've got a bit of a camera

00:06:09.400 shortage today, so we've had to rely on you in the old seats there in the newsroom. Yeah, I understand

00:06:14.440 it's halfway to Edmonton now, and you and I are heading up there right after the show. We are indeed.

00:06:20.200 Yes, the toasting Ted event for Ted Byfield. I'll try not to terrorize you too much on the drive.

00:06:26.360 Can I sit in the back seat so it's like a real Uber experience? You certainly can, and I can scowl at

00:06:31.880 you in the rear view mirror like I typically do. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Yeah, we've had a

00:06:37.240 busy morning as usual here in the newsroom. You were alive back in 1947, right? Almost. Almost. Well,

00:06:47.000 that was the last time you could buy a chocolate bar for five cents. It was in 1947. And that's exactly where

00:06:54.360 Alberta natural gas prices today at five cents, which is not very good. It's almost cheaper to

00:07:02.040 keep it in the ground. But our energy expert, Sean Polzer has got a story up there explaining it all.

00:07:07.960 And he's actually at a press conference right now with Premier Smith, and he's going to ask her

00:07:14.120 about that because it's going to cause some big budgeting problems too, because the

00:07:17.480 the provinces budgeted that for it to be at $2.20 gigajoule. And right now it's five cents. So

00:07:25.400 not very good at all. We've got a strange story about an Indiana guy. I don't know if Nico can pull

00:07:31.480 his face up on the screen, but it's a face that only a mother could love. He strangled an 11 month old baby.

00:07:38.840 And then when he was in prison, he decided he would be much more comfortable in a in a women's prison.

00:07:44.440 So he's applied for a sex change operation. And the judge down there has ruled the taxpayers money

00:07:50.520 will be used to pay for it, which has sparked outrage in Indiana, as you might expect. Some drama in

00:07:57.640 Saskatchewan yesterday with a fugitive armed robbery suspect was spotted at a on a First Nations base there

00:08:05.560 and police big police chase ended up with shots fired and his vehicle driving into a field and

00:08:13.480 and that's where he died despite the the aid of paramedics. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has

00:08:20.360 finished listening to the 11 interveners on the the what's it called the Parents Bill of Rights.

00:08:28.200 That's sort of making sure parents are informed whenever their child wants to change gender. So

00:08:34.040 they've heard arguments on both sides and have reserved judgment on that. And you'll remember

00:08:38.520 Thomas Lukasik, a name from your past, Corey, a former Tory cabinet minister who managed to blow

00:08:44.680 $20,000 on a cell phone bill when he was on holiday in Europe. He's been doing nothing but lambaste the

00:08:51.880 UCP for the last couple of years and they finally had enough and they announced they were ripping up his

00:08:56.520 UCP membership. So our Jonathan Bradley's got a story on that. So lots more stuff up there, Corey,

00:09:04.680 but I'll leave it for the viewers to take a look themselves. Right on. Well, yeah, Fabio is no

00:09:10.520 longer a member of the UCP. Maybe he'll finally formally join the NDP where he probably belongs

00:09:15.320 anyhow. Well, certainly that's what he sounds like the last couple of years. I'm sure I'm sure Mr.

00:09:20.600 Nenshi would be happy to take him. I don't know if the room could fit both of their egos,

00:09:23.960 it's going to be interesting to see them try. Indeed. All right. Thanks, Dave. I'll see you

00:09:28.840 after the show as we whip off up to Edmonton there. Sounds good. Right on. So this one,

00:09:33.640 I like to remind everybody the reason we got Dave working and hustling in the newsroom and

00:09:37.240 Jonathan Bradley writing those stories and Sean Polzer out at the press conferences

00:09:41.240 is because you guys have subscribed. So this is where I got to nag you and remind you to get on

00:09:44.920 there, westernstandard.news slash subscription. We don't take tax dollars, which means we can report

00:09:51.640 things as we see them. We don't have to suck up to the liberal government like CTV did by doctoring

00:09:57.800 clips of the leader of the opposition or things like that. We answer to you guys, but we do need

00:10:03.720 you guys to step up and subscribe. That's how we can do it. You know, it's just like a newspaper

00:10:07.320 subscription. You get past that paywall, $10 a month, $100 for a year. It's a good deal, guys.

00:10:12.360 Get on there, westernstandard.news slash subscription. Take one out. And if you've already subscribed,

00:10:16.360 thank you. We really, really do appreciate it. We do. Great. You know, some of this stuff,

00:10:21.960 this, this parents bill of rights and this stuff that's going on, we're seeing that in Alberta,

00:10:26.600 we're seeing the discussions. I mean, because the crazed trans activists, and they are,

00:10:31.640 they're crazed. Maybe they just keep pushing the limit and pushing the limit. I mean, I'm

00:10:35.640 libertarian minded. I have no issues. If you're a grown person, you can do whatever the heck you

00:10:39.880 please with yourself. I don't care. It's your business. If everybody's consenting,

00:10:44.040 do what you like. I'm more than happy for you. But they got to go for the kids. They can't leave

00:10:49.320 the kids alone. The lunacy, the ridiculousness. A story that Dave didn't mention that's on the

00:10:53.880 Western Standard site too is in Saskatchewan, some, some brochure on lesbian BDSM sex techniques,

00:11:00.760 including fisting. If you really want to make yourself feel pale, you can Google that. You don't

00:11:05.480 need to. It's stuff that kids don't need brought into their schools, but these activists keep pushing

00:11:09.880 it in there. And parents have the right to know what's being presented to their children.

