Shaun Newman Podcast - #470 - Franco Terrazzano

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

He is the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and is a former economic policy analyst with the Calgary chamber of commerce. All things Canada, politics and taxes. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Patreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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and a BA in Economics. He's a former economic policy analyst with the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and the current federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm talking about Franco Terrazano. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Franco Tarzano. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Hey, my pleasure. I've heard a lot of great things about your show from my colleague and one of my best friends, Chris Sims. So I'm really pumped to be on here with you. Well, I tell you what, Chris Sims has a special place in my heart. We did, I don't know if she's told you the entire backstory, but I, I subscribe to the

newsletter or whatever because I was like, okay, yeah. And, you know, I did a show in March of this year in Eminton, and it was on media. And about a month and a half before the show, I interviewed this lady named Chris Sims. I was kind of like one of those things like, should I interview this lady? I don't know. That's a pretty good newsletter, but I didn't know who she was. and then I'm sitting there interviewing her just like this and halfway through I'm like oh my god I think this lady needs to be on the stage

in emminton so at the end of it I'm like do you want to come to emminton and be on a stage and talk in front of people she's like certainly and anyways friendship has bloomed ever since so I appreciate her high compliments if she's sending them along because I got a lot and I think the audience has a lot and that's what brings you on to the show Franco is I asked you about it and anyways asked her about it and she's like oh yeah you got to meet Franco, he's, he's excellent. So, um, you know, I was going to, I had a whole thing I was going to

talk to you about. We were talking right at the start, but I'll just get to it. Uh, you know, there's going to be a ton of people, just like I, that have no clue to Franco's background, you know, maybe you're always the Canadian taxpayer federation man, you know, or maybe you have a different story. What, what is Franco's story? Where are you originally from? And let's hear a little a little bit about it. Okay, cool, man. Well, uh, yeah, so I am the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. So I like to say, unfortunately, my home base right now is in Ottawa. Just keeping an eye on the Trudeau government and how they're wasting our money. Yeah, I mean, I'm essentially, I guess, in the business of exposing government waste here

from our federal government. And unfortunately, business is a little bit too booming. But before I came out here in Ottawa as our federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I was in Alberta. I was our Alberta director before Simmer took over. I was there for a couple years, maybe a little bit more than that, holding the feet to the fire of the Kenny government, and also some of those big spending municipal governments. They're in Calgary and Emmetan or just across the province. Before coming to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, though,

my passion was in sports, hockey, baseball was my number one passion. I essentially just went to university so I can keep playing baseball. And before going to university, I was like, well, I guess I should probably pick a major, heads finance, tales economics, it landed on economics. I didn't really know what it was. I thought maybe it was a way for me to make money.

But instead, I got into economics and then got really into politics. And here we are now. You know, if I could have guessed, as soon as you said sports and I went to university or college or what have you,

I would say 97% of my teammates went into economics, played hockey in college, and I was the oddball who went into history. But, yes, and there's a couple more oddballs out there that went into different things. Where were you playing baseball? Where did you, you got me curious now. And once upon a time, this was a sports-only podcast for the most part.

Where did you play? Okay, so I actually started playing baseball at such a young age man, because I grew up in right in the heart of Toronto, right downtown Toronto. So I was about a like five-minute walk away from what it was called then, the Skydome. And how JKSK kindergarten worked in Toronto is that we were half days. And my dad did a lot of work from home back in the day. And he would come pick me up half day at school. And to get home from kindergarten, we'd have to pass where the Jays play.

So we'd always be hopping in watching matinee games. And so by the time of like three, four, five, I was in love with baseball. I had the pleasure of playing all over baseball very competitively in high school. Then for my last year of high school, I moved out to Coquitlam in BC. to play for a competitive team there. And then in university, I went to the University of Lefbridge to play baseball, then the University of Calgary to play baseball. Yeah.

And then I even got to play one year in Europe before, you know, becoming an adult and getting a real job. Well, two questions then. What position did you play? Because I'm kind of curious. Were you the All-Star fielder or were you pitching or where were you at? Man, I wasn't an All-Star in anything. Like, that's why I'm here talking taxes.

You know what I mean? Like, let's not. not kid myself. But I, no, I grew up as a catcher. I've had a couple knee surgeries. So then near the end of my career, I kind of just was moved around the infield as a utility player, essentially like, hey, where can we put a guy that we're going to get in our nine spot and put him somewhere on the field? Can we get Franco in the game today? No, man, he can't even walk. Where did you play over in Europe? Amsterdam. Holy crap. How long were you there for? I was just there for one season. One season.

What's one season? Is that a couple months in the summer? Yeah. Yeah, a couple months in the summer. You got to get, you know, I played, you know, when you talk about I wasn't an all-star anything, that's funny, because I played, I always say it was a cup of coffee in Finland. And, you know, I'm a short, stocky little defenseman and found a way over to Europe and everything else, had a ton of fun.

I am curious, though, you know, as in a North American, you don't hear much of baseball over in Europe. and in Finland they had finished baseball, which is not real base, well, not real base. I shouldn't say that if I have anyone listening from Finland. It's real baseball.

It just isn't our baseball. So what was playing in Amsterdam like? No, Amsterdam baseball is huge. It's really big in Amsterdam because you have some of the Dutch islands, right, in the Caribbean. So you get a ton of really good baseball players

who are not from the Netherlands, but are, I guess, Dutch, I don't know if it's a monarchy or not, but they're in the Dutch kingdom, so to speak, right? Who was the famous Atlanta Braves center fielder? Was it Andrew Jones? I believe he's, I believe he's Dutch. So there's some really good baseball, but I actually even had a better experience because it wasn't just a Dutch league. It was all across Europe.

So I was playing in Spain, in France, in Prague. How unreal is that? Even to just do it for one year, you know? I got to live the dream. I talk about always as a kid. You know, I think at some point you realize, I don't know if it's when you're 14 or when you're 18 or somewhere in there. You realize, okay, I'm probably not making the NHL.

Like, you've got to just come to terms with it. It's a hard thing to come to terms with because you always wanted to play there. But I always wanted to get paid to play a sport. I mean, you're in a small, small portion of society that gets to do that. And so to go over to Finland and get paid to be there was like, this is super cool. and then to have offers from all the different places in Europe. Hey, come play over in Sweden or France or one was Austria, I think. And I was like, do I want to go play? Do I want to go play?

I have no idea. But you get to tour all the different places. That's pretty friggin sweet. Like we got to just dip into Sweden because obviously Finland and Sweden right along the same side. Although we didn't play Sweden folks. We dipped in because in Finland, chewing tobacco, maybe it's, this isn't the case anymore is illegal. It isn't illegal to chew. It's illegal to sell it. So just inside the border from Finland to Sweden, there's this big store giant.

