00:14:08.860In the case of me, I'm not too eager at this point.
00:14:11.160But if you put a gun to my head, I'm definitely digging my heels in and saying no. It's the coercion, guys. That's the problem. Leave it to choice. But this government doesn't do that. This is an authoritarian government. That'll kind of tie into my guests when I do speak to them in a little bit here. It's nuts.
00:14:26.120The other thing that has been talked about, here's something that doesn't help, and it doesn't help for, I think, genuine trans people who just want to move on and enjoy life and do what they do.
00:14:36.720But the activists, they just won't stop pushing, and they just keep going too far.
00:14:42.080So with this drag show in Texas, drag show?
00:14:54.220It was a good time out and everything.
00:14:55.300lots of character, but now they keep going for the kids. What's with the kids? Why do you keep
00:15:00.020pushing on the kids? Let them be frigging kids, leave them the hell alone. There's limits for a1.00
00:15:05.080reason sometimes. And I'm looking at pictures from this drag show they held with kids as everyone
00:15:08.920was talking about getting them to tip them. It was held in a strict bar and there's people sitting
00:15:12.840in front of a sign saying, it's not going to lick itself. Guys, leave our kids alone. Get the hell0.84
00:15:20.460away from it. This is causing pushback, I think, to a lot of, again, you know, peaceful living
00:15:26.240trans people who just want to get on with their life. They get lumped in with these crazed
00:15:30.380activists and the other woke assholes who force us to keep indulging these activists, to keep0.99
00:15:35.620saying that we're supposed to take their endless pushes seriously. I mean, it's seriously time to0.99
00:15:40.920say that's enough. You know, we've certainly come along as a society. We're a hell of a lot better
00:15:46.040than we've ever been. But now when we're holding shows and strip clubs, it is nuts. Come on,
00:15:52.160let's get real. But either way, we'll be reporting more on that pretty soon. As we said this
00:15:57.800afternoon, Mel's working on that story too, because there might be another Alberta event
00:16:02.360coming up with something along those lines. We'll see. So let's see. I'm going to speak to one of
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00:16:26.620want to get your money into a safe, cold wallet and find out even what a cold wallet means or
00:16:31.580things such as that, Bitcoin Well is the kind of service that'll help you do that. They lead you
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00:17:10.820All right. You know, this theme is it just works as a boy. I love to rail about our authoritarian state all the time. And, you know, you can do it with a bit of humor, yet at the same time, have some seriousness behind it. And Mr. C.J. Jackson, an author, has written his book, as I said, So You Want to Be a Dictator. A great guidebook, I imagine, for aspiring authoritarians. So let's have a conversation with him and see what this book is all about.
00:17:37.320but bring Mr. Jackson in from the lobby there.
00:21:02.980Yeah, well, information, I mean, it can cut both ways.
00:21:05.660I mean, you know, I don't expect you to know too many on Canadian issues, but things that we've got coming down from Parliament, it's kind of scary lately.
00:21:11.840We've got a bill coming forth that is going to give customs agents the power to force you to give the password to your phone or tablet when you're crossing the border so they can look within it in case you're carrying any information that's not supposed to come into the country.
00:21:26.560Again, people brush that off saying, I got nothing to hide.
00:21:50.820Arab Spring 12 years ago, we thought Twitter and social media was going to actually support the prominence of democracy.
00:22:02.460And instead, dictators and dictator wannabes have used it to actually either delay the information, remove the information, create misinformation or disinformation.
00:22:17.360And we see that with Russia. We see that with China. We see that with the West now that it's been struggling with it, you know, six years.
00:22:24.880I mean, I'm the U.S., you're Canada. We see it.
00:22:27.900Yeah, well, and we see sometimes dictators come into power through a revolution or a big turnover or a military coup or something like that.
00:22:35.240But it seems with us in the Western world, we're doing it more with an incremental frog in water sort of approach.
00:22:40.020But the outcome is going to be the same if we don't pay attention pretty soon.