00:11:15.080 Even if you don't agree with what the parents views are, public schools have to answer to the

00:11:20.840 parents. It can't be the other way around. Yet these activists keep trying to wedge themselves in.

00:11:25.400 They keep trying to get in the way and they're telling parents they don't have the right to know

00:11:29.160 what their kid is up to at the school. I'm sorry, that's wrong. And Saskatchewan has put in this

00:11:34.680 parents bill of rights to say, we're going to make sure that's protected. And it looks, chances are,

00:11:39.880 if the idiot judges, and I'm afraid a lot of them are fools, will say that this is unconstitutional,

00:11:44.280 that's for, you know, it violates the charter, that's fine. You know, apparently it's a charter

00:11:47.880 right for children to hide things from their parents and have the schools stand between the

00:11:51.480 parents and their children. They'll use the notwithstanding clause. So, I mean, the one

00:11:55.560 thing we'll give credit to is Pierre is giving out of the notwithstanding clause to see past these

00:12:00.440 things. The government's job is not to raise our children. It's not to get between us and our

00:12:05.480 children. It's ironic and sad and funny when you see these same activists, these left activists,

00:12:11.560 and so on, going on about residential schools. Well, that's a prime example of what happens when

00:12:15.800 the government takes over the raising of children versus the parents. That's what happens when the

00:12:19.400 government says the parents don't have the right to say where their children should be educated,

00:12:23.880 how they should be educated, or even know what's going on in the school. Think about that. Did you

00:12:29.000 guys learn anything from that then? I mean, we've got a lot of hyperbole and untruths and things that

00:12:34.920 we can cover about what happened at the residential schools, but there was a lot of terrible things

00:12:38.680 happened at them. I mean, it was certainly an attempt to take a culture and jam it into a modern

00:12:43.640 perspective that they weren't ready for, and it did mess up a whole lot of people and we're still

00:12:48.520 dealing with the fallout from it today. Part of that was because the government felt it was in the place

00:12:54.600 to step in between the parents and their children. And how did that work out? Yet now,

00:12:59.400 we're doing the same bloody thing. We're saying parents actually don't even have a legal right to

00:13:04.520 know what their kids are up to in the schools. No, no guys, the parents have every right. In fact,

00:13:12.280 it's essential that the parents know what's going on in there. The other thing that my view that this

00:13:16.840 leads to then is a better case for a voucher system for breaking up the school's school choice. Let

00:13:22.200 parents choose what they want. If you want your kids to go to a woke school, fine. Again,

00:13:26.920 that's your choice as a parent. But if you don't want any of that trash, it should be your choice

00:13:30.840 as a parent to send your child to a school that doesn't deal with that. We just need a base core

00:13:35.720 curriculum, of course, to prepare them for a career and future and life. And after that,

00:13:41.400 we should have school choice so parents can choose where their kids go to so they can get what they need

00:13:46.600 without embracing the rest of the trash that gets shoved in together with it. I find it funny when you

00:13:51.160 listen to teachers when they fight against standardized testing because they say every

00:13:54.440 child learns differently. You can't standardize test because it's not fair because this child

00:13:58.120 responds this way and that child responds that way. I agree. But then shouldn't we have all

00:14:02.680 different kinds of schools then to address the different needs of all those kids? Oh, no, no, no,

00:14:06.440 no, no. When it comes to that, then they all have to be standardized schools that are controlled

00:14:09.960 by the school boards and, of course, wagged by the tail of the teachers' unions. Well, you can't have it

00:14:17.080 both ways there, guys. We either address the unique needs of different children in education

00:14:22.440 or we don't. But the hypocrisy never seems to end when it comes from some of those unions and such.

00:14:29.000 All right. But either way, I'm going to be actually saying something nice about it. Some of the union

00:14:32.520 folks who I'm usually beating on, which is our federal civil servant, because as I said, I'd like

00:14:36.520 to see it reduced. I'd like to see it cut down, like streamlined. But I don't feel that they should be

00:14:41.720 abused. They're not having their payroll properly managed. They have that right. And it has not been done

00:14:46.360 well since 2016. So we're going to bring my guest, David Sabine. He's an author. He wrote a book on

00:14:52.280 the Phoenix payroll system called Phoenix. And he's going to talk to us about it today. So thanks for

00:14:56.920 joining me today, Mr. David. Hello, Corey. Thanks for having me. So, you know, I guess just to give

00:15:05.080 some background, people have heard of the Phoenix system. I read most of the book. I didn't get all

00:15:09.720 the way through it quite yet. But part of it was, I mean, it wasn't even originally called the Phoenix

00:15:13.720 system. But there was a big change that was happening kind of a little bit before Stephen

00:15:17.320 Harper. And then it came in during Stephen Harper's time. This is one I don't even want to point at

00:15:21.400 specific parties, because it's had multiple parties in charge. And this disaster has kept rolling along.

00:15:27.000 Give a bit of background, though, what happened? How did we get into this mess?

00:15:31.560 It's a great question. We should talk about how the mess began. And then let's talk about when it blew up.

00:15:37.080 And so let me explain first the word Phoenix. The mythical Phoenix is reborn from its ashes. So we

00:15:43.400 need to ask from which ashes was this Phoenix project supposed to rise? And here's a quick history.