And all it is is chewing tobacco. And so the bus would roll in, guys would all hop out, buy their fill, come back across the border. Pretty cool. Anyways. You know, the Pringles can, boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I mean, look, I got to live the dream for a summer. So my career was already over at that point. Like, I already knew it was over. to be honest with you like you know not to be a negative nellie but i was already kind of done with baseball at that point pretty burnt out after playing uh competitive ball for a long time uh you know i just finished my undergrad i was already enrolled to go do grad school uh in the fall so i kind of look at look at it as you know what like i'm just going to go live the dream for a summer uh really

enjoy it play some baseball meet some new guys but really just soak in traveling across europe as you know i'll let your imagination kind of carry that one no that's that's unreal what was your team name? We were the Amsterdam Bombers. The Amsterdam Bombers, man, that's a great team name. Okay. Now, everyone's like, did you get Franco on to talk sports? Or did you get them on to talk some Canadian taxes, everything else? Ladies and gentlemen, anytime I get the opportunity to talk a little bit of sports, I'm going to take it. I'm going to run with it. And if Franco was willing, we'd probably talk an hour of it. I know that's not what everybody wants. Let's talk about how on earth you get into, you know, you talk about taking economics. But what is it about

economics, one, they just really pull Jan. And from there, obviously, we'll get to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. So I think if you study economics correctly, it's not a bunch of math, it's not a bunch of equations, it isn't about maximizing functions. That's incorrect economics, right? That's probably what you're going to be taught if you go to undergrad or graduate or if you have to do a PhD. I don't know how you'd suffer through that. But that's wrong economics. I believe that correct economics is the study of human action, explaining how and why humans act. And, you know, I've always kind of been a fan of trying to figure out psychology. Economics isn't that, but trying to explain why people

do and like, what are the outcomes that we have. I've always been really interested in like the bigger picture ideas of like why, why do some countries go through civilization while other countries, you know, really struggle to get off the ground or struggle with poverty, things of that nature. And economics to me just kind of provided a way to see the world, right? It kind of refined my ideas to look at it in a certain way to start to explain some of these types of phenomena. Now, I went through undergrad as like the kind of wonky economics program, kind of boring. And then I did that in graduate school as well until I met one professor named Tom Flanagan. You might know that name. He was Harper's, I believe, director of campaigns. He ran a bunch of Harper's campaigns. He ran a bunch

of Harper's campaigns. He's also a political science professor at the University of Calgary, or he was when I was doing grad school. And he's just, he's a funny guy. He's got an interesting way to communicate. And I did really well in his class. And he took me aside and he said, hey, Franco, like, you know, you should give a few of these books to read. You should apply to the Institute for Liberal Studies. Now, liberal as in like libertarian, not like the Liberal Party of Canada. So I did. And then I just got, man, so, I just nerded out on all these like old libertarian economics books that I probably spent way too much time doing that. Like, dude, it actually became my sport.

You know what I mean? I stopped playing baseball and then I start hitting the books. So that's how I got into this whole world. It's pretty cool. You know, yeah, I actually kind of get it. It's, you know, we all, everybody who like really enjoys what they do stumbles into something. And then it's like, I, I joke about the being on stage when I had Chris on stage. And others, you know, I never thought I'd find something that mimicked or was very similar to the hockey rink,

where you get that like adrenaline rush and everything else. Going on a stage in front of people is identical to it. It is, I mean, it kind of makes sense. You're going on front of a live audience, but I never thought I'd ever find that again. Hockey rink has just like this, I don't even know, like this feeling when you walk out underneath that, you know, you come out onto the bench or onto the ice and you're just like, ah, man. And when you leave that, you think, oh, I'll never find it. find this again. I'm sure baseball is very similar. And yet I've found that. And I hear that when you

when you talk, you know, digging into the old economics, how the world's function, you know, study of human action. My issue with study of human action, maybe you can clear this up, not clear it up, but this has to frustrate you too. Study of human action is one thing. But when it's manipulated by government and media, where does it, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, human action, study of it, get muddled with like a few whoever are over here pushing what they want all of us to do. Yeah. Okay.

So again, that's like the incorrect way of economics. And so one of the reasons I think you have to study correct economics is so that you know when you're being fed a bunch of BS, right? Study economics to essentially poke holes in the BS that you're being fed. So are you saying the way I look at it is incorrect or you're saying, rephrase that or not I'll rephrase that. So, so of the stuff.

So whenever you hear like on sometimes, and I don't want to paint too broad of a picture here, right? But whenever you hear governments being like, no, no, we can print as much money. We can run these massive deficits. We can increase taxes.

We can increase spending. Don't worry about it. We'll put on the credit card. And then they, you know, cart this economist in front of the stage and say, yep, the government's doing what it should be doing.

Most of that's BS. Right? And the reason you study, is to understand when you're being fed that type of thing. Now, how economics has been distorted is because of the political process. So when you see these politicians and bureaucrats trotten out these economists or claiming one economist says this so it's okay, they're just doing that because they want ammunition for what they want to do.

Those politicians want to run these big deficits. They want to spend other people's money like crazy. And then they try to find an academic who supports their claim. and then they use that academic as ammunition risk cover. That's all that's going on. So everybody gets in, well, I shouldn't say everybody. I feel like a lot of politicians get into politics to like be like, you know, they're just like, maybe not like you or me,

but not that far off. I don't think they go in there going, I'm going to spend everybody's money and it's not a big deal and everything else. And then, you know, like, I mean, dude, all you got to do is read the newspaper once a week and see the amount of spend they've been doing everywhere. It's just like money printing galore. But then on top of that, they just like,

well, we're going to take a trip across seas. We're going to spend a million dollars. Like, whoopty-do? What's the big deal? And we're going to spend a million dollars over here. And oh, we're going to stay at a book fair and we're going to spend money here. And on and on. Oh, we're going to rent this giant limo in Iceland, I believe. And we're just going to, you know, 70 grand. What do you do? It's not a big deal. This is what the government does. Well,

I guess after a while, the swamp starts to feel like a hot tub, doesn't it? Now, I'm glad we're bringing this up because there's there's a big distinction here right you are not the government the government is not you there's the makers and the takers the taxpayers and the tax consumers and i think one of the reasons that canadians are really feeling ripped off right now is because we are being ripped off like we are the class the taxpaying class that is essentially funding this bloated bureaucracy that wants to do what help itself um one of the things that really nails the point home to me is all the bonuses that are

being dropped around in ottawa right the feds have handed out like 1.3 billion dollars and bonuses since 2015, hundreds of millions of dollars and bonuses over the last few years each year when the government can't even meet half of its own performance targets. Now, Sean, if I would call it my boss, it'd be like, hey, man, I want a bonus. No, I didn't meet half of my own performance targets. He'd be showing me the door, right? I wouldn't be getting a bonus check. But, you know, they're in Ottawa.

It's not their money. They're not in the private sector. They don't have to make sure that their business is efficient or they go out of business because they just jack up taxes, take more money, borrow more money, print more money. Right? So that's the difference between the world that we face and the world that they face. I don't know if you know the answer to this, but how did we get here then? Because it always hasn't not been like this, right? There's been times where government was small, fiscally responsible.

Maybe I'm wrong on all this. But to me, like, how did we get to where, you know, I hear the numbers. And it's funny, I can already feel my brain doing it, Franco. It's like, I don't know. Yeah, I get it. Another billion out the door and 100,000 over there. And yeah, over there. It's like my brain can't even comprehend it. I make fun of it more than anything because I'm just like at the end of the day, I'm like, you know, I feel like all of us should just go work for the government. We'd all be taking care of quite finally. I'd find a way to just like embezzle a whole bunch of money. I'd start a couple of fake companies and pull some money in. All of a sudden, we'd all be rich and we'd carry on with life and whatever else other than I'd have to give away my soul. But other than that. Well, eventually you'd also run out of other people's money to spend, right? That's another thing that would be an issue there. Okay, so a few things to break down.