00:26:32.640I mean, we have a digital science dot.
00:26:34.900I mean, and, and that's, that's a big thing. And, and dictators have been able and, and, you know, want to be dictators have utilized it so well. And not only that, not just social media, but just controlling the internet. I mean, you talk about Myanmar, they can shut down, they shut down the internet. Turkey, shut down the internet.
00:27:00.520Iran, shut down the internet. So they could just control it because that's the only way to1.00
00:27:06.380communicate anymore. I mean, you can't just share pieces of paper across that to build a following.
00:27:14.120So it's the same. It goes back to my point about the decay of democracy where
00:27:20.160dictators have found a way to exploit democracy to feign legitimacy.
00:27:27.640and that's what's going on and they're just using social media and the internet as a way to better
00:27:33.780do that. Well in our case again I know our Canadian examples are a little different we've
00:27:38.540actually got a number of bills coming through that are literally modeled to control the internet
00:27:42.040for the preservation of Canadian culture they say for the preservation and fighting of fake news
00:27:47.520they say so they're going to accredit news organizations and say you're fake you're not
00:27:51.480that's a dangerous road to go down giving the government full control on what you can or can't
00:27:56.120see on there, but they are very much trying to get into that. Maybe even some are well-meaning,
00:28:01.160but you can't give that authority to someone else. You make a good point because everything's
00:28:08.160well-meaning when it comes to theory and bills, and then you get to the practicality about it,
00:28:13.180and it ends up being abused, and that's what's happening. That's what's happening around. I know
00:28:21.060it's happening in canada i apologize i don't know all that's all right you know things are going on
00:28:25.680but in the u.s it's happening in a very big uh sense um it's happening in europe it's it's just
00:28:34.020an easy way to abuse it um and i i think that's that that's a key point here is what we're seeing
00:28:42.000is that um i'm talking you know my book's about dictators but dictators aren't just your kim jongens
00:28:49.500or your Putins, they are your parliamentarians, you know, in Canada, I assume, and congressmen
00:28:57.200here, they find ways to abuse those rights and then abuse that freedoms.
00:29:04.960Well, in our complacency, I mean, we're our own worst enemy to a degree. So I'm sure it
00:29:09.320made even news, well, it made international news when we invoked the, actually, the Emergencies
00:29:13.200Act in Canada, which is our version of the War Measures Act, to combat protesters in
00:29:18.360Ottawa. I mean, you know, they're still open to discussion whether those protesters should have
00:29:22.440been shut down or cracked on upon. But actually, it's a form of martial law to suspend civil rights
00:29:28.280for that period of time, which meant they could arrest people without warrant, it meant they could
00:29:32.460actually force tow truck drivers, forced labor, if they refuse to tow trucks, they'd be thrown in
00:29:37.580jail. I don't think enough people realize just how significant that line they crossed was when that
00:29:43.360happened. And, you know, I fear the precedent it set, because it kind of let the government know
00:29:49.080if we can convince people for the public good, we can really do a lot of interesting things here
00:29:53.700without bothering with individual rights. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, I can't say I'm,
00:30:01.460you know, a full libertarian here, but I think that there is a balance here. And I'm a little bit
00:30:11.040disappointed in the way that government kind of takes the full attack on everything versus the
00:30:21.000full freedom that, you know, people want to enjoy. And I think that we tend to forget the world of
00:30:30.440regulation. And, you know, there's, I mean, that's how society works, to an extent. I just think the
00:30:38.560government tends to get to, you know, overbearing at a time. And then that causes a bad reaction
00:30:51.600from everyone. And the U.S. is a great example. And again, I'm not an expert on Canadian politics,
00:31:00.080but I assume, you know, that it's a similar thing. You know, here in the West, we've just,
00:31:05.760uh we're starting to see that we're starting to see that um you know tension if that makes sense
00:31:13.460yeah no our western democracies are all sort of grappling with similar issues i mean we'll have
00:31:18.100some some nuances between our constitutions and things like that but for the most part we you know
00:31:22.560we've got similar particularly canada the united states similar cultures and and uh governance
00:31:27.020systems and challenges i guess you could say in these times so getting back to your book i'm just
00:31:31.440looking at some of that stuff. Yeah. Satirical leadership guide for aspiring autocrats and
00:31:36.600assholes, which is great. We embrace assholes a lot on this show. The autocrats, we can have1.00
00:31:41.980some issues with, but some of the stuff from within your book, though, you know, before we
00:31:46.820let you go, just to kind of cover what's inside for this rather than our dry discussion on the
00:31:51.540realities here. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'm sure people love dry discussion on politics all the time.