00:15:50.520 A core operation of our federal governments to pay the public servants. And you would think that

00:15:55.560 having to issue paychecks every two weeks that they would be good at it by now. They're not. And so by

00:16:01.320 Mulroney's term in office, it was apparent that our government had cobbled together a bunch of IT

00:16:05.640 systems. It was difficult to maintain, difficult to keep up to date. And so in the last weeks of his

00:16:11.560 term, and when power was transitioning over to Kim Campbell, his government signed a $45 million

00:16:17.800 contract with Accenture. The goal of that contract was to modernize the pension systems and the pay

00:16:23.560 systems of the federal government. Now, of course, we know Kim Campbell didn't win that election.

00:16:27.960 John Kretchen won that election. And immediately he terminated the contract. And so nothing but ashes,

00:16:35.000 you know, Accenture took us to court or took the federal government to court, there was a settlement,

00:16:39.800 the Canadian public doesn't know the details of that settlement. But litigation took a decade.

00:16:45.080 And so 10 years later, now we're talking 2004, five, six, the senior bureaucrats had renewed interest

00:16:51.080 in the project, they estimated it would cost about $6 million. But the scope of it continued to increase.

00:16:57.320 Stephen Harper's government then was persuaded to spend about 300 million

00:17:01.400 to replace the payroll systems and to centralize the payroll staff into one single office. That's how

00:17:07.800 the mess began. So, I mean, kind of, we'll cover some more of the details in between. But fast

00:17:13.000 forward to today, some of the estimates on what this has cost is getting into $4 billion. I mean,

00:17:18.120 when you started at $6 million, you got up to a few hundred million, and now we're up to $4 billion.

00:17:22.760 And that's just the taxpayers cost. And then hundreds of 1000s of payments over the years

00:17:28.680 have been messed up. Some people have been overpaid, some have been underpaid, some of them

00:17:33.000 paid at all, that that's a cost that we can't even begin to measure. Is the bleeding stemming at all yet?

00:17:41.720 Not at all. And so let's go back to 2016 for a minute. Justin Trudeau's government green lighted the

00:17:47.160 launch of the project. Phoenix had been delayed a number of times under Stephen Harper's government.

00:17:54.040 Everyone knew it wasn't ready. And no one was ready to launch it. Justin Trudeau was elected and MP

00:18:01.400 Judy Foote was given this file. And then her and her senior advisors agreed to launch the system in March

00:18:08.120 9 of 2016. So the system at that time was used to calculate the paychecks of about 120,000 of the

00:18:18.360 roughly 200,000 public servants at the time. 40,000 of those paychecks in that first pay run were

00:18:26.040 incorrect. And so your question is, are we still hemorrhaging money? And yes, we are. We're throwing

00:18:32.760 money at this ever since the error rate today. The backlog of corrections that need to be made today

00:18:39.640 is as large as it was in 2016. So as of today, 408,000 payroll errors await resolution. And every

00:18:47.720 two weeks, there are more errors, they fix some, there are more errors, they fix some,

00:18:52.040 there are more errors. It's been a disaster ever since 2016. Yeah, and you know, we saw it was

00:18:57.720 frustrating to read it. For people familiar with Yes Minister, you know, it's an English sitcom,

00:19:02.680 about, you know, a minister getting snowed by his bureaucrats who were talking to him,

00:19:07.720 you know, when things would fail, and so on, and they would double speak. But some of those

00:19:10.680 committee meetings, when they would talk to some of the, you know, asking about this,

00:19:14.680 they just couldn't get any straight answers out of the senior bureaucrats on it. And I believe it was

00:19:19.160 Foote who said at one point that she called it a success in the first little bit of a run,

00:19:23.080 how could you have such a massive error rate and call it a success? Yeah, it's amazing the double

00:19:28.600 thing that you can read into the committee minutes. So I wrote the book, your question

00:19:34.520 earlier was about costs, you know, I wrote the book just over a year ago, I calculated that the

00:19:39.080 taxpayer had already spent 4.2 billion, and I should qualify that number. And I actually think

00:19:44.280 journalists should really dig in and debate these numbers more deliberately. So first,

00:19:50.200 most journalists go with the government's own estimates, 3.2 or 3.5 billion. But those numbers

00:19:57.880 include the direct costs and the large settlement that was paid out to the to the union members,

00:20:03.880 but they exclude the costs associated with replacing the Phoenix system. And there's a huge number of

00:20:10.920 projects underway in that regard. And they exclude. And this is where my unique expertise was held

00:20:20.120 full. I looked at the full list of ongoing large IT projects, and I found numerous integration

00:20:25.960 projects. And so for example, $33 million was spent to integrate the systems at CBSA, CRA,

00:20:32.520 Parks Canada, RCMP. This money is spent only because Phoenix exists, and only because its capabilities

00:20:40.040 are so incompatible with the needs of those departments. And so if we include all of those

00:20:45.240 integration projects, as of a year ago, I calculated $4.2 billion had gone through this inferno.

00:20:52.200 Yeah, and I mean, it's, it sounds like there's work being done. You know, I started looking and

00:20:57.160 digging because we do hear about it pure periodically erupts, but it never seems to get solved.

00:21:02.280 They're going to replace it with something called day force, or they're they're easing into that system.

