Shaun Newman Podcast - #1055 - Kris Sims

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Kris Sims is a Canadian journalist, commentator, and prominent taxpayer advocate who currently serves as the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). Her career spans radio hosting and producing on Vancouver Island, legislative work on Parliament Hill, reporting and anchoring at News Talk Radio 580 CFRA, parliamentary journalism for CTV, and as a founding reporter for Sun News Network, where she focused on fiscal issues, personal liberty, and rural Canada. Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Expat MoneyExpatmoney.com/SNPGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast. Folks, happy Thursday. How's everybody doing today? The weekend looks like it's going to be junk. Just throwing that out there. Hopefully wherever you're at, you got some good weather.

It's beautiful as I'm recording this. and it's looking like we might see some white stuff on the weekend. I don't even like talking about it. I know it's going to be gone soon enough, but it'd be nice if it just smoothed up, you know? I don't know. Silver gold bull. We're talking precious metals.

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Yeah, we are closing in on July 5th, real fast. And, you know, I don't know. I don't have a whole lot to report on the trip other than it is happening. And I think the family is getting more and more excited about it every day, although the youngest keeps asking about when we're going fishing. I don't think he's fully got a clue on what's about to take hold

or, you know, or happen. And for those of you who are just tuning in and haven't heard, we're leaving July 5th for a year going across Canada, the United States, and a few places internationally, or further out, I should say. And the family's coming with. We're going to be homeschooling. and it's going to be an interesting year of hopefully getting in front of lots of these guests in person and trying to sit down with them and we'll see where that takes us. I'm excited for it, excited to bring you guys along for the ride as the podcast will be here just like it was before or is today. And it'll just be from different parts of the world and starting going across Canada. So excited to get on the road and start experiencing that. Now, if you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, substack,

feel for you to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to share with a friend. And, yeah, leave a review at the top. You know, you get a chance to rate it, take the 10 seconds, go up, leave a review. It helps me, you know, on all these different charts. Although, you know, it was Harim. Harim, why am I spacing on his name, right?

now. I'm flipping through my Hakeem, not Hareem. Come on, Sean. If you listen to yesterday's interview with Hakeem Anwar, some interesting thoughts there. And yeah, his above phone, interesting thought as well. A few different people had reached out. There is a link that can get you $50 off it if you're interested. So shoot me a text and I can forward that on to you or go on the substack underneath his episode. The link was posted there as well. So if you're interested in getting away from big tech, that's one to contemplate, I would say.

All right. Let's get on to today's episode and the tale of the tape. Today's guest is the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm talking about Chris Sims. So buckle up. Here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Chris Sims.

Chris, great to see you again. So good to see you. could give you a hug in your real studio. Well, you know what? You've already said yes, and I guess this is a little insight for all the audience. They already know I'm leaving July 5th, but one of the people I'm hoping to run into an Alberta is Chris Sims. She's on the docket of hopefully some people we're going to track down and start to, you know, over the next year, have a little more sit down one-on-one in person. Obviously, we've got to do that here in Lloyd Minster. But yeah, I don't know. I should

throw this at you. You're a long time journalist, right? Like you go way back. One of the things when we were putting together this idea is I'm like, you know, like when I look at some of the greats, they just have such world experience. They go to different places. They see it. And then on top of that, they talk to a lot of people in person. Like, you know, like in today's age, everything's done online. But some of the grades that I follow, a lot of it is done in person. And There's just obviously something different when you're talking to the person across from you instead of through a screen. Yeah, big time, big time. So if we can actually connect while you're here in Lethbridge, I would love that.

We could maybe, let's book the private room at IHOP. That'd be super fun. And then we can interview there. Where did you interview Chris Sims? IHop. Yeah, we got a stack of pancakes and then we did an interview on taxes. Pancakes and politics, man. That's a good spin-off show.

Well, let's get into it. You know, like I was actually just interviewed by Mikkel Thorup down in Panama, right? And so like this, I mean, we just literally sat and he was asking about all the things in Canada. And he was like, well, we could go back like a year. And I'm like a year. Man, we just got to look at like the last two weeks. I mean, this year alone has been insane. You don't have to go that far.

Let's start with the sovereign wealth fund. Let's start there. Okay. Lots of people have coined the sovereign debt fund. but I'm going to let you have your way with it, Chris, and we'll see where we get to. Awesome. So for folks who follow financial news, like they might pick up on Bloomberg, right? They hear stuff like that. The term sovereign wealth fund probably rings a bell in your head. And it's a good bell because it is Norway's sovereign wealth fund. And this is why I am super, super

ticked at Prime Minister Mark Carney right now because he knows full well what he was doing. He's in the financial circles all the time. So Norway's sovereign wealth fund is truly a wealth fund. It has between two and three trillion dollars, US, in the black, just socked away into this savings account. So they built that up over many years because of their natural resource extraction. Amazing. They're not dumb with their natural resources. Who to thunk it?

And this is where it gets really cool, Sean. is that they don't touch the principle. They only spend and invest the interest. And here's a really interesting kick. The term sovereign means two things in Norway's case. One, they want it to be for future generations of the nation. But two, they only invest the interest outside of Norway. They can't do it inside of Norway.