00:31:55.940Oh, this is what we do a lot of. We're allowed to laugh, too, though.
00:31:59.840Yeah, well, just, you know, for you and for everyone listening, look, it's just a satirical human book. I've spent 12 years in the world of government and corporate, and I'm so, you know, I've seen so many leadership books about, you know, how to be a leader.
00:32:20.960and you know why shoot for CEO go for the top but the real grouping here is that it's a step-by-step
00:32:31.420guide of how dictators become dictators and how you can be one if you want to I mean you know
00:32:37.500just give me a little credit and you know don't kill me but and and then it gives you a lot of
00:32:44.820you know, history about previous dictators, where it came from, and a lot of the dictators that we
00:32:53.020have today, and probably places you didn't think of, and the reality of this is, look, you're not
00:32:59.180going to go and read a 400-page book about dictatorship and democracy, so why not have a
00:33:05.140little laugh and learn about, you know, how democracy works and how it can be exploited,
00:33:10.680it because it's pretty damn easy and it's been happening for a while yeah though i wouldn't
00:33:15.920want to discourage people from reading the road to serfdom and some of the other good publications
00:33:19.380of course yeah yeah i'm not yeah i didn't mention any other books but but uh i mean it's great and
00:33:25.280satire is important and it makes serious messages digestible i mean there's there's so many great
00:33:30.260long columns i mean i've written columns and i see that some fantastic political cartoonists
00:33:34.920has actually managed to get out in one image what i had to write 800 words to try and get across
00:33:39.620and they will have reached far more people than I have.
00:43:06.380But again, this gets back to what I was talking about earlier.
00:43:08.320Trudeau does not surround himself with bright people.
00:43:10.740He's insecure. He's insecure. Look at his cabinet ministers. They're never really the sharpest
00:43:15.740knives in the drawer. And Freeland's not much of an, you know, exception to that. She's one of the
00:43:20.980brighter. That's why she's his second in command. But I mean, you know, unable to actually deal with
00:43:26.480your own budget bill. That's what you're there for. You're the finance minister. But, you know,
00:43:31.840she moved to cut the debate short. And it's nuts. All right, let's get on to something else. This
00:43:38.640another story. Here's where we're getting with the government spending, government efficiency,
00:43:41.960and government looking out for your interest. I haven't mentioned that as well. So federal
00:43:46.080agencies are warehousing millions of rapid COVID tests. Yeah. And the parliament just voted to
00:43:51.540spend billions more with suppliers. Total spending on rapid tests, they've blown $4 billion on these
00:43:56.620kits. Nobody wants them now. They were bad. I mean, don't you remember that some months back,
00:44:01.660everybody had to get their rapid test kit. Pharmacies were running out, people were running
00:44:05.220around. People were trading them online. Well, now we got millions of them sitting around in
00:44:10.060warehouses. We don't want them because who cares? Oh, look, I shoved a Q-tip up my nose and tickled
00:44:15.800my brain and found out I got the flu. So what? It doesn't make a difference, but this is what
00:44:21.960they're... And then, you know, you wonder about the inside dealing. You really do. Again,
00:44:26.240that stuff gets dismissed as conspiracy theories, but who's making money off of these
00:44:30.820There's millions and millions of tests. Where's it coming from? Likewise, we got some people who are going to do very, very well if everybody's forced to get a third vaccination shot. And we've got to stop complying. We've got to push back. I don't know what it takes. I know what it takes. It's going to take independence because I don't see Toronto and Montreal losing their love affair with the Trudeau family and the Liberal Party. Speaking of authoritarians, I mean, you know, we can keep pushing and we're gonna.