00:21:07.080 Now, do you think they're going to be more careful? It sounds like they're going to phase it in rather

00:21:11.320 than try it because I mean, something that large, you can't just flick a switch and change systems,

00:21:14.600 you do have to try to integrate it. But at the same time, they're trying to fix 500,000 other errors

00:21:20.120 that they still have built up. Yeah, good point. I mean, so they are taking a more incremental

00:21:25.160 approach, I think, with this new initiative. However, Corey, you know, where there's smoke,

00:21:32.200 there's fire. Day Force, it used to be called Ceridian. They won the contract to replace Phoenix. And

00:21:39.160 there's virtually nothing known about their involvement or McKinsey's. So we can see those

00:21:44.360 two companies show up in some committee minutes. But there, you go to the website, you find for

00:21:50.920 projects or RFPs or line items in the annual budget. And there's very little to discover there. I think

00:21:57.800 there are many questions. For example, why did Navdeep Bains step down? Why did Navdeep Bains chief of

00:22:05.000 staff suddenly become an executive at Day Force? And why did the CEO of Day Force tell reporters

00:22:14.760 after the 2021 election, he told reporters that Justin Trudeau's cabinet had requested that Day Force

00:22:21.960 not publicize the fact that they had won the contract until after the election?

00:22:27.480 It appears Justin Trudeau or one of his cabinet members specifically asked to keep that a secret

00:22:36.520 during the campaign until after the election. Why was that? I think there's a lot of questions

00:22:40.840 to be asked about their involvement and what's going on. There always are. And you know,

00:22:44.520 people always have to be careful, but when you get a government contract with that large amount of

00:22:48.440 money and their history of bad controls on it, you know the opportunists are going to come out of

00:22:53.480 the woodworks. I mean, it just happens. It's the way it goes. So, I mean, whether Day Force is right

00:22:59.160 or wrong, it's not unprecedented for an organization to have a payroll this large in modern times. I

00:23:05.800 mean, Canada, we've got a workforce of about 420,000, which is really huge for civil service, but still

00:23:12.520 there are a lot of companies and governments and others who have payrolls as large or larger than

00:23:17.880 this. And are they operating more successfully than us? Well, if I could take a moment here,

00:23:24.760 like we need to do this differently. Issuing paychecks every two weeks to public servants is

00:23:30.040 a core operation of the government, as you said. And we're talking about basic math and well-known

00:23:35.800 accounting techniques. Like this kind of software is not magic. The business rules, while complicated,

00:23:42.440 and there are 80 plus collective bargaining agreements, and that certainly makes things more difficult.

00:23:47.480 But the requirements are known and programmable. So, I believe, and so your question is, are others

00:23:53.000 doing this better than the federal government of Canada? Well, some are. Some governments also have

00:23:57.640 their own boondoggles. But I think it comes down to a simple question between lesser evils. The government

00:24:03.640 could do this in-house. Certainly, the taxpayer employs an army of IT professionals and software

00:24:09.880 developers. And they could build a purpose-built tool to operate this core operation of the government.

00:24:18.760 Or the government could continue to outsource this stuff to giant multinationals who supposedly have

00:24:24.120 the expertise, but they continue to fail, and they repeatedly fail to deliver. So, both of these options

00:24:32.680 are ripe for waste and corruption. But we need to think back to 2005 and six and seven. What were the conditions

00:24:40.840 of that time before Stephen Harper was persuaded to sign the approval of that first $300 million?

00:24:47.320 Let's think back to that time. Many bureaucrats and MPs complained about the existing payroll

00:24:52.280 systems. They were 40 years old. They were hard to maintain. And I don't doubt that. But let's

00:24:57.480 remember that those systems were successfully conducting paychecks every two weeks for 190,000

00:25:03.560 employees. The error rate was very, very low, much lower than today's error rate with Phoenix. But the

00:25:09.320 MPs latched on to this Phoenix myth. You know, they were absolutely taken on faith and with no empirical

00:25:16.520 evidence that the old systems just needed to be replaced and that a commercial system, you know,

00:25:23.640 purchased from some multinational company was the way to replace them. Now, both of those ideas were

00:25:29.800 the result of, I think, just a bandwagon effect. To your question, lots of other jurisdictions,

00:25:35.400 they've tried the same. They've bought systems off the shelf. They call them COTS products or commercial

00:25:41.640 off-the-shelf products. And their mileage may vary, you might say. But our government is absolutely

00:25:49.560 addicted to these giant IT replacement projects. Is the taxpayer just on the hook every five years to

00:25:55.800 throw billions of dollars at the cronies of the day to replace these IT systems? I think we need to

00:26:01.080 start asking these kinds of questions. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, you know, kind of a funny comment out

00:26:06.440 of Mr. Stanley, but he's probably dead right. He says, I bet the Phoenix employees still receive their

00:26:10.760 pay on time. Yeah, when you're inside, you can make sure that your check comes through. But, you know,

00:26:17.640 and I'm kind of bouncing around, but I'll bounce back. I mean, something you mentioned in the book,

00:26:20.680 and it's interesting, when politics gets mixed into things, that's usually when the trouble comes

00:26:24.040 about. So one of the things Prime Minister Stephen Harper did in his time was getting rid of the old

00:26:29.320 boondoggle of the liberal gun registry. And part of that was they bought themselves love and mirror

00:26:33.800 machine New Brunswick by setting up the administration offices there. So now they had to lay off loads and

00:26:38.760 loads of civil servants who were running this terribly inept gun registry. Harper thought he could kill two

00:26:44.200 birds with one stone and said, Well, we will re employ them with this new payroll system.