Now at first, it sounds a little weird, but here's why. It's so politicians can't pork bear. with this money. They can't promise a chicken in every pot and use up the wealth fund money during every single election cycle. No, they have to look overseas where they've got no interests, right? No conflicts, no votes to gain and actually invest it into profitable things. And that makes a big return. It helps Norwegians. So Carnies coining the phrase of sovereign wealth fund, like invoking that term, it's. It's Orwellian. It's Orwellian in Canada's case, because what he has done is it's not wealth.

He took out a $25 billion loan. He added $25 billion dollars loan. He added $25 billion bucks onto our national debt and stuck it in a fund. And it's only going to be used within the confines of Canada. So just wait for the corporate welfare bombs to line up here. Sean, this would be like, let's do like human equivalent. So we're not talking billions. Say you went out and grabbed a credit card and you took out $25,000 cash on the thing. And then you stuck it in a savings account. And then you come home to your wife, honey, we have a wealth fund.

That's what Carney's done. Yeah, I was saying to you before we started, if I got $25 billion that I just like, I took a loan to get $25 billion, putting in a business. bank account. I know this is probably not how it works, but I'm like, I'd probably find a way to siphon off. Well, I don't know. Out of billion, is 100 million going to be noticed? Whatever the number is. And then Sean just disappears. I'm just, I'm just gone because I'm like, okay, so you're going to, you're going to get interest on that, but you still have to pay the interest on that. I'm like, I can't actually get my brain around this thought process. And then when you bring up Norway,

in the fact they have to invest outside the country. That seems quite like common sense or smart, maybe both. Yeah. This doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like it's got anything, you know, it's got the name. It's got the Southern wealth fund. Sure, it sounds like it. But other than that, it doesn't sound like a whole lot's going on there.

No, it's a welfare fund. And this is what's getting me right now. There's like a three-headed monster with this going on. So we've got the sovereign wealth fund and that's when it clicked for me. I'm like, I see what he's doing? So hear me out. Remember the, what is it, the major projects office that Prime Minister Mark Carney announced? So we have the major projects office.

Then we have the MOU memorandum of understanding, which is basically a pinky square, you know, paper promise of maybe a future pipeline consideration. In exchange, oh, and to be fair, lifting the emissions caps. slash production cap in exchange for a massively punishing industrial carbon tax, which Alberta should not go along with. So, so far, we've got the major projects office. We've got the MOU just promised. And now we have the so-called sovereign wealth fund, which will be a corporate welfare slash fund. If you combine those three things, I'm worried that Carney is going to use the MOU and the major projects office as cover to spend taxpayers' money on some attempt at a pipeline someday. And that taxpayer's money is going to come out of the sovereign wealth fund.

So it's like he's playing one of those like shell games, but there's a marble under every shell and how he's moving stuff around. I hope I'm wrong, but I've read his book a couple times, and that's where I see these things going here. The, forgive me, give me the name again of the group, the project lead on this. On for the sovereign wealth fund? Not the sovereign wealth fund for building projects in Canada. You said three things. Oh, pathways, yeah.

Are they the ones that get control? Like, who has control of the sovereign wealth fund and deciding where that money goes? Federal government. This is a federal government thing. So we already have the Investment Bank of Canada, okay, which is already a huge corporate welfare slush fund. We already have just, you know, the federal government that hands out money willy-nilly whenever it wants to. But no, this is not some separate, completely separate group of financial wizards who are bringing in private money or even resource money, like take royalties

or something and then reinvesting it outside of Canada or into good money-making projects. No, this is none of these things. With the $25 billion, are they, I don't know if I, like, I remember the announcement. I remember listening to them talk about it. Are they leaving it there for 10 years or are they spending it immediately? It just sounds like it's a new label on the same old corporate welfare bucket. It sounds like they're just going to spend it immediately. So it's different.

I don't want people like confusing this with the real thing we have here in Alberta, which is the heritage fund, which is great. like here, I've been criticizing Premier Daniel Smith a little bit here, but kudos to her for protecting the Heritage Fund. I'm really glad that she's doing that. She's obviously done our homework. If we keep on investing in that and protecting the principal, we'll have a big nest egg years down the road, similar to Alaska's. But that's completely separate from what Mark Carney just announced in Ottawa. So if the federal government has, okay, so they create the sovereign wealth fund, which is $25 billion, which then they get to dole out, which is why even create the fund

if you're just going to spend the same amount of money? Like you have the $25 billion already. You're going to create a whole bunch of legal framework, which means there's money being spent on getting it to be in this little shell. Yep. And then you have control of it anyways. So are they just freeing it up from something

that I can't possibly imagine? You get a big, beautiful parliamentary press gallery press conference out of the deal this way. And he gets to say, building faster than any generation since the Second World War. And everybody claps. And the term sovereign wealth fund, this is, this is, call me cynical. But the term sovereign wealth fund got bounced around real hard. It was like a racquetball court for like a week. He got tons of good press over it, as long as you don't read past the headline. But that term got bounced around a lot. And he again is lauded as a financial genius. I will point out, and here's my reason why, I'm skeptical about all of this, just being noise that wastes our money.