00:45:00.820Um, we have to, you know, speaking of, of, uh, vacuous cabinet ministers, the queen of the mall
00:45:08.660was Catherine McKenna. She's not in there any longer, but man, she used to be painful when like,1.00
00:45:13.540um, she'd know, you know, you know, she would give a press conference and she's still active0.98
00:45:18.500on social media. And, and she was commenting on the Ontario provincial election with, but had a,
00:45:23.700a dismal, I think 43% turnout in the electorate or something like that. And she's saying maybe
00:45:28.580it's time to force people to vote this that's the liberal response to everything is to take away
00:45:33.780choice and force people to do something i don't care if a person chooses not to vote i really
00:45:41.060don't i mean i think it'd be better for democracy if more people chose to i think it'd be better
00:45:45.460sign of everything if more people felt their vote was worth something and they would get up and do
00:45:49.300it i think we should see some alarm bells with the fact that a provincial election had such a low
00:45:54.100turnout. But the response of wanting to put a gun to everybody's head and say, you have to vote or
00:45:59.320we'll fine you or whatever other way. No, no, absolutely not. But that's their vapid short-term
00:46:08.300type of thinking, these guys. And I imagine, you know, there's a lot of people who don't vote that
00:46:13.400I don't want to vote. They're probably stupid, or at least indifferent. A lot of them are people who1.00
00:46:18.780are completely apathetic, wouldn't know one party from another, one candidate from another. They're
00:46:23.000going to throw a dart at a ballot, I don't want them voting. If they're going to be that lazy,
00:46:28.460stay home, watch the Kardashians, and let those of the rest of us take part in the representative
00:46:33.520democracy. But forcing them into the mix is not going to make the outcomes any smarter,
00:46:37.860which of course, I guess I could see why people then like Freeland, Trudeau, or Reagan would like0.68
00:46:45.020people to be dumbed down to get out and vote. That could be the next move we go to. There's
00:46:50.160some of the irony. We've got to force you to take part in democracy. If you have to force people to
00:46:53.960take part in democracy, democracy is broken. It's absurd. People say they do it in Australia. So
00:46:59.380what? Do a lot of things down there. Some are good, some are bad. Forcing votes doesn't mean
00:47:06.080they vote for a better outcome. People need to want to take part. And, you know, as Gary said,
00:47:13.320that's the bottom line there, commenter. If you don't vote, then you voted for whoever won. And
00:47:16.960And that's a lot of how it feels, you know, I don't like when people go out and try to read in, you know, I saw that with Andrew Coyne on Twitter the other day, you know, he posted a big thing showing, oh, this is the Conservative victory and showed in Ontario was 18%. When you take into account, all the people who didn't vote. And yeah, but the Conservatives still don't want the majority of the people who bothered to vote. I don't care about what the other 58% or 57% who didn't bother voting thought, or at least I worry that they're
00:47:46.960choosing to stay home, that's a problem. And it's indicative of a big problem. But let's not try and
00:47:52.320interpret what they might have voted for had they come out. That's a fool's game. All we have to0.99
00:47:57.360concern ourselves with are the ones who did show up. So when you start playing that game, and of
00:48:01.500course, I don't recall Andrew Coyne ever doing that to break down how many people actually voted
00:48:05.660for Justin Trudeau in the last general election, because I suspect the number would be fairly
00:48:09.820similar. And to be honest, I would say it's just as unfair. The bottom line is in the system we've
00:48:14.120got right now. He won the wealth, the majority amount to make it a minority government. But to
00:48:20.680sit there and slice and dice and try and interpret based on the number of people who didn't vote and
00:48:26.240guessing as to what they might have voted for. No, no, I don't think so. And the best interpretation
00:48:31.680you could give it all, as the commenter there said, as well as people who chose not to vote,
00:48:36.520were choosing de facto to vote for the status quo. They must have obviously, well, not obviously,
00:48:40.940but a lot of them felt, well, things are good enough as it is.
