In this week's show, we discuss the anti-lockdown protests across Canada, the record federal deficit approaching $1 Trillion, and why these protests are not, in fact, "BLOC" protests.
00:02:56.480Well, today we're going to be going through a number of issues.
00:03:00.520The main one you see on the banner is the anti-lockdown protests erupting across Canada
00:03:04.760and the record federal deficit approaching $1 trillion.
00:03:08.520But we'll also be diving into how this is broken down across the West,
00:03:13.600particularly comments made by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney as it relates to COVID in the South Asian community.
00:03:20.520And the Calgary City Council, bizarrely, trying to put in place new rules that would restrict any sitting city councillors who are running for mayor from campaigning in...
00:05:39.840They say they should have been all ticketed and fined.
00:05:45.420And this sort of stuff is going on now across Canada.
00:05:49.580You see the big barbecue protest in Etobicoke, where Adam Skelly, a barbecue joint owner,
00:05:57.660was hauled away at handcuffs and charged with breaking their public health act by breaking into his already locked restaurant and reopening again.
00:06:08.060Apparently, they serve some of the best ribs in the Toronto area.
00:08:19.660But, you know, I suppose there are a number of people who think that even bad laws should be followed.
00:08:24.860I'm not necessarily in that category, but people have different views on it.
00:08:30.640Corey, do you think the reason there haven't, at least in Alberta, been what we've seen in, say, Ontario, where the Ford government has been just positively gleeful to just hammer people for any disobeying of the government's, I won't call them laws here because they won't have to pass by the legislature.
00:08:52.540I'll call them cabinet orders, orders in council, technically.
00:08:56.880Why do you think we haven't seen the same level of crackdown, both in terms of the, I think Alberta does have a lockdown.
00:09:07.080It's just not as extreme as the one before.
00:09:09.120And it's not as extreme as we see in some other provinces like Ontario.
00:09:14.680Why do you think Alberta's not had as extreme a lockdown as other provinces?
00:09:19.720And secondly, why do you think there hasn't been, you know, say, arrests of people at these protests?
00:09:25.640Yeah, well, I mean, part of it's just the attitude of the premier in each province.
00:09:30.180I mean, there's something, I think, to a degree with people who are inherently very much more concerned or even afraid of the virus versus those who aren't.
00:09:38.580And it's clear Doug Ford is terrified of this thing.
00:09:40.920I mean, he, right from the bat of the whole pandemic, he's been very strong on enforcement and pushing and trying to clamp down on this.
00:09:48.000I mean, we could call it almost an individual ideology.
00:09:51.500It's just how people feel about that virus.
00:09:53.480Whereas Jason Kenney's been more reticent.
00:09:55.420It's almost reluctantly bringing in restrictions.
00:09:59.780And there still are restrictions coming in.
00:10:01.580But the feel going out to Albertans, at least, is that he's a little bit on your side, at least the ones who don't feel we should have more restrictions.
00:10:06.880Like he's cornered, he's forced to do it.
00:10:08.920So you're not getting that broader range of the public feeling that they've been cracked down on.
00:10:14.040I went down to the Calgary demonstration on Saturday for a little while.
00:10:19.160And there were a few hundred people there.
00:11:20.380It was just malcontents in general getting together in one spot.
00:11:23.260There were a lot of genuinely concerned people who came out, too, who were concerned about the lockdowns, about the mass legislation.
00:11:28.500But I think almost once they got to the core of that group, they got a little put off and they just kind of wandered back home.
00:11:33.400If we get larger lockdowns that impact people more directly in Alberta, I think we'll see more of those mainstream people getting off their butts and saying, we've got to push back.
00:11:44.740If we see the optics of things like that business owner in Ontario dragged out of his business like that physically.
00:11:50.920If we do actually start getting examples of neighbors calling because we had Uncle Phil over for a drink one night, then we're going to start seeing bigger protests.
00:12:00.640But, you know, also what could bring about bigger protests is had the police marched into that crowd and really started hammering down on these people.
00:12:10.120Then that is what's going to bring up more people.
00:12:14.080Obviously, guys like Don Braid of the Calgary Herald, who said that all the COVID deaths that take place, if there's no lockdown now, will be, I think I'm giving an exact quote.