I had Pierre Pollyov on my show a few weeks ago, and we talked about a ton of stuff, went over like half an hour stuff, and he committed to recall legislation at the federal level, which would be enormous. So if he formed government, he would have recall legislation at the federal level, which means we could fire a MPs between elections. As we see here in Alberta, there's a lot more accountability within government. And that's because we can fire their butts between elections. Imagine having that power federally. So that was, in my opinion, big news. Like for all people, all taxpayers, no matter what your ideology is. And then later on in the interview, I mentioned the usual line that you and me and Franco say quite often because of Carney's overspending. Because of his terrible deficits, because of his terrible budgets, I said the old line of who to thunk,

that the guy with a PhD in economics from Oxford is worse with money than the former part-time drama teacher being Trudeau. Because, yeah, Carney is planning on adding more to the debt than Trudeau. Like, period. That's just what the math is. And Pollyov agreed with me and basically said, yeah, like here's a sign of bad, bad education, basically. Sean, the parliamentary press gallery got them in such a twist over that term, how dare you criticize the prime minister's education? Like, what kind of

rube are you? Like, out of that entire half hour. And they just, they went on it. I'm serious for like four days. Chris, we're all just a bunch of rubs. I know. Sorry, I should wipe my boots at the door. But see, this is why. You ask me why bother doing this? So he can have a press conference and everybody gets to murmur of how intelligent he is over his sovereign wealth fund. When it's not sovereign. It's no wealth and it's not a fund. It's just a black hole. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the industrial carbon tax. Um, you know, like Carney gets elected, then removes the carbon tax, not permanently as I understand it, right? It's just kind of zero and it's just kind of sitting there dormant, if you would. But then the industrial carbon tax is still talked about,

like all the time and nobody's piecing that together or maybe it's harder to piece together because people don't see it immediately. Yes. So a few things. Yes, the consumer carbon tax isn't there anymore. That's why initially when he got rid of it, we saw about 20 cents per liter fall off at the gas pumps. That's why. And then also on your heating bill or your electricity bill if you use natural gas for power, that line item isn't going to be there anymore. It won't say, fed carbon tax or whatever it used to say. So yes, that part's true. But to your point exactly, Carney is a huge fan, like a super fan of carbon taxes. And one of the ways that he's going to carbon tax us is the industrial carbon tax. Now, yes, technically, for a long time now in Alberta,

we have had the tier program, which people have told me was basically a carbon credit. trading thing that the corporations did amongst each other within the oil sands, yada, yada, yada. We did warn the provincial government of Alberta saying, you shouldn't have anything resembling a carbon tax because you are going to give the federal government permission to push the door open and impose a carbon tax on you or force you to agree to one. We did warn them years ago, but here we are. So now what's happening, Sean, is that this MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding that Carney flew out to Alberta to sign with Premier Smith back in November, includes a $130 per tonne industrial carbon tax. So what does that mean? Well, in Alberta, our industrial carbon tax is supposed to be frozen at about $90 a ton.

Carney hates that. He doesn't like that. And so he announced that it's going to be six times higher. That's one thing. So the six times higher thing should send a chill down everybody's spine. But two, this part's really freaky. He's mentioned a few times now that actually the real market carbon tax is very low, too low, in fact. So low, beyond low.

All those other carbon taxes, losers. It's way too low. And so what he's saying is he wants to bring the base price, like the enforced you will pay this base price, up to $130 a ton. That's alarming. And the reason why we're taking it so seriously is because actually oil and gas companies are taking this seriously now. And that might sound weird of like, well, of course oil and gas companies would oppose the carbon tax. Actually, no, they haven't been super helpful on carbon tax fights. In fact, when former NDP Premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley announced her surprise, consumer

provincial carbon tax in Alberta, the oil and gas company executives were on stage with her, like clapping and kissing babies and stuff. So they've gone along with this nonsense before. But now, miraculously, and thankfully, I'm so glad they're speaking up, like good for them, okay the CEOs of big companies like synovis are saying um i'm paraphrasing you're going to price us out of the market here like with these industrial carbon taxes and all your complicated carbon uh capture stuff and your net zero stuff like you're basically going to make it unaffordable for us to produce a barrel of oil for the market and also jack mince a long time well-respected economist he's saying that the combination

of this industrial carbon tax on Alberta and the complicated carbon storage thing, he's saying it could add like $8, maybe $10, US per barrel to the production cost of a barrel of oil. And any, like your viewers and listeners know this better than me, you start adding that kind of production cost into something that's on the market and you're going to make it unaffordable.

So like completely non-ideological. This is probably a terrible example. example. But I remember being back in high school and doing math. And then, you know, as you get higher in the, you know, as you're into like probably grade 11 or 12, you get into imaginary numbers and it. And, and for some kids, they get it. And for a lot of us, we're like, the hell is this? Who cares about an imaginary number? I'm dealing in the real world. Why am I timesing the alphabet, Sean? I know. Right. Like so now, now you're talking about like, well, we're going to, you know, they got these different carbon offsets and they're going to build that and they're going to do that. And, this has real world implications that's probably why it's a poor example imaginary numbers it's like okay whatever but it turns a lot of people off math as they go on like what the heck are we even doing anymore right i don't even get it anymore right like what do you actually need you need to know what two plus two is and i mean there's more to to that i'm oversimplifying it but like the real world complications of this is if you take eight to ten dollars per barrel i mean

that's going to do some real harm to the industry. And I've seen the CEO of Sinovus was just last week, him coming out with his letter. And there's been more, which is great. But it's whether or not it's actually going to have any impact because it's just, you know, everybody's seeing the longer this goes on, the more frustration that happens specifically in Alberta. But then you're starting to see more and more people, I'm just out. I just can't do this anymore. I don't know what Canada is doing.