00:26:50.120 So they took those bureaucrats and just kind of shuffled them into something they weren't necessarily

00:26:53.960 qualified to embrace. But it was a way to patch a hole and try and maintain a seat. It's, you know,

00:27:00.360 this is just typical of governments, unfortunately. Well, I think any other Prime Minister might have

00:27:06.280 made the same calculation Stephen Harper did.

00:27:08.200 Stephen Harper said to just if the goal was to centralize this operation into one office,

00:27:13.480 there were just a few offices across the country that were suitable for this with available staff.

00:27:18.440 So I don't begrudge his decision on that point. But it also is interesting to note that it takes about

00:27:24.200 two years for the payroll staff to be properly trained so that they can conduct this work. Why does it

00:27:31.720 take two years? Well, part of that is because the regulations are so complex, there are 80 and more

00:27:41.000 collective bargaining agreements. The systems are difficult to use. And then they burn out. So of all

00:27:49.400 the people that start the process to learn how to become a payroll advisor in our government, only about

00:27:54.920 40% of them continue the training. Two years later, 60% of them have quit and left. And so that speaks to the

00:28:01.560 difficulty of the job, but also the, you know, the nightmare that is this, this work environment.

00:28:07.480 Well, yeah, and plus just the competency. I mean, if you have a high turnover, then you're not going

00:28:11.720 to have offices with long term experienced people to apply themselves to issues. But I guess if you're

00:28:17.720 applying yourself, and you can't fix anything, that that's how you end up burnt out.

00:28:21.880 What's interesting, if I could add, Corey, to that point, the solutions, the best, so if we look at

00:28:28.360 how the government has burned through the errors that have occurred, and we look at how have they

00:28:35.560 done that most effectively, it's usually that a small group of experienced people have come together,

00:28:39.800 they work together as a pod, and they burn through a backlog of errors, and they fix them.

00:28:45.720 The solution here is people, not some belief in some magical system that we can buy from a multinational

00:28:53.960 corporation. Well, there's not going to be any quick magic bullet, that's for sure. And I mean,

00:28:59.800 that's part of why you've written a book on it, the time has run out quickly, because it's such a

00:29:03.480 big issue here. But I'm certain you're going to continue to watch this and be speaking on it. So

00:29:08.200 where can people find your book? And where can they find you to keep up on what's going on as

00:29:12.360 hopefully this government, or the next government gets on to solving this issue, so they can move on to

00:29:17.560 solving with many others. Thanks, Corey, for that. They can find me at davidsabine.ca,

00:29:25.080 and davidsabine.ca slash phoenix, that'll take you right to a page where you can look at the book,

00:29:29.800 you can buy it at Amazon on paperback or Kindle version, or you can buy it at LeanPub as well.

00:29:37.160 Find me on LinkedIn, I'm active there. And on X, I'd be happy to connect with people.

00:29:41.320 Great. Well, thank you for taking the time to join us today and for watching this issue and digging into it.

00:29:47.080 Like I said, you know, some of these things seem kind of dry and they're bookkeeping sort of things

00:29:51.720 and stuff like that. But boy, it's not so dry and unimportant when you're the one whose check hasn't

00:29:57.400 shown up on time or when you're working in a department that's spinning its wheels and burning

00:30:03.160 you out. It's true. You know, some people have lost their savings, they've lost their homes.

00:30:08.040 It's been a disaster all around. Really, I appreciate that you brought me on to talk about it.

00:30:12.760 Great. Well, we'll keep bringing it up and can't let them forget it. And hopefully,

00:30:16.920 as I said, hopefully that problem gets solved because there's many others for them to work

00:30:20.040 on. So perhaps we'll talk again soon and we'll be talking about a solution at that time.

00:30:23.640 Thank you, Corey.

00:30:25.080 Great. Thanks, David. So again, yes, David Sabine, you can look him up. As he said,

00:30:28.840 he's on LinkedIn and on X out there. And he's got that book, Phoenix. If you look it up,

00:30:34.440 it's on Amazon and other spots like that. Yeah, just massive, massive bureaucracy. I mean,

00:30:41.000 I mean, again, you know, bureaucracy screw up a lot of things. That's hardly new. This one's one

00:30:46.440 of the ones when it takes a lot. As I said, I love ripping into bureaucrats and civil servants. But

00:30:50.760 when you get me feeling sympathetic for civil servants, you know, it's got to be pretty bad.

00:30:57.880 Paradox is saying, I find myself struggling to be sympathetic with the unionized, striking

00:31:00.920 bureaucracy that keeps supporting liberals. Yeah, fair enough. But either way, if we're going to run

00:31:05.240 a government, if you're going to hire people, if you're going to have them on a payroll, you have

00:31:08.760 to pay them. You have to pay them properly and on time. That's just morality. That's just doing the

00:31:14.760 right thing. And it's also not doing us any favors. As you said, with as upset and crabby and low

00:31:20.760 production as civil servants are, well, this is one of the areas that contributes to it,

00:31:24.440 contributes to it, isn't it? You know, when your morale is in the toilet, because you haven't been

00:31:28.680 paid consistently, you're not going to perform really well, you're not going to work really hard.

