The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Michael Campbell - Is Canada on the Brink of Disaster (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week we welcome back Michael Campbell, host of Mike's Money Talks, long time friend of the CBP, and one of Canada's most respected business analysts. Be sure to check out moneytalks.ca for more! From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

Friends and enemies, welcome back. Canadian Bitcoiners podcast, the mighty CBP. I'm Joey, being joined today, not by Len, by the invincible, untouchable Mike Campbell. That's a reference to an old Capo and Noriega rap song for you guys who are a little younger than me. We have a lot to talk about. Mike's been a friend of the show for a long time. I've appeared on his program many times. And Canada's in a weird place right now. And so we try and get Mike on once a friend of the show for a long time. I've appeared on his program many times. And Canada's in a weird place right now. And so we try and get Mike on once a year, twice a year to talk about where things are here in the country economically. We'll discuss how Mike has, I think it's safe to say, started to approach Canada's problems

through a new lens, through a new set of viewpoints as they relate to social cohesion, which we will talk about. And if there's one thing you can count on Mike for, it's a no punches pulled conversation. And why should he pull punches? He's one of Canada's most well-recognized names in business and obviously hosted the Money Talks show, which we talk about on our show all the time. So we'll get to that. First of all, the sponsors, EasyDNS, best place for you to host

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to the group. So go there, buy some stuff, and tell them we sent you. The one, the only, Mike Campbell. What's going on, man? How the heck are you? Is it a good place to start? I think you've had quite a few weeks here. Things are going well, though, it seems. You're looking well, looking handsome as ever. How are you? I'm laughing at the concept of looking well. You get on in the years, Joey, and you look in the mirror and you go, what happened? What the heck happened? So we can leave that one alone. Yeah, I have had a bit of a problem. I had a bacterial infection of fall, two operations, et cetera.

And yeah, feeling much better from that. Outstanding. I'm glad to hear that. We'll talk a bit about this sort of state of the healthcare system. I'm going through it right now for a different reason that I'll share with you and the listeners. The listeners already know because they come to the show, but I don't usually make notes for guests and I certainly don't make them for guests that we've had a bunch of times. And, you know, you and I know each other fairly well at this point. And, you know, I, I found myself today thinking about where am I going to start this conversation? And it started with the text I chose for the thumbnail, you know, is Canada on the brink? I look around Mike and what do I see? I see more and more tense. I see frustrated

major city police forces tweeting their frustrations at the PMO. I see healthcare in a state of, you know, seems like perpetual collapse and crumble at this point. I see housing is an issue. I see elections around the corner here and next door. I see social cohesion problems. I think maybe we should start there. I don't want to speak for you, but I said to you the last time I was on your show, after we were off the air, that it really felt to me like you had taken the gloves off on a lot of things in recent weeks and recent months. One of those things has been the lack of cohesion on display clear for anyone to see, uh, this fault line between what looks to me to be

recent arrivals to Canada. You can define recent however you like. And different religious groups, the Jews are targeted these days, it seems like with chants in the street almost every day I see on Twitter. The Canadian way of life is under attack in a lot of ways. I don't say those things lightly and it's not fun to talk about them, but I want to know a couple of things from you. Why start on a show that's about business economics more broadly talking about this? This is obviously very important to you. Why make that decision? Give me some of your thoughts. How do you think we got here, man? Well, let's talk about the foundation of what Canadian life is. I think we had an agreement, a social agreement across the country, and we could have variations

of what a Canadian value was, but it was tolerance. I think it was accepting. And look at the switch we've seen in the support for immigration. And I would encourage people to instead think about the failure of vetting the immigrants coming in. I've been very blunt about it. We didn't have this level of hate that, if you had said, guess what? We're going to take to the streets. We're going to identify a specific ethnic minority, religious minority, and call for their death. I honestly believe we wouldn't have believed it. Whether you substitute Jewish people, Black people, Indigenous people, any minority that we have in this country, I don't think people would have believed it. And the reason is we've imported this. And it's not about all immigrants. It's

about the failure of the federal government to vet the immigrants. Is it too much to say that you would agree with Canadian values? You know, is it too much to ask for? We have an existing society built by Canadians right now. You know, some a lot older than others, you know, are generational. I think, you know what, we deserve to have our lifestyle maintained in that value sense. And it clearly hasn't. I mean, you know, that big talk, Joey, that Canada's broken. I don't know how you'd get a more clear example that Canada's broken than when we consistently break hate crime laws. And we have.