We're just like we can't get out of our own way or we won't get out of our own way. And you have a leader in Carney who maybe talks in a more mature manner than Trudeau ever did. But everything we follow on me, you're like, well, that ain't good. But that sounds nice, but it ain't good. And it just keeps getting more bizarre or worse as we go along. It is. You're right. I think Carney is kind of like, it's almost like he has a cloaking device after the absolute

dumpster fire of governance that was Justin Trudeau. I mean, Mark Carney when he's on the world stage, isn't pointing at his socks to grown men, like on camera in earnest. So it's just like, I know that, you know, that's better, but that's a really low bar. Our leadership bar was so low, him being even just by the visual an inch higher, even if all the policies and everything else are far worse, people see that and go, he's doing a great job. Yeah, yeah.

And it's kind of like a relief of like, it's as if, you know, your sock has suddenly gotten too tight and you finally take it off. It's like, ah, you know, your foot's no longer asleep. I think that's kind of what Canada's been going through the past year of like, oh, well, at least it's not that other guy. But my goodness, the policies, we have got to pay attention to this. Can I get into real quick

on the dead interest, man? Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Okay. Like you even have to ask Chris. Fire away. Well, I just want to, it is a bit of a shift from industrial carbon. Like you realize, you realize how many people are going to text me tomorrow going Chris Sims is back on hearts and you got a lot of

people that enjoy when you come on, Chris. Means a lot to me. Thank you. In fact, a lady at the restaurant last night who was my husband and I's 25th anniversary. Hey, congrats. Thank you. She recognized me and she said that she watched me on your show and you haven't been on very recently and then you texted me so it's perfect today. So very quick last thing on the industrial carbon tax because we're waiting on the MOU details

apparently announced this Friday. We'll see. I've just cards on the table. I personally really like Daniel Smith. I've known her for like 20 years. I know she's very popular. I know that she's doing important things. But I've just got to flag this for her as premier. Like the industrial carbon tax is a no-go. She should not go for it. Like, don't trust Ottawa on this. Like, do what Premier Scott Moe's doing in Saskatchewan, where he's like, nope, we're a carbon tax-free zone. Come at me. Come at me. Come, come arrest me. Basically is what he said. Like, Premier Smith should be on that same footing because otherwise, I'm just scared it's going to be that old, you know, Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown again. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this

announcement's going to be great. There isn't going to be an industrial carbon tax. They're going to lift the production cap and I'll look like an idiot. I'll have to look like an idiot. And maybe pigs are going to fly. Yeah. I sure. It's possible. Yeah, there it is. Okay. There's my flying pig. Okay. So I wanted to just drill down quickly on the debt interest if you don't mind because we had the spring update, which was kind of like a mini budget update that happened a little while ago. And again, I don't know how he manages this. It's like he throws a smoke bomb and all the media falls asleep and they sing the same songbook. He got praise of being a good carney got praise of being a good fiscal manager. No, no. Like he, from the fall budget that he released to just this, the other day, the spring update,

he's outspending his own projections already by $6.5 billion. dollars. The deficit itself, just for the fiscal year, is $65 billion. Like, I'm old enough to remember when Christopher Lund was finance minister and the narrative that went through Ottawa was, oh, she's resigning in protest because they've eclipsed the $60 billion guardrail, as if that's a good guardrail for a deficit. And now we're at $65 billion and everybody's applauding. Like, I feel like I'm on crazy pills. The point here is that they're adding all this to the debt. And by the end of this fiscal year, we're going to have a debt of $1.4 trillion. To put that into perspective, the interest alone that we're paying on this debt is more

than we spend at the Department of National Defense, like including the procurement. The interest alone on it is more than our sovereign wealth fund. It is. I know in Coriablo, right? So this is nuts. And I did the math. So it's around $57, 58 billion dollars with a B per year, per year. So it's double the sovereign wealth fund. Every year.

This is nut. This is nutty. So I actually, this is grim and people sit down because it was, I made me almost cry. I sat there and did the math for just the interest that we're paying on this. credit card. We could otherwise pay for the annual groceries of more than three and a half million Canadian families. Yeah, families of four, full on, full groceries paid for for a year, three and a half million Canadian families could have the grocery bills paid for what we're paying on the debt. Sorry, man. I'm curious, I didn't bring this up with you before,

but it just popped into my brain and you being the numbers lady. I go, had retired lieutenant colonel David Redmond on with Sam Cooper. I forget. Now, is that a week ago, folks? Is that two weeks ago? And they were talking about, you know, like how bad, you know, and how bad cand is and how corrupt it is. And both of them agreed that the liberal government right now is allowing all this to go on.

And one of the things that David Redden was talking about was Kuzma and how he's like, they're going to find a way out of this. July 1st, they're going to find a way. And if they can't find a way, what they're going to do is they're going to tariff every Canadian good, like hundreds of percent. Playing that theory out, if that were to happen, what would happen in Canada? That's a good question. So that would be bad, man.

like I'm just picturing what goes across our border every day. Now, not all of it is subject to Kuzma, of course. But just to give people an indication of how valuable our relationship with the United States of America is, we do cross-border trade with them to the tune of $3 billion per day. Like per day. I saw the prime minister's office release and news release about 10 days ago or so saying, oh, we celebrate our new trade agreement with Luxembourg or some nonsense. Like we do the amount of our Luxembourgian trade with the United States in like 15 minutes.