00:31:34.760 You're not going to, you know, go out of your way to do anything better with it. All right,

00:31:40.200 so let's look at that House of Commons, that gong show that we've got of the people who are running

00:31:44.360 our country, that minority thing. The confidence vote as of this time for folks who aren't watching it

00:31:50.840 live hasn't been held yet, I believe. But, you know, it's going to fail. I mean, I'll make that

00:31:55.960 prediction right now. I mean, if the government falls somehow, if the bloc changed its mind or

00:32:00.760 something, you know, I'll report on that and talk about it on the next show. But as far as things look

00:32:06.360 right now, Pierre Polyev, you know, is putting the motion forward, and it's going to fail. But it's

00:32:13.720 showing the opportunism and the weakness of the other parties that are out there. The Bloc Quebec law

00:32:19.800 has ramped up the demands even more to keep holding the government in power. They want

00:32:24.360 more legislation to entrench the supply management system, which is the dairy system, which is Soviet

00:32:28.520 style, which rips off Canada all the time. You wonder about your high dairy and chicken costs?

00:32:33.560 That's where it's at. And he wants that deeper entrenched. He also wants some OAS things increased,

00:32:38.600 which again, which would benefit Quebec. The only thing I'll give to the Bloc Quebecois is they're honest.

00:32:42.440 You know, they really are. They're the most honest party out there. Party Quebecois, Bloc Quebecois,

00:32:47.480 all the way back to René Lévesque. They say, hey, we're here for Quebec, and only Quebec,

00:32:53.000 and we don't really care about the rest of the country. They don't dislike the rest of Canada.

00:32:57.320 I met with Bloc members back when I led the Alberta Independence Party. They don't dislike us.

00:33:01.880 They're indifferent to us. They don't care. They're there for Quebec, and they make no bones about it.

00:33:07.320 So when they find now that Jagmeet Singh has played his little game, and it's a little game,

00:33:12.760 saying, I'm no longer, I'm ripping up my agreement with Justin Trudeau. We're not going to hold them

00:33:16.600 up any longer. Even though Singh already came around and said, well, actually, we will keep

00:33:20.840 holding him up because we're a bunch of losers. With no money in the bank, we can't run an election.

00:33:26.920 The Bloc stepped up and said, well, we can make sure you stay in power, Justin. We can keep you safe.

00:33:31.240 We just want this and this and this. You think they're going to stop at that? No.

00:33:35.720 Every time a confidence vote comes, the Bloc is going to lay out their demands

00:33:40.200 for getting Trudeau through it. And they're going to keep doing it because as long as they're getting

00:33:44.280 their demands, why would they stop, right? Unfortunately, the rest of us get to pay that

00:33:49.480 price for a wildly incompetent, wildly unpopular prime minister clinging to power in this country.

00:33:57.080 The system is broken. It really is. And again, that's a whole separate show as to what I feel

00:34:04.600 we need to do about it. I wrote a book on that if you want to look up my authorship. But in the time

00:34:09.640 we're stuck with now, what is Justin Trudeau doing in this time of crisis? What is he doing when his

00:34:14.040 government is sitting there teetering on the brink of falling, madly unpopular? Well, he's down doing

00:34:20.520 TV shows in the United States. Yes, he's sitting with Colbert and giggling and

00:34:24.680 playing footsie and playing celebrity. Yeah, he's not doing him any favors up here. We've got some

00:34:31.000 issues to deal with, Justin. But no, he runs away. He hides. That's what he does. He's a coward.

00:34:37.080 He is not a leader. He's there because of his name. And he's now there just because we haven't

00:34:44.440 the mechanism or the ability to kick him out yet. We can't get rid of him. We can't get an election

00:34:51.880 brought forth yet. The time will come eventually. It'll be interesting.

00:34:56.600 It shows, though, how bereft of ideas this government is, how exhausted they are of any...

00:35:04.760 I mean, what we're seeing now is deeper and deeper boondoggles. We're seeing more and more

00:35:09.320 spending initiatives. We're seeing a lot of them feathering their nests. They know they're going

00:35:13.560 down. We're seeing the appointments to the Senate. We're seeing some big contracts that are going to

00:35:17.160 be laid out. This is the tail end of what's going to happen. But Trudeau, if they really thought they

00:35:24.520 had a hope of winning, of turning it around, they got about a year to do it. They haven't changed

00:35:31.400 anything. They haven't changed their lines. They haven't brought in any really significantly new

00:35:35.080 policies. They haven't said they're going to do anything differently. When you're down into record low

00:35:41.320 support territory, you won't even shuffle your cabinet. You are a broken government. So no

00:35:47.240 wonder he runs away and hides to try and, you know, avoid the problem, leaves the rest of the

00:35:52.840 government to have to deal with it. Similar to a couple of years ago, we're coming up on

00:35:58.200 the Kamloops Residential School Hoax Day. I think they call it the Truth and Reconciliation Day. It's the

00:36:05.400 the holiday that Justin Trudeau created after the hoax of the Kamloops Residential School body thing

00:36:11.240 broke. And I'm going to keep calling it a hoax. I know some people chafe every time I say that,

00:36:14.680 but you know what? I'm getting sick of it. I'm getting really, really, really sick of it. When

00:36:18.840 all the evidence is pointing to the fact that there wasn't a single bloody body there. We turned the

00:36:22.120 country upside down. A hundred churches got burned and vandalized. Billions were spent. Millions were

00:36:27.080 given to these reserves to find these murdered children. And it turns out there weren't any.