00:12:25.880I could be wrong, but saying was, we'd be blood on Kenny's hands, essentially accusing him of murder or at least public manslaughter, if we can call him a term.
00:12:33.500But, you know, they're calling for just mass arrests of these people.
00:12:39.520I think Kenny is smart enough to know if you do that in Alberta, the way Albertans are, you're going to make it a lot worse.
00:12:46.760I'm not going down to it because I know it's going to have, I largely agree with the broad reason that they were there, but I know it's going to have a bunch of disparate conspiracy theorists and people who think it's all hoax or something.
00:12:59.420But as soon as you start, you know, sending 100 cops on horseback to raid a barbecue joint, haul the guy out, arrest them, I think the reaction in Alberta would be terrible towards the government.
00:14:02.180But if you start, if I saw, you know, a barbecue joint owner here hauled out and arrested for trying to make a living and not lose his home and lose his business, you know what?
00:15:35.380But when it gets to me, I have every intention of taking it.
00:15:38.340But as soon as the government says you have to take it or if you don't take or a form of mandatory vaccination, which would be you don't we're not going to pin you down.
00:15:45.880But if you don't take it, you're not allowed to leave your house or something.
00:15:48.200If you do that, I'm not going to take it on principle.
00:16:01.660It may not be government that's going to make the choice for you.
00:16:04.860I think what the future is going to see is places like Ticketmaster have already said you're not getting a ticket unless you can show you've been vaccinated.
00:16:12.380But that's private and airlines are not going to let you fly.
00:16:17.020And so they may be sort of forcing people that way to to to get yourself vaccinated.
00:16:23.160I could see some court challenges coming up with that because that's asking for personal medical information.
00:16:28.860Though, again, I mean, it could turn into quite a battle.
00:17:21.480You're forced to participate in government.
00:17:23.120So I think there's a big difference between governments mandating vaccination or semi-mandating it and private businesses or homes.
00:17:30.380The other interesting angle this week, gentlemen, is the finger pointing that has started to go towards northeast Calgary.
00:17:38.340They're the hotbed of COVID cases in the city.
00:17:41.880And Premier Kenney took to the airwaves this week to, they went on an ethnic radio station.
00:17:50.400And he basically told the southeast Asian community to smarten up and start following the rules.
00:17:56.220He noted that the southeast Asian community in northeast Calgary only make up 11% of the population, but they're accounting for 20% of the cases.
00:18:07.500So it's the first time I think we've had somebody point their fingers at an ethnic community for spreading the virus.
00:18:16.900Caused immediate backlash, of course, and Kenney being called every racist name under the book.
00:18:23.960But it's a different twist on something that a single community is now being singled out.
00:21:02.920I don't care which leader is that tone.
00:21:04.520People are looking right now – like what we're seeing right now, I think, is the desire – everybody says, oh, if I was around the 1930s, I would be against the fascists.
00:21:14.460But what you're seeing now is actually most people have, at least to some degree, a desire for the paternalistic father figure, the strong man of government.
00:21:24.340Ford's popularity went through the roof when he was the strong man commanding things and scolding people.
00:21:30.960But it was a poor choice to use that strategy and term when you were talking about a specific ethnic community because it could be spun and taken in just the way it was spun and taken by people that don't like him.
00:21:43.160If I go a bit further, since then, I talked to a friend of mine that was ideal to talk to about this, Dr. Anmal Kapoor.
00:21:51.280He's very involved, of course, with the South Asian community.
00:21:53.800He runs an annual thing called Dilwak, which is regarding heart disease and diabetes, which is actually much higher in the South Asian community as well due to dietary – you know, that Indian food's fantastic, but it's not really great for your heart and veins.
00:22:11.420So he can speak directly, because there's a lot of communication challenges.
00:22:44.880He said, like, in the Punjabi region of India, it's huge over there for them to say, I guess, the word that they're calling home to friends and family over here saying, the pandemic's over.
00:23:49.120Some of them are small business owners.
00:23:50.440They don't have somebody to come in while they self-isolate.
00:23:52.700Well, the South Asian community, particularly in Alberta, but I think across Canada, and like many immigrant populations, they have public-facing jobs.