Like it's not even close. So for them to not be making an honest, earnest effort to renegotiate what is essentially a free trade deal with United States is madness. because if we start getting into another tariff war, tariffs are trade taxes. Like Ben Shapiro is right about that. They're just trade taxes. So that means that our stuff's going to be more expensive for them to buy and their stuff's going to be more expensive for ours.

That also means they're probably going to get into a big hairy fight again over auto manufacturing. Southern Ontario will be like shaking at that. Like this is such a mess, Sean. And just, you know, obviously I have my own opinions on it. I was raised in the 80s watching Reagan speeches. So, you know, that's a personal thing. But if you just look at the cost alone, the very idea that they would purposefully scuttle this ship,

it makes no mathematical sense, like at all. And if people want to get ticked off on how much money we're wasting on this, we pay deputy ministers and like high-ranking bureaucrats who are in these departments, $300,000 $400,000 per year, plus all of their staff, plus the, you know, Global Affairs Department Minister,

plus the Minister of Trade, like, picture all of these, like, paychecks going to them of between $300,000 and $400,000 per year, plus the Prime Minister, plus all of our diplomats down in Washington. Like, they have one job. One job.

And that's to keep this talk happening into actually ink a deal and save everybody money. I'm not seeing it. I'm seeing a high school level amount of insults being traded. It's crazy. I'll give you an example. And this might be a weird example. I don't know if you followed it all, King Charles III's visit to Washington. But a little bit. So he made a move there. And this is, I'm not speaking on the taxpayers' perspective, just as a human being who observes politics and human nature. He went to, he went to. He went to, he made a move there. He's, he officially to the state dinner with U.S. President Trump and his wife. And he gifted Trump a tiny bell about this big that was from the USS Trump, which was a submarine during the Second World War.

And apparently there was a lot of, you know, stories around the submarine. It was a big deal. His name's on it because it was called, you know, USS Trump. And as a gesture of goodwill, gave it to him. They said very nice speeches. And apparently the next day, Trump dropped all the tariffs on all their whiskey and their booze. Like, that's what, that's what diplomats are supposed to do. They're supposed to get in there, wade into the personalities in the room, you know, kiss some babies and shake some hands and smooth some ruffled feathers and get deals done. Like, but we're not seeing that. And I'm just really worried about Canadian. because if we get into a tariff war, tariffs are trade taxes. And we're already taxed to death. And they're our number one trade partner, which means some way, shape, or form that is going to affect us all. By a Jupiter country mile, they are our number one trade partner. Three billion

dollars a day in cross-border trade. Let's switch to the CBC. This whole, this whole, I don't, You walk me through the story because like I've, I kind of understand it, but I'm, I still scratching my head a little bit on it. I'm like, you tell it. And then maybe I'll have an intelligent call or an intelligent question to ask after you're done because I'm like, I just don't get it, but maybe I should. Okay. So details are still coming out as of tape time.

So, you know, forgive me if there are some asterisks on these points. But Lindsay Shepherd is a young woman. People might remember her name. She became kind of a household name within the Freedom Movement when she, how do I put this? Was grilled by her academic board that was at her university because she dared use a clip in class of Dr. Jordan Peterson. And it was from TVO, like TV Ontario. Like it couldn't have been a more mainstream clip, okay? Like government taxpayer funded TV.

And then they just witch hunted her. So that's where she became prominent. She now works, I don't know her well, but she works within conservative circles based out of British Columbia. And the story goes, we do know that she wrote a children's book on Sir Johnny McDonald, our first prime minister of Canada. He's like our version of George Washington, if you're looking at this from an American perspective. She wrote a kid's book.

I think it's called A Day with Sir John A. I don't have it yet, but I will. And so she had this product. Now, the story goes based on what I'm reading, because I haven't talked to Lindsay about this directly, is that she was contacted by what looked to be a media company, like a publishing company, saying, oh, we'd like to promote your book. There are some toy lines that we can farm this out to to have Sir John A Toys, that kind of thing. We'd like to conduct an interview. We have an entire production team, yada, yada, yada. Basically, what Lindsay Shepard is saying is that there were, months of like back and forth emails amongst multiple people, all claiming to be a host or a producer or something like that, right? It was supposed to be a production, camera people. And then it turns out that it was fake. Like none of it was true. And this was supposed to be a big, weird, spoofy joke. And now, allegedly, this fake group is somehow tied to the CBC.

like that's what got my blood boiling because it's one thing to say okay well you've got some tricksters around here that are going to try to pull spoofs and pranks that sort of thing I'll let the lawyers who deal with you know free expression argue about that but to use if you're using taxpayers money to pull this nonsense like that is completely out of line completely off base now we have to find out if taxpayers money was spent on this. We don't know yet. We're asking some pretty serious questions, as you can imagine. But if they did, if the CBC spent money on trying to trick Lindsay Shepard into an interview that they thought was going to get her or be embarrassing or

smear her or something, there's some explaining to do, Sean, because the CBC goes on committee whenever they can and they cry poor. They say, oh, we're terribly underfunded. We're just starving for money. They get like $1.4 billion from us every year. And then they'll say something like, oh, we're just essential to, you know, the character of Canada. Meanwhile, their ratings. Their ratings are microscopic.