00:36:31.960 We kept the flag at half-mast for six months. We didn't even do that after the wars.

00:36:40.360 And it didn't happen. There weren't any bodies. And yes, as Paradoxie points out, calls it Surf and

00:36:46.440 Recreation Day because what? It shows how tone deaf, how shallow, how stupid Justin Trudeau is. If

00:36:52.360 you're going to do a political thing like create a holiday, the first thing you would be expected to

00:36:58.280 do is be cutting your ribbon, giving a speech over at one of these things. So what happened

00:37:02.760 on the first holiday? Where was Justin at? He was surfing. He went surfing. Yeah. So their

00:37:09.560 term for it is Truth and Reconciliation Day. There's where I get a lot. This is where I start

00:37:13.960 getting upset and I get sick of things because you can't have reconciliation without the truth.

00:37:18.120 And they don't want the truth. The truth is we need to get a shovel in at Kamloops. It's been years now,

00:37:24.840 over three years. A shovel is supposedly 200 murdered children are buried there and dig one up.

00:37:34.440 We need to try and find the killers. We need to try and find what happened. But we can't,

00:37:38.120 of course, because there's nobody there. It's idiocy. It's wrong. And it's ripping the nation apart.

00:37:44.280 It's entrenching more of a sense of victimhood amongst the First Nations people who are already

00:37:48.920 in a socioeconomic disaster on the reserves and often off reserve when they come off there.

00:37:55.560 And when we continue with this divisive crap, it makes it worse. It makes more of that us,

00:38:01.320 them mentality. And it just entrenches the mess that they're in and the mess that we're all stuck

00:38:08.120 dealing with too. So this is the government we have right now. We need somebody else in there,

00:38:14.760 but we just can't get the chance. And what do we got also with what Trudeau has been doing? We saw

00:38:18.520 some great evidence. And Israel will pat ourselves on the back again on being independent media,

00:38:23.160 because as I said earlier, we only answer to you. You do dance with the one that brung you. That's

00:38:27.480 life, right? When someone's paying your bills, you tend to lean towards who's paying your bills.

00:38:32.840 In our case, it's the subscribers, which is great. We serve you. So what happens with media outlets when

00:38:38.120 they get subsidized by the government? Who do they suddenly answer to?

00:38:41.400 Who are they suddenly beholden to? CTV showed it in spades the other day,

00:38:48.920 when they actually, it's unbelievable. They took, I mean, media bias is nothing new. That's been

00:38:54.520 happening since the first Gutenberg press put out a sheet to give to people news. There was bias there.

00:39:01.160 That's fine. But to the degree of CTV now taking government subsidies, whining for more government

00:39:08.360 subsidies. And, uh, they took a clip of Pierre Polyev and actually hacked it into different

00:39:14.520 pieces and then reassembled it. So he was saying something completely different than what he was

00:39:18.440 saying. They really did that. And now, yeah, Polyev rightly furious. He was, they basically made it

00:39:27.240 look as if Polyev was trying to pull the government down on the confidence vote so that they could get

00:39:32.760 rid of the dental plan. That's what they did. It's actually what they did. And CTV put out this

00:39:37.640 apology when they were caught on it and said, Oh, it was a mistake. We made an error. You don't

00:39:42.520 accidentally take a video and splice it into a few chunks and reassemble it to make a completely

00:39:47.880 different message by mistake. Oh, I dropped the disc on the floor and it came back differently. No,

00:39:52.440 it doesn't work that way. You morons. You put out pure falsehood and yeah. So Polyev will not

00:40:02.120 no conservative party members. Now we'll give any interviews or time or clips to the CTV until they

00:40:08.280 apologize for purposely doing it. You see, they apologize for a mistake, but that's a load of BS.

00:40:12.520 It wasn't a mistake. It clearly wasn't a mistake. Some heads should roll. That's what you need to see.

00:40:17.000 You need to see these producers in this department went way over the line. We are sorry for that.

00:40:22.120 We've fired them and we've put these mechanisms in place to make sure that doesn't happen again.

00:40:25.800 But no, they said, Oh, it was an error. Well then fine. Screw you. We won't give you any more time.

00:40:31.000 Why is CTV taking such a beating like this? Well, it's because they have to keep the liberals happy

00:40:36.680 because they're subsidized like the newspapers. Like this is what happens when government runs

00:40:44.520 the media. They don't have to directly run. It doesn't have to be directly Pravda style like the CBC.

00:40:50.520 They can indirectly do it through subsidies because again, when they control who does or doesn't get

00:40:56.040 these subsidies, then the outlet is going to dance to their tune. And that's exactly what CTV is doing

00:41:03.800 is dancing to the tune of Trudeau's liberals. Speaking of other subsidies, why not, right?

00:41:12.760 The electric vehicle binge, the lunacy, the mad rush. I mean, God, we've been hearing about how

00:41:19.400 everybody's going to switch to electric vehicles for what, 15 years now? And what's the general use of

00:41:24.280 them on the streets still? Five percent? Six? We aren't massively embracing these things yet. Maybe

00:41:30.680 we never will. Maybe we will. I don't know. But leave the bloody market alone because you can't

00:41:36.120 force it. That's what's happening with these stupid electric buses that are failing all over.