I mean, I'm going to probably throw a bunch of numbers at you. If you guys are watching the video, you can see my big glasses. I am a bit of a numbers nerd, but the most important thing is the concept. And the concept that I'm trying to explain here is that, you know, people work very hard for the money that they earn and the taxes that they pay. and if you mess up at your job, you're held accountable. That's not how it's going on in Ottawa, right? You got the bureaucrats that are getting bonuses. You have members of parliament that took not one, not two, not three,

but four pay raises since the onset of COVID-19, when the people they're supposed to represent struggle. Okay, you have the Bank of Canada. I'm sure we'll get into this, but the Bank of Canada has one job. Keep inflation low. It failed to do that one job. Was it held accountable? No, it showered itself with bonuses.

The CBC, our favorite state, broadcaster. Look, they got an extra 42 million smackers to help it cope with the pandemic, all while giving out $46 million in bonuses during the pandemic. Destination Canada, a Crown Corporation that is tasked with marketing Canadian tourism industry. Now, what happened in 2020 and 2021? The tourism industry was brought to a screeching halt because of government fiat, right? The tourism industry was shut down. So what a destination Canada do when tourists were legally prohibited from coming to Canada?

Well, they handed out bonuses and raises to their staff. So are people that just that dumb? Like, they just don't care. They just don't care. They're not dumb. They're the ones getting the bonuses and the raises. But I understand. But I mean, like, okay, then they have no moral compass.

They just don't understand or they just don't care. It's just like, I've been working hard and I'm due my hundred grand and this is my job. I think there's a couple things. Like, I'm not going to pretend to be in their mind, right? And also, let's not be so collective, a collectivist where we think that they all have the same type of motivation. Sure. Different individuals are different. But there's a couple things.

Number one is I think most of the executives who are making these decisions think that none of this will ever be found out. None of this is published online. The reason it's online and the reason people know about it is because you do have groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation digging all this stuff up. None of that's posted online. But then the second thing, Sean, and this is just anecdotal, right? Because I came here from Alberta. I saw firsthand what happened beginning in the winter of 2015 when people were losing their jobs.

People were like leaving office buildings, boxes in hand, crying. People didn't know what was going to happen. So I came. I come from that. I come from a working class family, right? My mom who lives it like a couple doors away from Simmer in southern Alberta, who has worked her whole life, scrape and clawed pennies to finally. me own a home. So I understand that. Then I remember coming to Ottawa. I remember out at a party

and I was in the news bashing these bonuses and someone pulled me aside and they they had the audacity to say, Franco, you just don't understand. These people are working very hard. They deserve their bonuses. And I just thought to myself, wow, these people are so detached from reality. Like it almost reminded me of the hunger games. You know, like the rubs out in like what, the sections 13 and 12 and 10 and then now I'm in the capital and they just have no idea the hardships that are going on in the rest of the country. Yeah, it's, you know, I got, I got a couple different friends in the podcast world that always tell me, you know, it's just, it's, just go back to the king in his court and then the peasants. It, you know, they just live in a different world. That's what you're

telling me. It just, I mean, it may be not quite to such an extent. And certainly I don't feel like a peasant living out in Alberta by any stretch. I feel like it's probably one of the greatest places on the planet. But it just, it shocks me that, you know, right now, as everything's going on, that we can just pile on more taxes. You know, last time I had Chris on, we were talking about the second carbon tax. And every time she comes on, you know, both of you love to throw numbers, which is great, because I think it just, it hammers home points. But, you know, like, by 2030, I'm like, how on earth are people going to survive in this? country knowing that carbon tax is just going to go up and up and up and do people understand

that as the carbon tax goes up where do all our goods come from trucking like we're this giant country it has to get moved from point A to point B we got farmers it's got to get from there you know and on and on and on and where does all that cost go Franco I know you know the answer this it's like to the consumer so everything's going up heat in your house going up your your grocery bill going up and up and up and up and I listen to you um I think it was on, I can't remember who I was listening to you on, but you were talking about them, maybe it was the host or you, you can correct me, was applauding, like they were applauding themselves every time they drive by a gas pump because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to make it unaffordable to drive places. And people don't want to, they're like, no, no, no, they can't be that. But if, you know, like, they're trying to push everybody away from gas powered vehicles. They're trying to push away from oil and gas. Would you agree with that? or did I butcher that a little bit? No, that's exactly what's going on.

It's all about this. Okay, folks, right? Okay, let me just take one step back. Now, obviously, carbon taxes in Canada don't do a single thing for the environment. Absolutely nothing. Everyone, everyone who wants to have an honest conversation, which isn't the goal of politics all the time, but anyone who wants to have an honest conversation cannot refute this, making it more expensive for someone in Alberta or Manitoba or New Brow.

Brunswick, making it more expensive for them to fuel up their car or to fill up their grocery cart will do absolutely nothing to reduce emissions in China, in India, in Russia, or in the United States. Okay. So carbon taxes really aren't about helping the environment per se. It's about this. Do what we say or pay, right? The Zoom class, the people who live in big buildings beside their big offices, whether it's academics who get, you know, a nice taxpayer-funded salary to go work at one of these universities, or it's one of these politicians or bureaucrats or ministers that get to build the taxpayer for their chauffeur service.

It's about them telling you, and I'm assuming most of your listeners, live the way we want you to live or pay more. Right. I mean, it's not about helping the environment. This doesn't help the environment. More than 75% of countries don't even have a national carbon tax. Now Canadians are paying too. and so it's not about that.

And you're right. The whole objective of the carbon tax is to increase the price of gas, is to increase the price of diesel, it's to increase the price of natural gas. The government isn't saying that it's not. The government admits that. And that's why I said every time the Trudeau government, whether it's Trudeau or Freeland,

drives by a shell station, I think they're patting themselves on the back. That's a hard, like, so then I come always back to what I ask Chris. And I'll ask you now, Frank. So what do we do? Yeah. Okay. So that is a great question, right? And what we have to understand is that apathy is the enemy, right? Because, and one of the things that I always want to be careful with is not be so doom and gloom that people are like, well, I don't want to keep banging my head against the wall. All I'm going to do is get a black eye. Sometimes I feel that way. But what you have to do essentially is a couple things. So number one, first you have to, you know, put a spotlight on what's going on. As I said earlier, most of them are doing this because they just, feel like they're not going to be held accountable. So that's why I'm so thankful to come on shows like yours, to speak to your audience, to talk about this kind of stuff. Right? So that's number one.

Number two is you have to stay in the game. Once you leave the game, you lose the game. That's really the only way to lose this game. So when you hear stuff like this, you have to be on your politicians. Look, at the end of the day, their number one objective is to get reelected. They're number one objective. Now, some of them just aren't going to run again, whatever, but then there's new ones coming in. And if you really care about this, you have to make it clear in your community that those people are not going to get elected unless they smarten up.

Emails, phone calls, door knocking, that's a good way to get politicians' attention. So those are just like two quick ways of doing it. I've listened to Simmer on your podcast. It seems like she says similar things to me when you ask that question. Yeah, and I come back to,

you've been on a Canadian story before with David Parker. and on here he talked about politics isn't a spectator sport. I seem to quote that an awful lot these days. It's a good one. Because I think a lot of us, you know, especially in, you know, I think of the Western provinces, you know, everybody's like, they're just, they're hardworking people. They want to go out.