Like, 96% of Canadians are choosing to watch something else. And if it's the news's case, it's like 98% of Canadians are choosing to watch something else other than CBC News. but if they're spending money on this like people should be like super outraged about this even frankly defenders of the CBC should be super ticked off

if they're wasting money on this nonsense yeah it seems like just I always go back to COVID times and I remember thinking it I'm like as I'm riding in the Freedom Comboy and I'm sitting there and saying I'm like man a guy should just turn on his camera and literally just

And there were people who did this, right? And just live streamed the entire thing. Yep. I mean, it's, you'd have, their ratings would have went through the roof. And don't you know that, and I'm speaking more to the audience than anything, because I know Chris knows, there's tons of people who started their journal, journalistic career off just being at the freedom convoy. And just by pulling out their camera and being like, this is what I'm seeing, like, you know,

I don't know what everybody else is see, but this is what I'm seeing. And that's how we all decided that this may. make sense. I remember sitting in Ottawa, I'm watching what Ottawa was saying. I'm like, man, this is, this is hard on my brain. I don't even know how to unpackage the two, what they're showing and what I'm actually seeing. It doesn't even resemble each other. And then you fast forward to 2026. And the idea that as journalists, right, I mean, that's what the CBC is, go, go, well, yes, we're going to have gotcha moments and we're going to create these a I don't even know.

Ruses. Ruses? Is that the word? Like, is this journalism in 2026? Is that where we're at? If they spent taxpayers money on it, it's a massive waste of money. And I'll get into the journalism thing here. I've been a journalist most of my adult life.

I graduated journalism school in the 1990s. So been at it for a long time. I worked on Parliament Hill. I was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery for many, many years, full-time member. I no longer am right now. But journalists, we're supposed to speak truth to power. Like one of the lines that we often use in the industry is our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. You cannot speak truth to power if you are or hold a powerful government to account. If you're counting on that government for your paycheck,

like it's just not going to happen. Even having to point this out as a conflict of interest is kind of embarrassing. It's like so obvious. It's like having to remind somebody to put on pants before they leave the house. Like you guys should know this by now. So the CBC, I wouldn't call it journalism. It's just state-funded media. Because even like if this were an independent podcast that I was having a conversation with

and you were really left wing and you didn't take government money, I would still respect you as a journalist because you're independent of government. That's the point here, folks, is a free press is free from government. So the CBC is just a wing of the government. Just because they have cameras and microphones instead of desks and wear suits doesn't make them a free press. They're the opposite of that. What's super disturbing is now increasingly massive amounts of our mainstream media are counting on government handouts. They're going to government for money.

Now, when I worked at the Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa, it would have been unthinkable. For my private media company I worked for at the time to take a nickel from the government. It would have been laughed at as an obvious conflict of interest. And here we see this ridiculousness. Again, we're asking some serious questions. I saw Andrew Lawton, now a member of parliament, formerly there with True North. I saw Rachel Thomas, who's my member of parliament, Erin Gunn, long-time documentary maker, who is now an MP. They're all going after this pretty sharp tooth because they want to find out if taxpayers' money was spent.

Because if this was a CBC production, our money was spent. our money was spent doing this nonsense. Well, Andrew Lotton and Aaron Gunn would be two that would know the ins and outs of what's going on there, right? Like they'd be in a position to actually ask the right questions. Yep. Because of their background and what they did before. And where they are now as MPs. So they can put an order paper question right in the House of Commons on the floor.

They can, they don't have the power that they used to at committee because now the liberals have a majority. Walk me through this. Okay, my thought, the last time I think we talked. I was telling you, John. I was like, I'm pretty sure if I understand the Canadian government, now that they have a majority, what they need to do is prologue the government, and that resets committees. Well, hold my beer, says the liberals, because they found a way to rejig committees while. I didn't think that was possible. So what?

Tell me how they did this. because I didn't think they could do this. And obviously something in my research, I missed something. No, you didn't miss something. How do I put this? What we're taught in social studies is technically correct, but it isn't how Ottawa actually works. Okay.

So I know this sounds weird. Okay. So we're taught to correct me if I'm wrong, because it's been a while since I've been in grade eight social studies. But last I checked, they're still teaching that your member of parliament is elected by a riding and they are there to represent the concerns of the constituents within their riding period yeah except they have a party whip like that's literally the name of the position party whip to whip people into line of the party vote

so we have a party system it isn't just independent direct democracy of like one vote, you know, per MP based on what the writing says, da-da-da-da. So yeah, you can do a prerogation to reset committee, but if you have a majority government in Canada, you are one of the most powerful forces within what people would call the Western world. You appoint Supreme Court judges. You appoint with consultation with the king, the governor general who is our de facto head of state,

a representative head of state. Who's a 79 year old lady now? Yeah. You appoint judges across different provinces. Like you, and you have power over committee. And if you bring up any bill you want, you got a majority.

That means that even if all of the opposition parties in the House of Commons all ganged up, wouldn't matter. because the governing liberals or whoever the party is, the government has the majority. So I'm sorry, but they can kind of do what they want. They've got very much, they've got a lot of power. And now what we're seeing shape up with the changing of committees,

and this is what I'm hearing from Ottawa. I don't know if it's all become official yet, but they're rejigging the committees so that they have the majority in all the committees too. So people might have noticed. But I thought the only, once again, I thought the only way they could do that was by, basically preroging government to rejig committees.