These are hate crime. You can't identify a single group and wish them ill the way they have with the Jewish Canadians. How can anyone who's Jewish in this country feel safe? And people should think about that. They're crime. They're Jewish. My goodness gracious. As I say, I think it's overwhelming and beyond the imagination of most Canadians. That's why we said for months, oh, this isn't Canada. of similarities between the two, right? The thread is basically the same and you did a good job pinning it down there. This idea that we're

accepting, we're trusting, it's a society that you can send your kids to school without worrying that anything's going to happen and not expect to be persecuted for your religion, your race, your creed, all these things. Exactly. So maybe we should talk a little bit about why it's not being met with reprisal by government agencies, by even seems like local police departments in some cases, but I don't want to speak for all of them. Why is that? Well, first of all, they haven't had the leadership. I think it was very easy. Look at the response they had in Germany. You look at the response even from President Biden, you know, even from and the Republicans agreed, no, this is against the law.

This, you know, I think that's the simplest one. They could have hidden behind that easily and said, no, we don't have hate crime here. Well, we clearly haven't enforced it. I mean, clearly we haven't enforced it. In fact, it's very rare circumstances where he said that breaks Canada's hate crime laws. You know, it's funny, I was in the hospital the other day, and they have one of those signs, and I think we've all seen them. You know, don't be rude, don't be this, don't be that. And I thought, we're not enforcing

it in society in general. I mean, we completely eroded the credibility of government in this regard. We have seen blatant, in this case, anti-Semitism, but we wouldn't have allowed it for any other ethnic group and done virtually nothing about it. I asked right from like basically October 8th on of last year, where do you think this leads? You can't just sit back and say, oh, it's not my thing. Well, I think we've seen where it leads. Increased violence. Come on. They have shot up Jewish daycare centers, you know, Jewish hospital,

obviously vandalizing Jewish businesses. I mean, seriously, at what point do we say enough already? What does the public say? Our leaders have failed us. And so I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. By my thing, one of the most important things a government does is protect its citizens, is let them pursue, you know, whatever freedoms they want, etc. And I know that's another debate these days, but, you know, this is way over the bounds of that. How can a Jewish Canadian, if they're a student on campus, you know, if they're, as I say, your child's at that daycare center that got shot? Are you kidding? Yeah.

You know, the list is a long one. And the response from the government and our leaders has been so timid. It's been playing both sides. Now, again, getting in the reasons for that, keep in mind, I'm just trying to think of who just called the NDP the party of anti-Semitism. But they're sure right.

If you look out in British Columbia, again, maybe many of your listeners aren't familiar with the story, but a longtime NDP cabinet minister, Selina Robertson, was ousted. Why? Because she was targeted by the Palestinian youth movement and Samadoun, who's just been declared a terrorist organization. What are they about a year or two years behind Germany and the Netherlands, but they are, they targeted her for the crime of saying we should have Holocaust education in schools. At that point, the two targets on her back, she was Jewish and recommended that. And the BC premier, not a single NDP cabinet minister or sorry, member of parliament stood up for her and said, no, this is out of bounds. She was promised by the premier, David Eby, to protect her. As she says, it lasted four days. She was the sacrificial lamb.

So we're seeing it. But the problem for the federal liberals, they have people who are anti-Semitic in their caucus. They have people in the NDP federally. Look at what happened to QP Ontario with Fred Hahn. He's going to be the poster child. Hamas is going to give him a special day. It was blatant. And we found out that we have academics, people in organized labor, obviously people in parliament and in legislatures that were clearly anti-Semitic. Well, my gosh, if that isn't a different Canada

than most of us thought we were operating with. Yeah. One more thing, sorry. I just want to emphasize this. So we've got people who we've elected who in this regard toward Jewish Canadians, Jewish citizens here, are closer to a Nazi ideology than they are to what we called, I think, consensus-wise Canadian values.

That sounds harsh, but come on, show me the evidence where that's not true. Yeah, closer is a term that applies there, I think. young to remember a lot of like um major foreign political religious standoffs um but the one thing i do remember is you know i was 13 or 14 in in 2001 and i remember the clear instant and wide ranging you know villainization sometimes criminalization, I think even here about anti-Muslim, anti-Islam rhetoric from the West. And, and, you know, we, we, we did days on this stuff in school. I remember I went to a Catholic school too. And, you know, like I remember that it was, it was overwhelming almost. And I think there's value to that. Don't get me wrong. Like we always say, and I know you think this as well, it's not about labeling everyone with the same

characteristics, but there are some bad apples that need to be reminded and in some cases reprimanded for behaviors that are detrimental to the sort of fabric of society. And you're seeing that here. One thing I can't figure out, and you know, I don't know if you have a thought on this. In 01, there was no doubt from broader society that we had to do this. And no matter how much it hurt to put on a pedestal for a little bit, the idea that all, you know, Islamic people were not these types of people, that all Muslims were not violent extremists. Of course. We recognized it, right, as a society.