00:49:40.120uh as i said i i read that uh report you guys did with the fraser institute and comparing basically
00:49:46.200the the trajectory of canada's energy circumstances and laying out why europe is in some of the
00:49:51.400crisis it's in can you can you kind of give us in a nutshell what that summary is
00:49:55.160sure thing um so yeah what we did in the report is number one to point out to people to make sure
00:50:00.120they realize this that europe was in an energy crisis and people were using that phrase before
00:50:05.720the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So obviously that exacerbated things, but this situation was
00:50:10.420in place well before that. Just to give you some idea, in July of 2021, right, so last summer,
00:50:16.780natural gas prices in Europe were up 670% just year over year, all right, just to show you just
00:50:23.480the skyrocketing price. Electricity prices in 2021 in Germany, the UK, and France were up more
00:50:31.000than 200 percent in each of those countries right so like a tripling and so again that those
00:50:36.340timelines were showing this was before the uh Russian invasion of Ukraine and so then in the
00:50:41.440study we said okay what what are the factors going on what why is why was Europe in such dire straits
00:50:46.340and we listed some factors all of which are also true right now in terms of Canada and its
00:50:51.660government's policies and so that's what the point of the report is to warn um and so it has to do
00:50:56.680with being hostile to conventional fossil fuels. And so companies aren't investing as much.
00:51:03.140And then having, in Europe, they have what's called an emissions trading system, which is
00:51:08.320like a price put on carbon. And they jacked up significantly recently. And that's very similar
00:51:13.000to Canada's tax on carbon. And so our concern was, if Canada is following the same policies
00:51:19.160that they had in Europe in place, you know, is an energy crisis going to come to Canada as well?
00:51:24.620Yeah, well, it seems like we're trying to legislate an alternative to hydrocarbons,
00:51:29.340but we haven't developed the alternative yet. So, I mean, it's inevitable that's going to lead to
00:51:34.000some spikes in pricing if we don't somehow ramp up wind and solar generation very quickly and
00:51:40.200effectively, which isn't going to happen. Right. So what seems to be happening,
00:51:44.120and this pattern's all over the place, but you see it in Europe in particular,
00:51:48.720is that certain jurisdictions, for example, Ireland, Germany, and France, they outright
00:51:53.440ban fracking and they have policies in place to discourage coal fired power plants in particular
00:52:01.920electricity derived from coal and so you're right in the short term we can't just instantly switch
00:52:08.000over to having solar and wind fill the gap those are intermittent sources when the sun's not
00:52:12.880shining when the wind's not blowing you need something else and so that meant the brunt of
00:52:16.000it fell on natural gas and then for various reasons because natural gas prices went up so
00:52:20.880much that's why it fed into electricity prices so that's sort of the the quandary that the world
00:52:27.120finds itself in as governments push uh away from coal-fired plants right now natural gas has to
00:52:32.640pick up the slack because it's not as carbon intensive and it's more reliable than wind or
00:52:37.120solar and so then when you have a disruption like for example interruptions in natural gas exports
00:52:42.480from russia then of course that you know the economies are more dependent on that yeah and we
00:52:48.080we are seeing, I mean, similar actions in Canada. Quebec is an outstanding example. I mean,
00:52:52.920they've got some pretty good natural gas reserves there, it appears. They started with a fracking
00:52:56.900ban, and now they've actually just basically said, no, we're not going to do any oil gas
00:52:59.960development whatsoever in our province, and they're leaving that in the ground. But
00:53:04.360that's not, I mean, that can only contribute to higher prices then.