No, I don't think they can just, they can just, hey, we're rejigging the committee, and this is because the government's changed. Such is my understanding. I'll talk for you, man. I've read this, and now correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, you're a heck of a lot longer and more decorated in the old journalism field than I ever am.

Is this the first time in Canadian history that a minority has gone to a majority without an election? I would have to check, but outside of wartime, yeah. And the reason why I'm hedging on wartime is I'm pretty sure this didn't happen in wartime either.

But strange things can happen during wartime. In England, for example, in Great Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously had what would be called a coalition cabinet. Like he invited like, you know, big leaders of labor, and opposition members right into cabinet, like they were integral parts of the wartime government of England,

even though they weren't part of his party. So that's where I'm like, there might be some oddities that happened at that time, but as far as I know, this is the only time it's gone from a majority to a majority due to floor crossing. Which then means my theory on prerogation is like, well, that's probably under normal circumstances. Yeah, up until now. Yeah. Since this doesn't happen, they're like, wait a second.

We can rejig the committees? Oh, we're rejigging them because now we can just do whatever we want. Yeah, because the cake's half baked already. Yeah, great point. Yeah, I'm going to check, but I'm 99% sure that you're right in that case, that this is why they're able to rejig because we haven't been in this sort of a situation before. Now, I've seen floor crossing before. Yeah, but never at this level.

Like, I mean, we've had five floor crossings. then the three by-elections, you know, you go from a minority to a majority. I mean, if you go back to even the Trudeau area, you had the NDP form a coalition, or the Liberals former coalition with the NDP to hold them in while they did atrocious things. And it's just like, it just continues to get worse at this point. Yeah. And see, that's happened before where they've basically had an either formal or informal coalition. That has happened throughout history.

But as far as switching from minority to majority due to floor crossing and then bonuses of by elections, this might be the first time. But I'm going to check, speaking of Sir Johnny McDonald, I'll go back to him and then I'll trace my finger along the timeline and see. But I'm pretty sure that this would be the first time. One final thing on, before I let you out of here, is you brought up Blacklocks and then committee stacking. What did you mean by this?

Yeah. So I love Blacklocks reporter. I'm a super fan. I think we all do. Like, all we don't. and Tom Corsky. Yeah, Tom Corsky, like, I'm like, they do a crazy amount of heavy lifting for two people.

Like, it's just, you think you can't do anything? You know, I'm just one person. And I'm like, and I look at Tom Corsky and Holly Don't. I'm like, watch what Blacklocks does. It's insane. Like, it's insanely cool how much they can do just two people. And I know they got a team there, but, I mean, they're the two that you always see. And I mean, I tried for the audience.

I tried getting Tom to come to the first cornerstone forum. And he told me flat out, no. He never leaves Ottawa and would be say only for a funeral or something else. And I'm like, oh, okay. And so then I was not, well, maybe Holly would leave, right? And Holly told me roughly the same. And I'm like, oh. They're very dedicated to their work.

Very dedicated to what they do. Anyway. I love them. So, yeah, I mentioned them because, of course, they were talking about committee. they were helping with presentations to committee, all of that on the issue of free press, on government-funded media. And so folks who definitely listen and watched your show, they probably noticed over the last two months especially, there were some heavy hitters going to committee.

Like Sheila Gunn-Reed, who's like, you know, part of Rebel News and president of the independent press gallery, right? She was there testifying, swinging for the fences, saying we need to free press and government can't be funding journalists, and that was super important. Franco, Terazano, my colleague federally at the CTF, he was there, just blasting them over the industrial carbon tax, pointing out stuff like, hey, smarty pants, if you have an industrial carbon tax in Hamilton, that doesn't mean that you're going to reduce emissions because steel manufacturing stops. It means they're going to move the mill to Ohio.

Like, same thing for fertilizer plants in Manitoba. They're just going to move it to North Dakota. like why are you chasing jobs at a Canada? So he had a really good presentation. And then a bunch of other folks who I would describe as being part of, you know, the freedom movement or the smaller government movement, they were all giving presentations. And that's because the deadline was looming from when people were expecting them to make changes at the committee. So now if the liberals are able to have the full majorities of committees, they might have already done so. Forgive me.

I haven't checked and done bean counting on each one of the websites. But if they have the majority of the committees, you think they're going to be inviting, you know, the Taxpayers Federation very often, or Blacklock's reporter, or Rebel News, or Jasmine Lane, or any other folks like that to come, give them both barrels, metaphorically speaking, at committee. No, they're going to have, you know, nice, you know, polite little conversations. People also saw Sylvan Chalabwe, the food professor speaking out, right at committee. And that was because it was opposition parties that were calling the shots at committees. And that was great because it's on the record. It's translated. It helps influence bills.

Like it's a big deal to go to committee. And now, unfortunately, when you have a majority government, they just get all the marbles. So they're going to be controlling the narrative. It's going to be pretty tight to be able to try to get in. They're going to controlling the echo chamber. It is. They're going to make sure you don't have any dissident voices. is pointing out the fallacies of their ideas?