And here we're trying to do the same thing and say, look, we have another cause here that needs our support. And Mike, no one seems willing to do it even at the societal level. Why? The governments I understand, I don't agree, but I get it. The people, why not the people? This is one thing I cannot wrap my head around. I'm with you.

I don't know where it fits in terms of their issues, the list of issues they have. Certainly haven't had much. We have exceptions to this one, but academic leadership. There have been some exceptions, but not the vast majority. I mean, they had these protests that were preventing Jewish professors, Jewish students from crossing the so-called encampment. Where was the absolutely, I don't see where the nuance needs to be on this, you know, or we have to go, well, it's not black and white. Actually it is. If you're one of them

and you're prevented from going, it's very straightforward. And I think this found us wanting as a Canadian public, as you say, how many people say this is unacceptable or here's always a tough one. How many people would change their vote based on this? You know, saying, well, it's clear. Like I'll go back to Selena Robinson saying very clearly, not a single member of her BC NDP caucus stood up for her. Not one, not one, but stood up to what? Stood up to this terrorist group, Samadun. Stood up to the Palestine. And there's several other groups that we've allowed.

Keep in mind, sorry, you know me. Joey knows this, by the way, everybody. I just never stop. This is great. I'm going to behave myself here in one second. But think about this. So Samadun is Hamas affiliated, sympathetic. They're not allowed to travel in Europe.

The Netherlands has just outlawed them as a terrorist group. Germany had already done that. And we had them as an NGO in Canada. They got a special tax status until two weeks ago, to be fair. But I'm going, this wasn't new information i knew this without ever focusing on this i knew who that group was you know i knew who hamas is and i know who has bella you know that kind of thing so i'm going we had him as ngos like oh yeah that's that i want to give a tax break to those guys i just don't know how that happens and it's frustrating

you know i i try not to bring up the trucker thing that often here because one it's just so divisive and two it's in the past i try not to you know go down this road but i just think how how swift and like you know all encompassing the response was to the the protests on on capital uh on capital property there down in ottawa i think in in 21 or 22 whatever year that was time is flying but um and i can't legitimate that's a legitimate point you're making yeah it's clearly two sets of rules and and you know as i say it would have been they open themselves to this so in government you know there shouldn't be two sets of rules one for the truckers and one for you know pro-hamas protesters yeah terrorist groups legitimate terrorist groups abroad yeah

so there has so it's difficult not to see that it's it's frustrating if someone is you know i think about to as a bitcoin guy enter into the crosshairs a little bit uh in terms of what i'm allowed to say and not say uh about the sort of sanctity of the Canadian dollar. We can maybe get into that. Well, let me get, as you know, I deal with this all the time. And I always say, in money talks, obviously I say things that are controversial. When we talk all of this stuff, I said, well, let's just see the track record. Let's just back off and see how it worked. So the number one issue for individuals is the declining purchasing power of our currency. And well, is that deniable? I mean,

obviously not. Now people may call that inflation. The bottom line is that dollar doesn't buy as much as it used to, in a significant way. Like you got me a dollar in 2000, the year 2000, you got my dollar now I can only buy 54 cents worth of the same goods. You know, it's being measured by gold. It's being measured by, you know, as you well know, and our audience knows, this is what's driven Bitcoin is lack of confidence in government and central bank management of the currency. So I just think it's the number one issue. And, and by the way, well ignored for about a latest thing, MNP survey came out. It's about 51% of Canadians saying they've had to make adjustments, you know, and some are seriously in stress, absolutely consistent. We have forgotten the half ofians who have found it difficult i'm thinking by the way on the other

side every policy they make helps people who own stocks yeah you know what i mean like that isn't the lower half that's what the top ten are i'm not knocking people doing well but those policies directly relate to the top what 20 of canadians yeah what about the other 80 and what at least my sense i'm not going to tell people who own bitcoin why they do it but my sense is there's a huge concern about the quality of the currency and the credibility of the currency and they and and many other government related issues that come up but the bottom line is they needed protection that's why they're pursuing it and they don't trust government either you know there's a there's a collapse of sort of institutional trust all over the modern world