They want to work their job. They want to build their business. They want to start a business. You know, that's what we do out here. And nobody wants to get in the ugly world of politics because, honestly, the longer you stare at it, the, you know, it's just, it's not this. you know, this great living, I don't know, it's just, it's an ugly world, it's a gray zone. And at the end of the day, most Westerners don't want to roll up their sleeves and get into politics

because they already got their sleeves rolled up and they're already doing something and they're already trying to fix problems that are coming down the pipe, right? And trying to provide for families and everything else. These days, I think a lot are realizing that has been a misstep because a lot now are starting to jump into politics. I just had on this past, well, it started this week actually, John Ruhmick, the first candidate for the SAS United Party going against, you know, the SAS party, and they're, you know, conservative, traditionally conservative, I guess, is where I would say. And you're starting to see more, and he's a business guy, right?

Getting into politics, why? Because he's frustrated. And as frustration grows, you're going to see more and more people get off of the sidelines and get involved, I would think. Yeah, I mean, look, I think, especially in Western, Canada or let's say Alberta Saskatchewan I think there's a there's a there's a there's a quite a um for lack of a better term like just like a libertarian streak and I mean like a real libertarian streak right like a um skeptical of government skeptical of politicians just want to be left alone but the problem is is that yeah you just want to be left alone but what if politics doesn't want to leave you alone right and so I'm actually hearing a lot more of the same or hey

Franco like how do I get involved how do I do this how do I do that now we're we're we're We're strictly nonpartisan. You know, we believe that like whether it's red or blue or purple or orange, no matter what party is in there, we're going to, we're going to beat them up when they waste people's money, when they raise taxes.

Like, it really doesn't matter to us. Now, I know some people want to get involved in partisan politics to them. I think people like Parker, who you had on your show, they would be better to advise how to do that. We're kind of more of the nonpartisan route.

Yeah, community grassroots, you know, go get involved. Your message is, get involved, right? Absolutely. You know, yes, I agree.

Parker is an interesting, interesting guy from that range, or from that standpoint. You told me this is going to be a boring topic. I don't care. I'm like, you're a numbers guy. I kind of want to understand this because, you know, we talk about the carbon tax and everything going up and the prices of everything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How does the government calculate inflation? They keep saying inflation has dropped, and I'm going to point to routers said Canada's annual inflation rate dropped more than, this is just July 18th, folks. Canada's annual inflation rate dropped more than expected to a 27-month low of 2.8% in June, led by lower energy prices.

Data showed on Tuesday, though food and shelter costs increase is persisted despite 10 interest rate hikes in less than 18 months. And I just, the reason it sticks out to me is that you got Freeland just patting herself on the back. You got all these people just patting themselves in the back. And we're doing such a great job. Franco, we're doing such a great job. What are you so upset about? Let's get some bonuses going. Crack the champagne.

Get the giant limo. Let's roll. Yeah. Oh, sorry, folks. Not bonuses for you. We mean for us. Yeah, totally. Okay, so, first of all, I just want to, I'll get into how it's calculated.

But number one is I got to poke some holes in that headline, right? Because inflation isn't going down. Prices just aren't increasing as fast as they were last year. So prices are still going up. Okay, so that headline figure inflation cools to 2.8%. That means that prices are still going up by 2.8%. Okay, so we had 40-year high inflation last year. Prices went up about 7%.

If you can trust, if you trust the government's numbers. Which we don't know. Well, yeah, I'm not surprised that you're going to say that. This isn't for Franco to say, folks, I don't have to pull Franco into my world. We know that the inflation is more, like, the things are going up astronomically. You just got to talk to people in the business world about how much machinery and everything else is costing. And you're like, holy crap. Anyways.

So let's just, okay, for the sake of the argument, let's just assume whatever. Government numbers are right. Yes. Trust, just trust them. Okay, so seven, let's say seven percent increase in 2022. And then on top of that. Is this a comedy show? Hey?

Let's just trust, you know, me and me. Anyways, carry on. No, no, no. I love it. So let's say, let's say inflation. went up by 7% last year overall. Okay. Now 2.8% means a 2.8% increase over the 7%.

It's not that inflation is coming down. It's just that instead of increasing again by 7%, the increase is only 2.8%. Okay, so prices are still going up. Prices aren't going down. It's just that they're not going up as fast as a 40 year high. But for prices to be going up on top of a 40 year high, just think about how really life. is unaffordable. Okay, so that's me poking holes in that headline. Prices aren't going down.

They're still going up. They're just not going up as fast as they were last year during a 40-year high. Now, how does the government calculate inflation? It's pretty boring, but it's actually not that complicated. What they do is they have what they call a consumer price index that has a basket of goods that people typically buy gasoline, food, you know, groceries, meat, chicken, all that kind of stuff. And they essentially just say, okay, well, how has this basket of goods that people typically buy? How have they increased or decreased, which never happens over the last year? And so inflation is just the difference between CPI this year and CPI last year, the difference in the price of that basket of goods that people buy. Curious, on the basket of goods,

has that been the same basket for 40 years or is that constantly evolving? No, there's changes. There's changes. And that's one of the things that like some skeptical people like you would be like, well, if there's constant changes, how do we then hold it constant? Now, one of the issues, though, that look, that this is just difficult to calculate for anyone, even if you're trying to be as honest as possible, is the quality of things change, right? So like the quality of my phone is a lot different than any phone would have been 10 years ago. Right. So it's just things like that that make the consumer price index. I would say it's even at, best, it's more of an estimate than it is like, no, this is what prices did. Right? Because, like, how do you

quantify the change in the quality of something? Right? Phones are obviously much better than they were five, 10, 15 years ago. Computers, same type of thing. Really, everything is, uh, it's probably much more better now than it was 10 years ago, other than the obvious exception of government services. You have to bear with me. Now, now I'm like, now I'm like, now I'm like, I'm extremely interested in all the things that are in and of course I can't find it I'll I'll worry about this a different day I'm just like I wonder what's all in the basket of goods I wish I could just like boop here it is and it's like oh that's that's an odd thing like what's what's the oddest thing in there Franco or or is it all just you know you mentioned gasoline you

mentioned meat you mentioned or you know you mentioned chicken I think but I mean like is it just like standard things or is there some odd things in there that you're like I don't know how would they put that in there and I this is me being a little bit skeptical just of the entire thing. Well, you should be. I mean, you should be. I'm just, I would just saying, let's just take these numbers just as an example, right? Just to be like, okay, it's this, and it's a 2.8% increase on top of that.

So they're applauding themselves because they've slowed it down, but it's still increasing from a 40-year high. And 40 years ago would have been rate smack dab in the 80s. And we all know what went on there, at least, you know, the Western provinces certainly do. And so that's about as bad as it gets, essentially, is what you're saying. But then also too, right, what makes it so difficult to quantify and now pull me back if I'm getting a little bit too nerdy and nobody can understand me. So what makes it really difficult to understand is that actually the way of progressing economy should experience prices, that prices should be going down. That's how things should really be working in advanced economies that are continuing to see progress. And I just mean progress in the sense of like things are getting better.

That's all that I mean by that. It's kind of a wonky way to say it. Okay. And why is that? Because goods, you're producing more goods, right? If you have more stuff, typically prices should go down. You're producing better stuff. You're producing more efficiently.