00:24:01.860These are not jobs, you know, like comfortable white liberals who can almost universally work from home.
00:24:41.880So anybody who believes that Diwali just went away is kidding themselves.
00:24:46.360So the bottom line in the end is there are special cultural considerations to take into place.
00:24:50.840So let's see how we can rationally approach it.
00:24:54.280That's one thing Dr. Kapoor offers that if Kenny wants somebody for outreach to talk to the community about these things, he said he'd be more than happy to work further on that.
00:25:02.060Just because there are special different things.
00:25:03.500In the early part of the pandemic, we saw the Filipino community got hit very hard in the meatpacking plants and very similar conditions.
00:25:09.620Because you have new Canadians, limited English, tight households, multiple jobs.
00:25:15.020So Jason Kenney was talking about something we're targeting.
00:25:31.400Everybody blows it now and then, I guess.
00:25:32.940Kenny's scheduled to appear with Dr. Hinshaw later on Wednesday afternoon would be his first attempting at the press conference since the new regulations, I guess.
00:26:32.640Actually, I think it might be just last year.
00:26:35.000The deficit, sorry, the debt now is about to hit $8 trillion for the first time in Canadian history.
00:26:39.420It will have nearly doubled in the span of less than two years here.
00:26:43.280An already sizable federal debt, a deficit that had literally an infinite projection of never balancing.
00:26:51.440Like the American federal deficit, an infinite projection of continued deficits, not even a theoretical balanced budget date.
00:26:59.160We're now looking at a deficit of well north of $300 billion, which is, I mean, I stopped voting conservative for a deficit of $30 billion.
00:27:08.220I mean, I still won't vote for anyone who runs a deficit of $30 billion, but holy hell, $300 billion, you can't understand it.
00:27:18.780That's the GDP of some countries in a single year that we're borrowing.
00:27:21.900Dave, why don't you run us through the fiscal update that the federal government put out and the numbers we're looking at.
00:27:31.240Holy hell, that's closer to $400 billion.
00:27:32.900Well, well north of $300 billion, and that death clock you showed at $600 million is going to double.
00:27:41.140It is now expected to hit $1.2 trillion.
00:27:44.600That's a lot of zeros, I think, Corey.
00:27:46.560I don't know how many, but that's 12 and a lot of zeros.
00:27:50.900Environment, not Environment Minister, excuse me, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland did her economic update this week in the House of Commons,
00:27:59.140announced the record deficit, obviously, mainly new COVID programs and support for Canadians there.
00:28:09.040She also announced another $100 billion of new incentives, and a lot of it is going to be for new green technology,
00:28:18.920converting gas stations into electronic charging stations, all that sort of good stuff.
00:28:25.920So not really a lot in there that's going to excite the average Albertan, but yeah.
00:29:54.700We're still using the fighter jets from that era, too.
00:29:56.680But we are still paying off the debts of pure Trudeau.
00:29:59.920And before those were paid off, Justin Trudeau was now taking on the largest explosion of federal debt by far in Canadian history.
00:30:07.960By my calculations, Justin Trudeau has borrowed in a single year, adjusted for inflation, more money than the federal government borrowed to fight both the first and second world wars.
00:30:22.440I mean, I understand revenues are going to drop off.
00:30:26.080There's probably going to be new programs.
00:30:27.740But the scale of this is unconscious, unconscionable.
00:30:32.760It's, you know, the government was already borrowing through the wazoo before it had not, didn't even have a projection before this happened.
00:30:40.020The federal government had no projection to even get to a balanced budget.
00:30:42.620Eventually, it just had infinite projections for deficits.
00:30:46.700But, of course, when this all passes, I'm sure we're going to need to continue spending in the name of stimulus.
00:30:53.660Corey, do you think there is – what do you think is going to be the political fallout of this?
00:30:58.980Do you think there's going to be any kind of political price to pay for the liberals for borrowing?
00:31:04.100And do you think there's any prospect of the conservatives under Aaron O'Toole being willing to completely shut off the taps and get back to a balanced budget here?
00:31:13.840I wish there was going to be a bigger political fallout.