canada is maybe at the sort of tip of that spear in a lot of ways unfortunately for you and i but it's it is funny you know i i listen to uh whether it's macklem or uh freeland or the, you know, big four economists now calling for, you know, a jumbo cut. Like I, I don't want to be in a situation where my policymakers are describing rate decisions the same way they describe Costco hot dogs. You know, like I, I prefer if we had a more balanced kind of, uh, you know, like, like something that's not quite as front and center. But as you mentioned there, as the number of people who want to consume literature or commentary around ray cuts, the language around them will almost invariably, I don't want to say get dumbed down because that's not very nice, but it'll become simpler and easier to understand for a lot of people who

are experiencing this for the first time. It's funny. You mentioned people tightening their belts and having to adjust. Canadians are great at describing the symptom, but terrible at describing the problem. We're understanding where it came from. Absolutely correct. Exactly. And so I want to ask you, what should Canadians really be looking at as the cause? There's so many things now being bandied about we've heard from not only from our leadership but leadership all over the world that it's you know putin's price hike russian inflation uh it's opex fault it's not opex fault uh housing is too expensive because of speculators uh galen weston is causing inflation it's anything but basically you know debt issuance right right? You know what I mean? No, no, you're absolutely right. Jagmeet Singh, NDP leader.

You know what I mean? Like, what are we talking about here? Well, you have to go back to inflation. And the bottom line was this, is there was a massive increase in money supply, you know, monetary changes, fiscal changes. That's the government spending a ton of money at a time when there were supply shortages. Well, what's going to happen? You know, you pump the system full of money. I think Canada's went out money supply jumped 26% in two years with shortage of goods. Well, it's going to go up the U S even worse than ours. So, you know, as Milton Friedman famously said, everywhere and always inflation is a monetary phenomena and people can follow that through. If somehow money disappeared from the system, you don't have it to bid the price of goods and

services up. But we had a two-pronged attack. What was the Bank of Canada doing? Well, they knocked interest rates down to record lows. I've got some investment properties where I don't even bother looking at the interest. They're so low and I've got some investment properties where, you know, that I don't even bother looking at the interest. They're so low. And I've got them for another two years. You know what I mean? As many, many millions of Canadians did. Gee, what a surprise that housing prices went up.

You had two ingredients, increased population beyond anything. They didn't plan any of that. And you had the Bank of Canada literally saying March 220, we're going to guarantee five-year mortgages, basically. So no risk to the bank. So they'll lend everybody and anybody. Well, presto, you got higher housing prices. That's been exacerbated, as I said, by uncontrolled. Now, I'm going to use the prime minister's own words, because you see people who have a political bent always say, well, you just don't like that politician. The prime minister said the temporary visas were out of control.

You got it. You know, well, I believe him. You know, you can't add 2.1 million people to the population in two years and go, I'm surprised they had to live somewhere. Yeah. You alluded to the colleges. I mean, the abuse of the temporary student visas in the colleges, especially in Ontario, was outrageous. They were basically selling permanent residency under the guise of getting a degree. And so we have this mass change in immigration and the nature of it. We used to have a point system in 2019. They changed it. So what we did is we've now imported a lot of people with low skills. That kept wages down for existing Canadian workers. But it also reduced our productivity because a low skilled worker doesn't produce as much.

So you always hear this measure, Canada's productivity for capital has been down. That's the most important economic measure in terms of predicting standard of living. So that's been declining. Capital investment, that's been declining. I mean, these important key measures for the economy are all down. And let me anticipate the question. Why? Because it has not been a priority for the federal government. The NDP liberal government, you can't make the case that economic and economic growth was their priority. Their priority, and they're welcome to it, we have a democracy, we can vote for these things. The priority, obviously, for liberal and NDP supporters is climate change, number one. LGBTQ2 plus is number two, and other gender issues.

But the economy is nowhere to be found. That's why if you want a good laugh from the economic point of view, you always listen to the NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh. He has no clue, like absolutely no clue, you know. Do you ever notice when you watch QP, Jagmeet Singh is in the nosebleeds when they cut to him? You ever notice that? Yes, I have actually.