Right? So the arc of like a growing economy, it doesn't have to be these higher prices year after year, after year, after year after year after year. In fact, one of the ways for people to see their real incomes increase is that things that they buy should be going down in price. Right. Like even just think about like that is actually a natural tendency for growing and progressing economies. Now, why do we see? So why? Yes. Why is it completely the opposite here in our country?

Well, I don't know if you can hear the burr in the background here in Ottawa, but it's because of the Bank of Canada. It's because of central banking. It's because of the printing press. Okay. So now let me let me just dive into what happened during the pandemic, which led to the, to the massive inflation that we saw. And then let me just poke some holes in some of the narratives that you'll hear from some of the pundits on TV and our favorite politicians and bureaucrats. Okay. So what happened during the pandemic? The Bank of Canada printed $370 billion right out of thin air.

How does a central bank print money out of thin air? It's this easy, folks. A central bank will purchase a financial asset like a government of Canada bond debt. Okay. How does it purchase? How does it get the money? purchase that financial asset, it doesn't hold a bake sale, it prints this money right at a thin air. So every time the bank of Canada is buying something, an asset, a bond, a secure, whatever,

it does so with printed money. So it printed $370 billion at a thin air, and it dropped this hundreds of billions of dollars into an economy that was largely shut down, lockdowns, restrictions, if you want to call it that, whatever, right? And that, and that, creates the perfect storm for inflation, which is too many dollars chasing two few goods. Now, let me get into some of the pushback. Does that make, does that kind of make sense, Sean? Yes, it does. Okay. So let me, let me get into some pushback. Number one, this was very rare what happened during the pandemic. So governments have been printing money for sure for for a very long time. But what happened during the pandemic was something different. We saw the Bank of Canada's

sheet, essentially how many assets it has after being bought, increased by about 300%. Okay? That's much more than the recession of the 70s, of the 80s, of the 90s. It's even more than the beginning of 2008 all the way up to the beginning of the pandemic. Okay. So that's number one. What happened at the Bank of Canada was crazy. They had the printing press on overdrive. Now let me let me debunk some stuff. Okay. Number one, inflation was a global phenomenon. Everybody was experiencing high inflation. Well, when other politicians and bureaucrats have silly policies, like massive deficits, massive money printing and tax hikes, guess what? They experienced the same thing. Okay, but there's other places like Japan. That was about

two and a half percent inflation last year. Switzerland, I believe was under three percent inflation last year. I just went through the IMF and looked at their data. And there was about 74 other countries that had lower inflation than Canada last year. Okay, so it wasn't, not everyone experienced it the same. Now, what's the next thing you hear? Well, what about supply side? What about the supply chains were an issue? Okay.

So supply chain issues have been happening from the dawn, since the dawn of time. Think about it. Refinaries closing down all the time, right? Maybe, I don't know, a lime shortage from Mexico or whatever. Sure. I don't know, but supply chain issues happen all the time. What doesn't happen is supply chain issues with this massive amount of money printing. That was the difference between the other years when you don't see high inflation and

2022 when you see 40 year high inflation. Now, Sean, supply chain issues can never explain general inflation. Supply chain issues can explain changes in relative prices. Some prices become more expensive. Other prices become less expensive, right? Because think about it. If you have $100 to spend and one of the goods goes up in price, what happens to the price of the other good? It has to go down.

People don't have, like, it's not like people's budgets just automatically increase. So what allowed for all of the prices to go up? The new money that was printed and dropped into the economy. This is where you're going to, okay. So, Sean's got, I'm going to try and every time they print more money, Franco, puts more money into the economy, right? Like there's more money instead of having $100 if they print an extra hundred, now it doubles and now you have more money in the general pot. But that means the money is worth less as soon as it's printed, correct? So like as soon as they print $370 billion,

all the money we all have is now valued less like immediately. Yes? No, no, no, no. Okay, so this is great. Now we're getting real wonky. Okay. So there's also a reading. distribution effect that goes on here because all the money isn't dropped from an airplane and not everyone gets the money at the same time. You know, the money enters the economy different ways. So one of the ways that the Bank of Canada will buy these assets is they usually purchase them from like the big financial institutions, like the big banks or whatever. Okay. So who gets the money first, the new money first, they're actually getting redistributed wealth from the people who get the new money last to the people who get the new money first. Because they get all this new money

and before prices go up, they have more money to buy things. As they spend the new money, then prices in the economy rise. But they don't rise all at the same time. So you get this weird, you get this weird double effect. Not only are prices going to be going up over the longer term or whatever, but you also get a redistribution from the people who get the new money last to the people who get the new money first. Okay, so I'm going to try this again. So what you're saying then is the people who get the money first, which is the people at the top,

go out and buy things for what they're valued at today. And then as they buy them for basically a discount, because they know the prices are going to go up because they have this brand new money, which is going to drive everything up, that is what they mean by transfer of wealth then, like immediately, because it's, essentially it's almost instantaneous.

Not exactly, but I mean, they already know by buying at today's price in whatever amount of time it's going to be way higher and that money that they've now printed is worth less. That's essentially correct. Right?

Am I, I don't know. Yep, yep. I'm like getting... Chris, if you're listening to this, you're giving me an economic class this morning and I'm trying to keep up. No, it's great. Don't apologize.

This is great. I think it's any time you can put it to a point where I'm like grasping and I'm going, oh, okay, yeah, all right. So I had, all right, fair enough. That's, there's a lot here, though, Frank. Like this, this is why, you know, most people, I don't probably myself go, oh, yeah, I get it, I guess.

And move along, right? Especially when you're talking, you're not talking a dollar. You're talking billions, $370 billion. It's a ton. Yeah, it's, it's absolutely crazy. So that's essentially what explains why everything is so expensive. not just one thing that's so expensive, but like everything is so expensive.

And so if you were sitting there as the mastermind of the government, right, how do you get it back, can you get it back going the other way? How does Franco go, oh, this is all we have to do. We need to do this, this, this, and we'd actually be off to the races. Is there such a thing? Okay, so it'd be very hard because of the political fights that you'd get into. But I'm saying Franco can walk in. and be like, listen, I am a king for a day.

We're going to do this and this. And you people, part the Red Sea, let's go. It'd be a busy day. Okay, so essentially, look, you have to roll back the size of the government. That is the number one thing. You have to roll back the size of the government. The cost of living is so high because the cost of government is so high. I mean, this government was spending all time highs before the pandemic.

So in 2018, no cross-country recession in 2018. there was no pandemic in 2018 and the Trudeau government spent more money than the feds did during any single year when we're fighting the Nazis and that accounts for population and inflation changes. So this government has to be scaled back. That means you have to cut spending,

you have to cut the regulations that are making it harder for people to start businesses to develop our resources to sell. And then you also have to cut taxes. So that's what the government has to do. Now, is the government going to do it? Let's see. but that's what has to happen.