00:31:17.440I don't think people – your average person understands the scope of just what's happening and what's coming down the road.
00:31:25.100I mean, we're going into this bizarre year of misery for all of us economically, personally.
00:31:31.260And everybody – that mindset and attitude of government has to do something.
00:31:34.780It's the government's role to save us.
00:31:36.320So they're letting it slide with this borrowing.
00:31:38.500They're not thinking about what – that it's borrowing.
00:31:51.780But, you know, the reason that Bev Oda's orange juice incident was more damaging to a government than any billion or trillion dollar episode.
00:31:58.940We can't wrap our minds around how huge that number is.
00:32:03.160Like, when you think of a billion, an analogy I like using just for a billion, you know, is a million dollars if you stacked up thousand dollar bills.
00:32:24.740So we're going to see a currency correction or something.
00:32:27.800There's going to be inflation or something is going to have to bring that back into check eventually.
00:32:33.000And we're going to all pay a price for it.
00:32:34.880But as far as the near-term future for Justin's political futures or anything O'Toole can do, I don't know what he can do to head that off.
00:32:41.820It's just darts like us who look at the long-term numbers.
00:32:44.220When I was at the Taxpayers Federation, you know, we, long before I was there, but it was rebuilt in my time there, is we brought back the debt clock.
00:32:51.000Like, because it was at least the closest thing we had to help people wrap their mind around it, that they could see it physically, they could see it ticking up in real time.
00:32:59.000Even then, it's hard for people to wrap their minds around.
00:33:03.380But now it's moving so fast that even I, like, I've made a career out of trying to help people understand and address deficits.
00:33:14.060And I'm going to get some numbers on this soon.
00:33:18.700But did you know that more than half of the Canadian dollars in circulation today, both printed and unprinted, were printed in the last year?
00:33:29.220We have inflated our currency by 100% in the last year.
00:33:33.660Now, that's going to hit at some point.
00:33:35.440Inflation can take a while to work its way through the system, especially when it's not cash printing, when it's not a physical printing press, but when the government just creates it on a balance sheet and releases it through the Bank of Canada into the main chartered banks.
00:33:49.280That's going to work its way through the system.
00:33:54.480They get the money when it's still worth something, and they get to loan it out to people when it's worth less.
00:34:00.940It's the greatest racket in history is when government creates fiat money.
00:34:05.860The United States government has massively inflated its currency through the Federal Reserve.
00:34:10.060Central banks across the world have done this.
00:34:11.400But Canada, if I'm not mistaken, has inflated its currency by a massive margin more than any other comparable advanced industrialized country on the planet.
00:34:21.580We are looking at serious inflation coming here.
00:34:24.920And people don't, unless you get to hyperinflation where you're taking wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread, people don't tend to blame the government.
00:34:31.620It's a way for government to spend freely without political consequence.
00:34:35.560Governments on the left and the right like to do it because they get to spend the money that people like without taxing people that they don't like.
00:34:43.140So there are going to be big consequences coming down the line right now, and no one seems to care about it.
00:34:49.700The federal conservatives, even before COVID, said they weren't even going to balance the budget within one term.
00:35:21.440But they didn't just run a deficit saying this is crappy, we have to do it, but I'm going to get out of it right away.
00:35:26.020He, you know, in the face of the whole coalition that formed against him, he just essentially took their program of stimulus and bailouts, this Keynesian kind of idea, and he ran with it and adopted it as his own and said, deficits are not just unfortunate, they are necessary.
00:35:42.680And I don't think they understood at the time, but what they were doing is they broke the consensus in Canada that had developed across all major political parties beginning in the late 80s that deficits are wrong, regardless of if you're on the left or the right.
00:35:55.800And then Stephen Harper went for, you know, he comes up against Justin Trudeau.
00:35:59.540Justin Trudeau says, I'm going to run a deficit.
00:36:02.260Well, Stephen Harper's argument essentially boiled down to, well, deficits are bad when you do it, but they're not bad when I do it.
00:36:59.020Okay, well, let's move on closer to home here.
00:37:03.800Calgary City Council proposing and voting on some very bizarre set of rules here that would seem to have quite an explicitly political agenda, even if they deny it.