00:41:40.440 And then with the massive subsidies being given out for electric cars and battery plants. So that's

00:41:46.600 what Trudeau put out, 50 billion and more to these battery plants out in Ontario. Meanwhile,

00:41:51.400 Ford is backing off on their electric vehicles. I think Audi's backing off. All the private

00:41:55.880 manufacturers saying, we're getting out of this for now. We're not totally getting out,

00:41:58.600 but we're backing off because people aren't buying the damn things. Well now, Northvolt,

00:42:03.880 a Swedish battery maker. Yeah. This is one of the ones that the Trudeau government's really been,

00:42:09.880 you know, hand in hand with and saying, you know, this is what we're subsidizing our battery plants

00:42:14.760 with and everything else. Well, what have they done over in Sweden? Oh, they've cut 1600 jobs in their

00:42:19.800 plants. Why? Because nobody wants the freaking batteries. We're making batteries for vehicles

00:42:24.520 that nobody wants. But where are we going? We're screwed. He's throwing that money. But where's

00:42:32.280 the money going? You see, where's the money going? We're not building these plants in

00:42:36.760 Southern Manitoba or Saskatchewan, Alberta. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Quebec. Quebec. It's always Quebec.

00:42:43.240 You know, I saw an article saying recently that separatism is rising. It's ugly head in Quebec

00:42:50.360 again. It's getting big. It was never gone, guys. It was never gone. If you spoke to some

00:42:53.800 independence-minded Quebec people before, you realize that they are serious about it. They

00:42:57.560 really want to go. If people say, well, they're going to take an economic hit if they go. Yeah,

00:43:01.000 I know. They know that too. They don't care. They just want their French state, even if it costs them

00:43:07.320 more money. That's what some Albertans have difficulty recognizing sometimes. Why would they pause?

00:43:12.120 They're threatening. They're not real about it. It would cost them money. No, they don't get it.

00:43:15.640 They don't care about the cost. I mean, they'll take the money whenever the government's throwing

00:43:19.000 it at them, of course. But they don't care if it's going to cost them to get out. So it is

00:43:23.240 raising its head. It's growing again. They're moving towards another referendum. The bloc might be back

00:43:28.360 in power in Quebec. But you know what? Good. Good. We've got to be different this time. When they voted to

00:43:35.000 stay by only 1% back in the 90s, when they voted that close, that was after a giant campaign from

00:43:43.240 the rest of Canada saying, we love you, Quebec. Please stay Quebec. Please, please, please stay

00:43:47.480 Quebec. You're our friends. You're our brothers. You're our cousins. Stay with Canada. We don't want

00:43:52.360 you to go. Next referendum, let's try a different tactic. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way

00:43:59.480 out. We should be inviting them to go. Go ahead. Leave. Please save Canada by leaving Canada because

00:44:07.960 that's the truth of it. Our constitution is supposed to be a living document. It's a dead one.

00:44:12.760 It's obsolete. It doesn't serve the regions. It doesn't reflect the needs and growth of the country.

00:44:17.880 And we can't change it. We tried and failed with the Charlottetown Accord. We tried and failed

00:44:22.840 with Meech Lake. We can't even revise the constitution in relatively minor ways. So the

00:44:28.600 only way we're going to change that document, that agreement, it's an engine that's broken. We got to

00:44:33.160 tear it down and rebuild it. And the only crisis that's going to be big enough to make people ready

00:44:37.720 to embrace and do that will be a province pulling out of Canada. And as much as I certainly would like

00:44:42.440 to see Alberta independence movements growing, Quebec is much closer to it than we are.

00:44:46.840 So let's help them along with it for all of our sake. Go, please go, leave. And then we can rebuild

00:44:54.840 this from there. We can come up with a new agreement. We can come up with a new union between the bunch

00:44:59.560 of us or have a bunch of independent states within who knows, but it will be superior to the mess that

00:45:05.800 we're in right now. Look up, I'll close the show on that. I hate to go off on a negative, but look up GDP

00:45:11.640 per capita. That's basically the measure of wealth in Canada. And I tell you what guys,

00:45:16.600 it's going in the toilet. The amount of money per person has been going down for a decade and it's

00:45:21.400 not going to turn around. We're losing. When you go to the States, you see those houses you can buy

00:45:25.960 for a fraction of the cost of a Canadian house. And you look at the average income. It's higher

00:45:29.240 than the income up here and the groceries are cheaper. That's our neighbor. Look at the trend

00:45:34.760 we're going on. We've got to break this country down and rebuild it and fix it. All right. That's

00:45:40.360 all my time for today, guys. Again, if you're in Edmonton, check into it. The Toasting Ted event

00:45:45.560 is on tonight. We're going to be going up there. I'm not sure. I think there's still tickets

00:45:48.360 available. You can have a look if you just Google Toasting Ted. Be sure to check out the pipeline.

00:45:52.520 Dave hosted it this week. Yes, we have a strange schedule going on. And check out our other shows.

00:45:57.960 Share the links with others, guys. Be sure to subscribe to The Standard. And yes, thank you

00:46:02.600 very much again for joining in today. We will be back again next week at this time. And I'll have a whole

00:46:07.960 new set of things to gripe about. Have a good one out there, guys. Thanks.

00:46:37.960 Bye.

Western Standard - September 28, 2024

Hit the brakes on electric buses!

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