But that also means that you're going to have to have politicians that are going to be ready for a fight, like a legitimate fight, right? Because you're going to have to cut the transfers that some people are taking in. One of the big areas that you're going to have to go after, or let's say two big areas that you're going to have to go after, number one is corporate welfare, right? We just heard the feds give a bucket of cash to two multinational corporations, Volkswagen and Stalantis. $31 billion, folks, is not something. You get tax hikes, multinational corporations.

get big buckets of cash. Now, what's $31 billion? That's a cost of about $5 million for every job created. Okay? So you're going to have to go after big business and you're going to have to go after the bureaucracy because right now, right now, every dollar that the federal government spends,

like it's day-to-day spending, half of it goes to the bureaucracy. So you're going to have to go up against the union bosses, right? So that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about. here. It's a big fight. You wonder, you know, I had Martin Armstrong on. I don't know. Was that three weeks ago now, folks? Was it a month ago? It doesn't matter. And do you know who Martin Armstrong is with the... Is that Armstrong economics? Is that that guy? Yeah. And he talks about how Socrates predicts Candace splits. And when I listen to you, rattle that all off, I'm like,

that's almost an impossible feat. Nothing's impossible. I won't sit there and act like it is. But when you talk about a fight, that is a monumental fight, you know, like when the provinces struggle to do it in their own, you know, in a smaller population, imagine trying to convince Eastern Canada where all these jobs are to be like, hey, by the way, we got to cut like a whole chunk of this, you know, like, I don't know, Franco, has that happened in Canadian history where a government got in and walked in and said, hey, listen, by the way, all of you, done out the door, we can't afford to do it.

do this anymore. The Canadian taxpayer doesn't want to do it. Well, the most significant one, it was actually in the 90s. Like it kind of has happened with the Crutching government in the 90s. They massively cut spending. They balance the budget. I mean, so here's what we're always kind of saying. Like, look, number one is eventually it's going to have to happen. There is no way you got to pay the Piper. And that's what happens. The question is, do you want to do it now on your own terms or do you want to wait, make it get worse? And then it's the bond fund managers that are like, No, you got to cut spending. We don't care.

So in other words, it has to get worse. Because the politicians dance to the tune of the public, right? And if the public isn't upset enough yet, which I think they're getting there, I think there's a lot of people very upset. But if everyone's not marching in the streets, so to speak, there probably has to get a bit worse. And believe me, I look at the carbon taxes and everything going up over the next. I'm like, this is going to get worse.

Like, this is not getting better. This is only getting worse as the years go along. But yours, you know, the bright spot then is, it eventually gets to a point where, you know, if the liberals under Kretchen can do it, some government's going to come in and be like, we can't, you know, the only way we're running this thing is if we cut and the public wants it. Well, another thing, too, is just that I guess it kind of gets a point. Maybe it's like this for every organization, I don't know, but where every more extra dollar you spend really doesn't give anyone any benefit, right? Like, think about how crazy, how much money the government

is spending right now, where before the pandemic, and of course, now spending has only gone up, even before the pandemic, the federal government was spending all-time highs. So even if you're like this big government, I love as big a government as it can get, the feds were already spending all-time highs. Like, the feds couldn't cure poverty when they were spending all-time highs, giving them more money, it ain't going to do it, right? And I think like now people are really like, are they really like serving us or are we working to serve them? Because like you hear all these stories like the $71,000, the Governor General dropped on ice limos,

the $61,000 that Trudeau spent on five-star hotels in Manhattan during an anti-poverty summit. You got Freeland. Well, like, hey, Sean, like maybe let's get a little, let's get a little light now, right? So listen to this, folks. Trudeau spent 61K on five-star hotel rooms in Manhattan. Man, I don't know about you, but nothing screams fighting poverty, like taking money from people who are less than you and going to a five-star hotel or a five-star hotel in Manhattan.

Here's another one. You got Freeland during COP 26, right, the UN's International Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Freeland, I guess, forgot to check Google Maps before she booked a hotel room. She booked a hotel room in Edinburgh, about 86 kilometers away from Glasgow. and then she built taxpayers $3,000 so a luxury chauffe service could cart her back and forth. Here's another one.

The Governor General, racking up $100,000 on airplane food during a week-long trip, you know, feasting on beef Wellington with raju, pan-fried chicken scallapini, stuffed pork tenderloin, right? And then having the audacity to be like,

ah, it's pretty much like normal airline food. Well, Sean, like I travel. I go on Air Canada West Jet. I get, I'm lucky if I get peanuts or the little pack of pretzels. They don't even have beef Wellington flavored chips, man. When I fly with my children, Franco, they give them like a second packet of, you know, like cookies or whatever the heck of those little things. And I'm like, oh, wow, us peasants are getting a second packet for free, you know, beef Wellington.

Like, holy, you know, this is what you just rattled off is why me and twos on the Tuesday mashup have a show. Because every week you just open up the headlines and you're like, you've got to be kidding me. You know, like, you gotta be kidding me. You know, you mentioned being out in Ottawa, and I, one of the things I love about what I'm starting to realize is there's some real fighters out in Ottawa, you know, like Tom Corsky and Holly Dona, Black Moss. He's a bad man. He's a beauties, yeah. Like, they, single-handedly, a married couple is keeping, like, majority of Canada informed just off of FOIPs and everything else and just fall in the money. Let's just keep falling the money.

And they just, you know, and Ottawa just keeps, you know, here's another stupid thing. And it's like, it's so funny because it's so ridiculous. Like at some point you'd think they'd have a staff or go, you know, maybe we should just rain in the spending, just a smidge. Nah, nah, nah, nah, let's get the, let's just piss them off a little more. It's almost like they want to gaslight the entire public. Well, okay, so I'm going to stay happy for a bit here just because I'm getting a little depressed myself.

And I don't want to be a rain cloud, man. We finally got some sun in the nation's capital. And I'm going to be happy warrior here for a sec. But the reason that I'm rattling all this off is because I think like more and more Canadians now are seeing all these stories and like, man, this is like what? And they're getting fed up. Right. And they're like, okay, I'm sick and tired of all this waste. So I think that is the good news, folks.

Here's another, here's another piece of good news. So the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pumping up my own tires here and our own tires here for a second. You know, we've been hammering away at the slush fund that Global Affairs Canada had. And it was called the Mission Cultural Fund. and they were essentially using all this money to promote Canadian cultural ideas abroad. Well, we started following access to information requests to see, like, well, what were they actually spending money on? Listen to this. They spent like $12,000. So old people in other countries could talk about their sex lives in front of a live audience.

Sean, we're outsourcing old people sex stories. We spent $8,800. We spent $8,800. We spent $8,800. On a sex toy show in Germany, I guess the author, I don't know, the artists of this show, her name is Peaches. You can't make it up, folks. 8,800 smackers. You know, we were promoting Margaret Atwood's book in Australia.

We did like this photo exhibit for like the famous rock star, Brian Adams, all of this out of the mission cultural fun. Now, the reason I kind of bring this up as a good news story is the federal government quietly announced that it's ending the slush fund. because we were hammering them. We were just beating them up in the media about it. And so they had to step away from it. So that's some good news there.

Oh, I think that's some great news. You know, it's, every time I make another connection in Canada, like yourself, like Chris, like Tom Corski, like Holly Done, and the list goes on and on because I'm finding more and more people. Like, you know, Frank, I didn't know who you were. Certainly maybe, you know, six months ago, certainly, maybe, you know, but I would say the audience. audience, you know, when I first introduced them to Chris Sims, introduced myself to Chris Sims. They're like, that lady, holy man. And, you know, on and on. And we're finding out that Canada is full of piss and vinegar.