00:53:08.900Right. In terms, too, of federal policy, too, in Canada. So, for example, they've got,
00:53:13.140most obviously the carbon tax that's in place that's set to get up to $170 a ton by the year
00:53:19.6402030. They've got an outright cap they've placed on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas
00:53:26.020sector. So with all this stuff, it sounds good in principle. And I understand the desire that,
00:53:31.980oh, we're concerned about climate change. We want to limit those emissions. But
00:53:34.680policymakers and Canadian citizens, of course, need to understand what the flip side is. These
00:53:40.720things come with a cost. And there's a reason right now that the infrastructure was so heavily
00:53:46.280reliant on natural gas and coal and oil. And that's because they're very dense forms of energy
00:53:52.380that are very convenient, dispatchable is a term that's used. And again, just to switch over these
00:53:57.120other forms, it comes at a cost. And as you say, like a carbon tax, this isn't some undesirable
00:54:04.220side effect. The avowed purpose of that is to make electricity and transportation derived from
00:54:10.300carbon intense products more expensive. That's the whole point of taxing something is to make
00:54:14.620it more expensive to discourage people from using it. And so, yeah, we shouldn't be shocked. Gee,
00:54:19.280how come energy is so expensive all of a sudden when the government's policies are explicitly
00:54:23.320designed to make them more expensive? Yeah, but they didn't discourage us from using anything.
00:54:27.660They just made it a heck of a lot more expensive for all of us. So, I mean, it's only having half,
00:54:31.480I think, the intended purpose, I imagine, because there's not an alternative realistically to go to.
00:54:36.020yeah you're exactly right and so you know in fairness the some of the people who are designing
00:54:40.580these policies and the projections they may have been relying on had optimistic assumptions built
00:54:45.780into it to say oh if you know we keep making strides in battery power or if there's widespread
00:54:49.700adoption of electric vehicles or you know various things like that if solar panels become more
00:54:54.500efficient then you know oh we could afford to move away from the current reliance on the more
00:55:01.540conventional forms of energy and it wouldn't be so expensive but yeah the problem is in actually
00:55:06.820implementing that in terms of the timetables it's it's not ready for prime time yet and so yes as
00:55:12.820you say by making this stuff more expensive people still need to heat their homes they still need to
00:55:16.500drive to work and so they have no choice in the short term but to suck it up and pay higher prices
00:55:21.700yeah well and likewise i mean i i know it only has limited effect but still i mean if we supplied
00:55:25.380more in the world market that's going to have a degree of uh offsetting on world prices but our
00:55:30.260biggest well one of the biggest world consumers and our biggest export customer is the united
00:55:34.980states but president biden while he's acknowledging an energy crisis seems to we see no indication he
00:55:41.220wants any more canadian product he's actually going cap and hand to saudi arabia and venezuela
00:55:45.700asking for more like is there ways we can develop our relationship better with the united states to
00:55:49.380help exacerbate some of this or well yeah i mean with all this stuff i mean when the biden
00:55:54.100administration came in of course they were very hostile to uh pipeline development and you know
00:55:59.380You know, there were a lot of so-called green groups that the Biden administration wanted to placate in terms of taking action, some of which was just symbolic.
00:56:07.580So, yeah, you're right. And I don't I guess part of that is that because they made those moves early on, they don't want to be seen as backtracking.
00:56:17.080But you're right, especially it is ironic that the United States policy, instead of building more alliances with its northern neighbor, is reaching out to areas of the world that are traditionally unreliable.
00:56:28.660And the U.S. as well also has a lot of domestic resources that it's not tapping again because government policy either literally forbids it or makes the people in the industry realize it would be foolish enough to invest billions of dollars developing this because for all we know, 10 years from now, the regulatory climate is going to be different.
00:56:47.500So with all this stuff, too, there's a chilling effect on the private sector's development, even if the explicit government policy right now doesn't forbid some of these things.
00:56:56.560Yeah, that's what I kind of wanted to get to, because even if we wanted to ramp up Canadian production, that's going to take a lot of capital, a lot of investment.