00:37:18.900This is actually a bylaw, Derek, that came in in 2016, prior to the last election.
00:37:24.420It basically says they do not want councillors going into other councillors' areas to hold political events unless you get permission from the sitting councillor in that ward.
00:37:36.940It was brought forward again this week by administration to a council committee where it was voted down six to four, but it still goes ahead to the full council on Monday.
00:37:50.080And I think what this will do, Derek, is basically hobble any attempts by Jeremy Farkas to run for mayor.
00:38:49.320Yeah, but wherever that is, Mayor Nancy wouldn't need the permission of Jeremy Farkas to go to his ward.
00:38:57.220But Jeremy Farkas would need the permission of 13 other councillors to get the permission to go to any one of theirs, making it virtually impossible to campaign if he respects the bylaw.
00:39:05.300As I said before, some laws are meant to be broken.
00:39:07.880And if the council does break this, I think, you know, Jeremy Farkas would be well advised to raise a GoFundMe campaign and challenge us as unconstitutional.
00:39:50.440So, actually, it's a code of conduct policy.
00:39:52.460So, it's kind of the inner city thing, which makes it even more nebulous, though, because then a councillor who's been accused of breaking, it can be dragged before the integrity commissioner.
00:40:02.740And then we're starting to get more Kafkaesque with these.
00:40:04.900Well, then you get a scolding letter for being unethical or something.
00:40:07.580Well, but then they can do some other things because we've seen Jeremy Farkas kicked out of council meetings.
00:40:11.680We've seen him shut out of doing his job and being public.
00:40:16.280They can really make an unholy mess for him through this.
00:40:19.640And your defense is difficult when it's an internal document like this.
00:40:22.400This was actually modeled, what they did was they dredged up an old one that had expired, and it was targeted at Sean Chu, who, prior to Jeremy Farkas, was the most hated man on council by the mayor and some of the others, because Ward 4 had boundary changes.
00:40:35.360And Sean was trying to campaign in what would be Ward 4 in the next election, but that meant he was campaigning in another councillor's ward at that time.
00:40:44.900So, they built this policy to handicap Sean and his campaigning.
00:40:49.320So, they dredged it up and realized this is more effective for a sitting councillor mayoral candidate than it ever was for Chu.
00:40:58.080So, let's adjust it a little bit and bring it back up and throw it through.
00:41:02.100And I think what happened, though, was, now, again, see, they love saying, oh, this wasn't us, it was administration.
00:41:32.140Some jerky columnist wrote a piece and called out Ward Sutherland as an individual who would probably use such a thing as a tool to hinder a certain other council member he didn't like.
00:41:42.420And it was, it was, I found it humorous almost listening to the live discussion of it because Sutherland was talking in committee saying, well, this has been turned into a political tool now.
00:41:52.200You know, you know, that could have been good, but I'm forced to just say we should not have it go through.
00:41:57.920Grudgingly voted against it, apparently.
00:42:17.600I mean, what they're saying is, and it's true, nobody should go into a neighbor's constituency and try to undercut the incumbent councillor or do anything belligerent like that.
00:42:27.840But it's not the role of the city to govern these things.
00:42:30.020It's communications between a candidate.
00:42:31.560When I was in the legislature, if I went to another constituency, particularly rural ones where the MLA actually might matter, I would make a courtesy call, even if it was NDP, particularly if it was another Wild Rose.
00:42:43.660But, you know, PCs, well, it wasn't real PC writings.
00:42:46.620But I would make a call, a courtesy call most of the time, unless it was something like a big event.
00:42:51.760You know, if there was a convention center holding something where it's not really a constituency event, just happens to be there, I wouldn't do that.
00:44:03.580Either way, there's things like that where they give actually quite an advantage to somebody who doesn't care for your campaign if you're going to give out your whole schedule and things like that.
00:44:12.840It's just not information that should be forced to be given to anybody else.
00:44:16.080It's not serving a purpose aside from hindering a mayoral candidate that they do not like.
00:46:03.900For a couple bucks a month, you can help support having a genuinely independent Western media outlet that refuses to accept any government subsidies.
00:46:12.540Thank you very much for joining us here today.