They're full of people that are right on top of the government and hold them account. The hardest thing, I think, a lot of us are slowly understanding is the machine doesn't stop on a dime. It is like, man, it is years. It is years of pounding away at this. And, you know, for a lot of people, especially in, you know, in starting up a company or, you know, doing different projects maybe in the oil field and stuff, you know, like, it's like go as hard as you can, get the project done and move on to the next one. And things like this, you really understand it is a marathon. Like, this is like, you know, you've got to stay involved.

Do you mention it right at the start? You got to participate. You got to stay involved. You got to engage. And it's like, well, in order to do that, you got to realize that this thing isn't a hundred, you. yard sprint. It's like the, I don't even know, the longest marathon, like, this is the longest,

I've stayed engaged on, politics. The fight is never over. The fight is never over. Wow, that's right. Like, I think probably one of the longest debates in probably forever, has always been some form of liberty versus power, right? In one way or another. And

when it comes to government, it's, you know, big government or small government, right? And look, we could, we could get the budget balance tomorrow. We can get the debt paid down tomorrow. We can cut all this fat. We can cut taxes to as low as possible. But the fight would still be there because then the next day, you'd have people who are like, well, you know, maybe I want just my own little bit of pork, you know, or maybe I want my own little piece of carved out regulation. Or, you know,

I could use about $5 billion, you know, to build my own electric vehicle factory, right? That would happen the next day. Or maybe not the next day, but in a week. So look, this fight is, is never over. You know, to paraphrase from my boss, the real big cheese of the, of the CTF, Scott Henning,

no fight is, no victory is everlasting and no defeat is forever. This, like, this is the fight. It's always going to be here. And if you are concerned about the way the governments are,

are essentially ripping you off, then you've got to get in the fight. And there's really no excuse. Like, I understand people are busy. And like, I understand I get the privilege of, of being able to work at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

I have the best job in Canada for sure. But I mean, you can, well, yeah, I mean, everyone's different. But, you know, but what I'm trying to say is like, I get, like, people are busy. I get you got kids and you got to go on vacation and you got to do your own job. But there is stuff that you can do, whether that's just sharing some stuff, whether that's making sure your friends and family know what's going on or even just, you know, listening to this podcast and making sure other people see it on like Twitter or Facebook or

whatever. Yeah. Well, I would argue that I have the best job in Canada, but that's, hey, that's, we can share a beer over that one and argue some more. As far as people go, yeah, everybody's in a different stage of life. So, you know, if you're in the stage where you want to be like running for politics or you want to get involved on an X board wherever that is, you know, or you want to, you know, go door knocking for somebody you believe in or et cetera,

you can make this as difficult or as easy as you want. Getting involved doesn't have to be, you know, a seven day a week, 24-7 job, you know, Like there's, there's interesting ways to just slowly get involved. And there's more and more people doing it. Like, more and more. Like, you know, the, it's funny. I talk about this lots, but, you know, like, what was it? 2015, I don't think I've watched a series, like, seriously, an hour of politics in my life.

Like, I don't know if I'd really paid attention. I've been off gallivanting the world and everything else, so I don't think at a young age you're really engaged that much. And then you have kids, or at least for me, I had kids. And as soon as I had kids, something changed to me. And then Trudeau, you know, is in office and he's saying some bizarre things. I'm like, well, that doesn't make sense. And then, you know, you start getting more involved. And some of it's just educating yourself.

Totally. If you can do that, then you can start to have some different conversations. And then you're probably going to figure out real quickly where you fit into the mix on how you can help, you know. And I think if everybody starts pulling on their little piece of rope in the same direction, you know, there's millions of us. that things don't have to go as slow is what I think they are going to go. You know, they could probably pick up real fast if everybody just picked up on their little piece and started pulling. You know, you mentioned, maybe you didn't.

I can't remember. Me and twos have this conversation all the time about how bloated government is. Since Trudeau came in, do you know the numbers on how much the government has grown? Because we talk about it all, you know, they talk, oh, unemployment rates going down and different things like that. How much of that is the government getting? Oh, huge. And I do know the numbers. 98,000 extra bureaucrats.

98,000 extra bureaucrats is what Trudeau has added in Ottawa to the federal government. 98,000 folks. So that's a 40. How many, and apologies, how many people does that mean work for the government? Okay, so it's close to 400,000 now. It's close. So in his, in his tenure, he took a 300,000 people. roughly government

to 400,000? It's somewhere like that, yeah. So the reason I said, the reason it doesn't even matter. It's about that. Okay. Now, like, I'm like, oh, but you know, Franco, you know, but no, I'm just being a nerd.

No, it's about 98,000. That's essentially what happened. It was a 40% increase. Okay. Now, there's a couple of things that we have to talk about here. Number one is, as I mentioned, half of all the day-to-day spending goes to the bureaucracy. So if you're like, man,

my tax bill is going up every year and I pay way too much tax, you'd be right. And a lot of it is because we have this bloated bureaucracy. Our streets in Ottawa are full of bureaucrats. The next thing is like, okay, so the bureaucracy is increased by 40%. In what world are we getting 40% better services from the federal government? Not in this reality, not in planet earth. I mean, the only thing that's going up by 40% in Ottawa is the wait times to get a passport. But we're not getting 40% better services.

Now, it's not just more bureaucrats. It's more bureaucrats with bigger salaries. The average compensation, the average compensation of the federal government when you look at pay, perks, benefits, yada, yada, yada, is $125,000 a year. The average compensation is $125,000 a year. Now, one more thing I want to add before you jump in. We already talked about the bonuses, right? It's like almost everyone in their dog, if you're a government executive, is getting a bonus. The average bonus last year was about $18,000 for a government exec, but it's also the pay raises.

So listen to this, folks. But since the beginning of 2020, there were 800,000 pay raises in the federal government. The federal government handed out 800,000 pay raises. So they're addition to these pay raises when people were losing their jobs, taking pay cuts, when you had small business owners like the restaurant or the gym owner down the street who was taking out a line of credit just to keep the lights on. And the federal government, they're using your money to give themselves pay raise after pay raise.

Now, remember, I say pay raise after pay raise because they handed out 800,000 pay raises. If there's about 400,000 employees, it means many of them got not one, but two raise during the pandemic years. You know, part of me would once upon a time be like, you know, let people do with their business what they want, except that's my money doing that.

Like, that's literally my money and your money. money and everyone else's money doing that. So while everybody's struggling and people are being, you know, like, I don't know how many people I've had on here who, you know, closed down their businesses or, you know, my own family, how they struggled through it with their business. Well, and the amount of colleagues I know that got let go during that time, all the money that we were fishing over the government or pushing over the government instead of them pushing it back into the, you know, into whatever, pay raises, salaries,

98,000 people. I know that wasn't in that three-year span, but over the course, I'm like, whew, okay. Well, then one final topic, I want to make sure I squeeze in here. Is, you know, like, right now, I feel pretty fortunate to have the show

and be able to, you know, talk to different people such as yourself, and the list goes on and on and on and on and on. But, you know, you got to, in the government, you got these different, you know, you got C-11, C-18, You guys, all these different things. What does Franco think of, you know, the government, I don't know, censorship, steering,

trying to, you know, bail out CBC and everything else, and then on top of it, try and, like, make it so, you know, I don't even, like, I'm a small fry. You know, I'm certainly, okay, I'm bigger than some, but I'm, you know, I'm not as big as a lot out there. But when you look at these things coming through, you know, us independent folk who get to sit down and have, very open discussions with people such as yourself all from across all of Canada. What do you think of C-11, C-18, or other ones, if you will?