00:57:03.140Timelines are long. And to be honest, in looking at how many projects have been canceled or delayed or regulated to death,
00:57:09.060we don't look like a safe place to invest in those kinds of projects because we don't know if you could ever get it to completion.
00:57:14.000Right. Yeah. And we have some figures there in the study that you may have seen that in terms of like European, the European energy mix,
00:57:21.240So, yeah, in terms of R&D, there was a lot more over the last 10 years that's been pumped into, you know, so-called renewable sources, things like battery power, things like that, not very much into more conventional forms.
00:57:34.620And you can understand why, again, from an individual investor's point of view, it's a rational decision to make that you don't want to spend a bunch of money investing in a coal-fired power plant if, for all you know, eight years from now, they're going to come out and say this is illegal,
00:57:49.320or they're going to put in place such a punitive carbon tax that it's no longer profitable to run.
00:57:53.840So you can see why they would get out of that.
00:57:56.540And that's partly what you see is, too, the contribution to the energy mix coming from coal is way down in various jurisdictions.
00:58:05.560And again, that's just because they read the writing on the wall and they know it would be foolish for us to invest in this.
00:58:11.680Yeah. So getting another aspect of things, too, we saw that from Minister Reagan the other day was labor, a shortage of skilled labor.
00:58:19.240We're like, if we do want to ramp it up, we're also down on a lot of energy related labor.
00:58:23.900I mean, they've been told for years, get out of this.
00:58:36.020So this a lot of this, I think, is you can interpret it as sort of like the chickens coming home to roost, that things that have been in place for years are now finally rearing their ugly head.
00:58:44.620And that it's, as you say, so yes, up till now, we've been focusing on this conversation on like the physical capital that, hey, if you haven't been building the pipelines, if you haven't been developing the, you know, the oil wells and things like that, that then it's hard just to turn on a dime and say, oh, because the supplies from Europe are low, you know, now we need to ramp up or the Canadian context.
00:59:04.280now because the european exports are in trouble like you know canada can fill the gap it's hard
00:59:09.560just to turn that on on a dime but you're right there's the human element as well that if you
00:59:13.440were somebody a 20 year old going into engineering of some form that yeah you would have also thought
00:59:20.180oh the wave of the future i want to get into the renewable sector because that seems to be
00:59:24.340promising and that's where the future lies you wouldn't necessarily be going into these old
00:59:29.060what you think are now obsolete technology so yeah at this point if we need more of that there's
00:59:33.980there's a shortage yeah so i mean we know that the problem is kind of acute and we seem to be on a
00:59:39.180similar trajectory to europe right now and we got another winter approaching in a few months like
00:59:44.140what where are the solutions though what can we do conceivably to ease this if we could coax the
00:59:49.020government want to address it so i mean the i think the obvious thing would be to rethink the
00:59:54.860policies that you know canada that the federal and provincial levels depending on which province
00:59:59.340we're talking about has that are quite analogous to what they had in europe so clearly um you know
01:00:05.260i and we've written a fraser institute on this more like the federal carbon tax for one thing
01:00:10.860even if you stipulated you know the conventional theory about externalities and how you need to
01:00:17.100have a tax in place to get um firms and consumers to take into account their greenhouse gas emissions
01:00:22.300and the effect it has even so the canadian version of that is much higher in terms of you know where
01:00:28.780it's projected to go by 2030 than what the conventional estimates are of the of the impact
01:00:32.940of a marginal ton of emissions so that's clearly not calibrated at the right level so at the very
01:00:38.140least you'd want to rethink that policy and then just more generally uh the hostility to conventional
01:00:46.060oil and gas development you know again that has a chilling effect on investment so i think
01:00:50.380policy makers should clarify and say look at if we recognize this is an important part of the
01:00:55.100the energy mix, then we're not going to take actions down the road to penalize this. And so
01:00:59.980investors can be assured that if they go ahead and build something, that they'll be able to
01:01:05.100recoup their investment. Yeah. Well, that hostility, a lot of it has more ideological
01:01:10.140underpinnings than legislative, I guess you could say, or policy. I guess I'm asking you to get a
01:01:16.640bit speculative. Do you think there's much chance of this government wanting to bend on a bit of
01:01:20.380that? I mean, again, I can engage in the cold hard analysis here. You're right. But right. I am
01:01:29.260doubtful. It's partly too, because, you know, certain political officials, if they made a
01:01:34.960career out of certain types of right, it would be hard for them to turn on a dime. And, but, you
01:01:39.020know, there always is sometimes there is a case where when something really is a crisis situation
01:01:44.600that they are willing to rethink and to realize, okay, maybe our plans before a bit too aggressive
01:01:49.800And, you know, what we're trying to do right now is too painful to our constituents.