Nope. The only place will be in the House of Commons during question period. And when they ask questions on the order paper, so they can ask, like, opposition is going to have, of all parties, are going to have to step it up on how many questions they're asking, if they can, you know, get committees at the whole being physically held in the House of Commons, which you can do. Emergency debates are a good way of being able to speak up.

but that doesn't get the same coverage, right? The parliamentary press gallery doesn't cover emergency debates as closely as they do committee appearances. So it's going to be a bit of tough sledding, I find, for the next little while. But it's time, you know, hey, if you're part of the freedom movement, if you want lower taxes, smaller, more accountable government, just keep stacking them up, man. Keep doing the homework.

Keep doing the reps. Because we are going to have to run the marathon eventually. Chris, appreciate you hopping on and doing this. Any final thoughts before I let you out of here? I just wanted to give people some encouragement. I find quite often we, you, me, all of us can get so dialed into this stuff. I'm worried that, at least speaking personally, I'm worried that when I'm talking about the debt, I'm talking about the interest on the debt, I'm talking about all this wasteful spending and stuff,

that I don't want people getting blackpilled because like this is our life, right? Like you have loved ones, you have family members, like hopefully, Maybe you have a garden, right? Maybe there's a car you like working on. Like every now and then, stop listening to me. Put the phone down. Listen to something else. Listen to something uplifting.

Because we can fix and change things. We can. I promise you we can. Places like Alberta, we have recall legislation at every level of government, meaning we can hold them to account at every level of government, including school boards. We're a lot better off in some cases. than our ancestors were.

I just want to encourage people. That as much as I want people to focus and rally around stuff, don't let this be your whole life to the point where it makes you upset. Make sure you take a break from it and count our blessings. Yeah, well, I know on this side,

I find myself at times getting cynical. And then, you know, obviously you've been a star guest of the mashup with me in twos. I love that so much. And sometimes I roll into a mashup, but I'm like, you know, you expect, I don't know, I think we're up to two, I think is it 208 this week, folks, somewhere around there, 200 plus of them anyways. And I was telling two's at one point, I'm like, no, at some point, I just started laughing and everything. I'm like, it's just, it's so ridiculous.

Like, this is ridiculous. The fact that we have a show where for 200 episodes, you'd think we've been talking about the last 20 years. It's new every week. And every week, you're just like, what are we doing? And a little bit of humor goes a long way. And I know having young kids, like tonight, for instance, I go and coach ball. Nice. You know, and it's good for the soul to get away from politics and like what our government is up to and doing because it is, at times, it's really heavy and dark, you know.

And I'm waiting for the day where something really good comes in. And it happens all the time. But, you know, like, it'd be nice to just like. I don't know. I always point out to Steve Eisenman. It'd be nice if Steve Eisenman ran for prime minister, one, and then sat there and was just like, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. No, that's a terrible idea.

Oh, that'd be awesome. Wouldn't it? Did you get him to, please? Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, his red wings missed the playoffs again. You never know. He's not doing anything. He can come up here, you know?

Our government's not doing anything either. You know, and we want to make it and reduce it by 80% and, like, get rid of our taxes. That would be amazing. I'll put it this way. because I can hear people saying, yeah, but we got to give it to the government. We have to stay eternally vigilant. And what happens if they freeze our bank accounts again? I get it.

I hear you. Okay? That was crazy pants. I understand eternal vigilance. I'm in the same boat. Look at it this way. You living a good life and choosing to laugh about it is an act of defiance. They want to live rent free in your head.

Don't let them. Well, and laughter is the best medicine. And it care, you know, like, you just look at how ridiculous they are. And sometimes you're just like, you're ridiculous. You're like absolutely ridiculous. I'm just going to laugh at this because again, can't get any more absurd. Yet they always find a new level to take it to. That seems to be the Liberal Party of Canada right now.

Although I chuckled when I watched all the NDP videos when Toos was having way too much fun with their convention. And you're just like, this is bizarre land. This is, this is gone somewhere. I can't even like you would write this is something that I feel like a good skit would be made on but it's real life like Monty Python yeah like I don't even know if we can do a better skit than what they just put out like I mean it's you just go watch it and chuckle and go this is bizarre this is from Monty Python except it's Canada 2026 I am trying to get Abby Lewis to talk to me on my show earnestly because you know I think he's a good communicator uh I used to I even went to one of a

show tapings a billion years ago. It was right after 9-11. It was around, goodness, can you picture this is 25 years ago now in Ottawa. And so, and I wanted to talk to him about honestly, I want to get his opinion on the carbon tax because it was his grandfather, David Lewis, who coined the term corporate welfare and corporate welfare bumps. And that's something that we use all the time. So some things do cross, you know, ideological lines. And Jack Layton, the late former leader of the NDP, was opposed to carbon taxes, like vehemently, because he thought it was a tax on life. He was a thought it was a tax on the poor and it was wrong. And that it would chase jobs out of Canada into the United States. And so I'm earnestly curious what a brand new leader in Abby Lewis

thinks about this stuff. So I don't know. You should try to get him on your show. I could try. I could certainly try. It's just going to be so far, but I'll keep asking. Hey, as you know about me, I'll talk to anyone. I'm not, you know, I'm always very curious about what people think, right? You can disagree with a lot of it. But, I mean, he is the leader of a party now. So, I mean, probably behooves people to go listen to what he's saying, although I'll be at the NDP are quite small at this current juncture.

What are they got? Four seats? Yeah, and he doesn't have one. And they're not focused on that right now. They said he's just going to do a cross-candidator. Look at you using the word behooves. It's such a cool word. Thanks for hopping on.

Bye, Sean.