I'm probably not going to add too much new here. Like, I'm sure I feel exactly how you feel and I'm very worried about it. Look, one of the ways that we hold our government accountables through what we're doing right now, through online social media stuff. That has never been more obvious than over the last couple of years.

That's how we've been holding governments accountable, especially like the independent media like say what you will and you might have faults and some people might be doing some stuff that you don't agree with but I would say there's many people in the independent media who've done a very good job holding governments to account well I'm very worried about how this impacts them and then by proxy impacts every average Canadian citizen's ability to hold the government accountable and a lot of this too what what is also very frustrating is that a lot of this and one of the issues with government is that sometimes it's not sometimes a lot of of the time, it's not the elected officials who are running the show here. They're not driving the bus. It's the big belly of the bureaucracy that's driving the bus on a lot of stuff. And that's what's going on with some of these things, right, where you have unelected bureaucrats in Ottawa who are going to be essentially deciding or, you know, influencing how you can hold your politicians accountable. Well, they're the last people who should be deciding what you see on your social media feeds. And we're not talking about criminal stuff.

All that stuff can be dealt with, not, you know, outside of Canadian heritage, outside of C-11, C-18, right? If you're worried about the real criminal stuff, there's another department to deal with that, right? We're talking about accountability issues. So I'm very, very worried about that,

for sure. Okay, the other one is, is another obvious concern. And look, taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund any type of business, including media organizations. We shouldn't be forced to pay for CBC more than a billion dollars every single year.

What was it like the hundreds of millions of dollars in the media bailout? We shouldn't be doing that for many reasons. I mean, one is just the moral reason, right? It's my money. I should be able to decide which type of news organization I want to support. The next issue is also a moral one.

Why should people like you or True North or the Western Standard or any of these independent medias be funding with their tax dollars, they're competitors. That's not fair. And the third reason is actually, I think what's going on

is the government is preventing innovation. Right? It's preventing innovation. Because you're keeping these types of business models that may be outdated, maybe they're not, I don't know, but with government funding, you're keeping them afloat when they could be innovating, when new people

can be coming into the space like yourself or like the other independent media. So I think just the fact that the government is funding media outlets is bad. But it's also, sorry, one last point. I know I'm rambling. It's not even about bias, right? You might feel like these organizations are bias, but it's also the perception of bias, right? Like, I can totally understand if people are like, well, I don't trust them because you're not going to bite the hand that feeds you. So whether that's true or not, I think the government funding the media does a disservice to democracy because of, at the

very least the perception of bias. I also have like amplification, right? Like they have a big old speaker. They have a terrible idea. And then it gets blasted out over thousands of channels. I mean, that was the ability to lock everybody down, the ability to steer narrative, everything came through the, you know, they were doing the government's bidding and talking about one message,

but that one message gets blasted like it's everybody's message. because they have the network. You know, Sean gets to talk about, you know, what he talks about, with who he talks about, and he's got one channel, one person. And if you don't like it, you don't tune in, and it sucks. And, you know, you carry on with life and you move on. And that's it. The CBC is artificially held accountable or held stable because of our money doing it.

And if you don't like it, which a ton of Canadians right now do not like it, it doesn't matter because they're still held artificially up, even though there's, they're Wiley Coyote, they're over the clef. They just don't realize it anymore. And the government just keeps going here. Here's a bit more money. We'll keep you going. If you support the CBC, send them a check.

Set them a check. Right? If you're like, oh, I value the CBC and I want to watch the CBC and I love the CBC. Great. Cool. Okay. Send them a check. Don't rely.

Don't force your neighbor just to take their money and give it to them. If you support it, really show that you support it. Well, before I let you out of here, let's do the Crude Master final question. It's what's next for Franco? And if there is a way, how can we help support it? Okay, so what I'm actually really excited about at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is we're trying to do more of our own, like, in-house communications, right? Like, check out our YouTube folks, just type in Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We have these, like, really cool, I think, rant-to-camera videos that can be like three minutes to five minutes to six minutes.

We just dive deep into an issue. And like, so if you like having this kind of information and you're like, man, I wish I had more like taxpayer news to know what's going on. Check that stuff out. I'm super pumped on it. I'm super bullish on it. I think we've done four already. They've already gotten like tens of thousands of views on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook. So check those out, folks.

I'm so pumped about that. We're also trying to get our own type of news directly to consumers as well. So head over to taxpayer.com. You can join us free of charge. Obviously, we love donations because we have never taken a dollar. or never have, never will take money from the government. So obviously we rely on volunteer donations. But even if you don't have the money, like I understand people are tough,

but times are tough, what you can do, head over to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, follow us there, Instagram as well. And then, yeah, get on our email newsletter, our email updates. I think they're gold. Sean, you said you read some of them. So hopefully you find value there as well. I actually do. I would actually give you a solid plug.

I've had to unsubscribe from a lot of newsletters and from a lot of of substacks because it just gets too much. You know, I'm sure I speak for a lot of listeners when you want to follow a bunch of people. But when they're hammering your inbox, like, six times in a 10-day span, you're like, that's a lot. Like, that is a lot. And some of it is very pertinent. What I found with your guys' emails is when they do come out, which is relatively regular. I don't know how regular they are. I don't know if it's weekly or if it's biweekly, but either way, it doesn't matter. They're like pertinent. And I actually like read through, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's pretty solid information for a person to have.

That's how I first stumbled on Chris and was reading her emails, and I really, really enjoyed it. So I would give a huge plug for that. Awesome. Thanks, man. So, yeah, head over, search us on social media, Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm Franco. You can find me at Franco underscorenomics. And then also our website is taxpayer.com.

So those are the places to go. Oh, cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on and doing this, Franco. I assume, you know, I certainly tell Chris all the time, like, yeah, I probably have her on, you know, quarterly or whatever because there's so much going on in our country when it comes to taxes and government and just honestly some stupidity that's that's they can bring a tear to your eye laughing because you're like I can't believe they're doing this and it's fun to it's fun to talk about it it's sobering to talk about it to realize you know how bad some of it is

and I know you you're like I don't want to be the storm cloud or that you know the but at the end the day hearing it I think is very important so I appreciate you coming on it probably It won't be the last time I have you this way. And look forward to seeing what Canadian Taxpayers Federation does here in the future because it's been, while it's been very informative for myself, and I assume the listeners as well. Hey, man, appreciate you. Hey, thanks for tuning in today, guys.

I hope you enjoyed it. Today's episode has been brought to by Calrock Industries with new, used, and refurbished oil and gas equipment in stock. Calrock is your best bet when it comes to finding equipment that fits your needs is within your budget and is ready as soon. as you need it. They can even custom manufacture tanks and other equipment for your specific application. They're located here in Lloyd Minster, but I'm sure they can serve you wherever you are at. All you've got to do is go to calrock.ca for more information. I also want to remind people that

Patreon, I just started posting back on it. We're going to give her a go here for the next six months. So if you want to go down in the show notes, you can click on that. Feel free to support. Don't support. It's behind a paywall, so the money is coming back to the podcast. And we got a little behind the scenes action happening there so love to see and hear your guys's comments on that either way we'll catch up to you on the next episode