01:01:53.740So, yeah, there is room for that. And I think both sides should be forgiving.
01:01:59.700You know what I mean? Like if some side is willing to sort of make concessions and realize, OK, maybe what we've been trying to do is too aggressive and it's having unintended consequences,
01:02:06.940then the other side should welcome that and not say, oh, but this is all your fault that, you know, say, OK, well, thank you for seeing the light finally.
01:02:14.900Yeah, well, there are some pragmatic people in government, even if it doesn't feel like it at
01:02:18.020times. And I'm sure they're hearing from their constituents, you know, they're having trouble
01:02:20.900paying the rent, having trouble getting to work or paying the utility bills that, you know,
01:02:25.200something's got to ease. So maybe they'll be more receptive to reevaluating, I guess,
01:02:28.880the way the policy has been. Yeah. And I would say, too, just, you know, I'm in the U.S. and
01:02:33.800Canada, and I see the difference in the debates there. And in the U.S., it does tend to be more
01:02:38.440ideological, whereas in Canada, there's more of an emphasis on the actual data that, you know,
01:02:43.440the Canadians seem, at least relative to the American political debate, it's more pragmatic.
01:02:48.720Like, is this working or not? And if it's not working, then we need to rethink this.
01:02:53.300Yeah, well, and I appreciate that. And, you know, with what you put together,
01:02:56.620because it's saying, can Canada avoid it? I mean, you know, you're saying there's room to
01:03:00.140avoid this crisis. We might be moving towards it. But if we pay attention, perhaps, and use the data
01:03:04.640and look ahead, we don't have to suffer quite the energy price shocks that they did.
01:03:09.800Yeah, so that's definitely, yeah, it's not a doomsaying document.
01:13:50.140And the end of that cycle is recession every time.
01:13:54.180Because yes, the Bank of Canada will, if they raise interest rates enough, the economy will
01:13:58.820cool down enough that inflation goes down. But the reason is because nobody's got any money to spend.
01:14:03.440You won't buy a house. You won't buy a car. You won't do these things because you can't afford
01:14:07.120to. The interest rates are too high. Or businesses, they stopped doing capital expansions and things
01:14:12.000like that because again, they needed to finance for that and the interest rates are too high.
01:14:16.120Plus the government paying on all their federal debt, those interest rates get too high. So yeah,
01:14:20.500it'll work. It'll slow down inflation, but at quite a cost. And again, it's because you've
01:14:28.000got a government that's incompetent. Yeah. Buying and shelving millions of COVID tests. And0.92
01:14:32.880this is one of the many, many things they're wasting our money on to no good purpose.
01:14:38.500Let's see here. Here's some brilliance. Yeah. Speaking of government agencies spending money.
01:14:44.340So this was a poll done, I guess, or a survey by Elections Canada, our electoral masters there, the ones who manage things like that, and asked people, they found that winning candidates in elections were more likely to have asked for their votes in person.
01:15:00.900Yeah, so they did this study to find out what every political campaign has known for the last 300 years.
01:15:09.240Your best chance of getting somebody's vote is having the candidate speak one-on-one with the person.