Well, but I'm just saying that his priority is not sound economics. I have no sense or evidence as he's ever read an economic report that didn't have a foregone conclusion, you know, to support his. So economics is not a priority until it hits you. You know, as you said, people don't like the result of a higher cost of living. Absolutely correct. They don't know where it comes from, you know, and housing. Oh my goodness. Where does that come from? Check out the development fees. I know. Check out the other ways, all three levels, not just one, all three levels put their hand out. It's a cash cow gee what a surprise prices went up yeah

shocker you should like i i i listen to your show every week and i like i always laugh when ozzy tries to he's another guy who's like he's he's trying he's trying to hang on to the cheery persona that he brings to the show but it's harder and harder every week when he's like yeah housing again like development fees through the roof. Well, I'm trying to do what politicians didn't, and that is I'm always surprised. Keep in mind, housing wasn't an issue at the federal level until they got a polling result in August of 2023, so a year ago in August. The prime minister about two weeks earlier had said said, housing's not a federal responsibility. They got a polling result, said, guess what?

You're going to lose the next election. And, you know, so I'm not saying things that I've just been blown away at how lack of foresight when you let in that many people, you know, when we literally had this explosion in temporary visas, and let me add one more thing. So you issue a temporary visa, you got a temporary work visa, I've got a temporary student visa. They don't know if we leave. That's right. Now think about that. I've come from a difficult country with difficult living conditions. My student visa is over or my work visa. Do you really think I'm going back voluntarily? So it's a little, the challenge is even bigger. And we've now, there's a difference with the housing though, that I thought marked a turning point. People understand you can't bring

in that many people and not push your housing market. They understand you can't bring in that many people with a healthcare system that's already, you know, having a difficult time being sustained. The pressure on our social infrastructure, which, by the way, the TD Bank brought out a report a year ago, August, warning about this. But there's other warnings. You have Prime Minister Trudeau standing up before he was prime minister with a formal speech printed in the Toronto sun saying, Hey, be careful with the way you're doing temporary visas. That's right. And of course, it's been much more explosive since then. Some of the most, yeah, it's unprecedented. I want to ask you about the, you know, I, I, I don't know if I told you this before on your show or when you come on here, but there's this sort of thesis

in Bitcoin that the end point of all this is already basically laid out for you. You can see it. And the road may be winding in one direction if you vote this way or winding in another if you vote another way, but you're going to wind up at the same finish line. And that finish line is inflation, currency debasement, lack of faith in institutions, you know, probably, uh, balkanization of major nations and, you know, probably more things than that, that I, that I've not, I've not considered yet. You know, it's the Martin Armstrong thesis basically. Right. And, um, I, when I look and see, you know, you mentioned that poll in 23 that, that, you know, jousted housing to the front of the line when it came to federal priorities,

at least in public speeches and public addresses. Is that a good thing, Mike? Because when I look at what's happened since, you know, we've put in programs where now first-time buyers can get a million and a half insured or uninsured for new builds. And I know, I know some first-time buyers or potential first-time buyers and they're excited, but I keep telling them that the implication here is that every first-time home in Canada for the, you know, the entry-level home. Now the implied value is a million and a half Canadian dollars. And that's not a place you want to be. The average Canadian home now entry-level, I would guess is probably somewhere between six and 750, maybe, maybe a little less in some places, but let's call that the mean. A million and a half is not a number you want to jump to that quickly on the back of

a subsidy, number one. And number two, I'm really worried the handouts are just getting started as we head into an election. And I just, I'm curious, you know, do you have a thought on whether or not we should be really hoping that maybe they just don't notice the problem and we can try and slow this down? Because it seems that when they do notice the problem, the gas canister comes out and that thing is just raining all over the place.

Well, I think the challenge is this. It is a massive problem. You're so far behind. They talk about building 4 million homes by 230. Well, that would double every year. And we're already behind now. Keep in mind, they made that promise over a year ago. So we're already behind. They don't want to look at the actual problem. They can't even diagnose the problem. We've got too many people coming in and not enough housing being built. So as you mentioned, they've made that change to have insured mortgages go to a higher number. The problem is that's a demand side.

We don't need more demand. That's not the issue. Also, if you noticed, have you ever seen any politicians stand up and say, we're too greedy when it comes to housing? You know, we have got, I mean, you could go in Ontario, I'm more familiar with Waterloo and London, Ontario and Toronto in their development fees. And they're, you know, it's unbelievable. You know, out in Vancouver, it's 30% of the cost of a new build. Well, they should be talking about themselves,

you know, and they're not. Like, what does affordability mean? It's a lovely little phrase that every politician has been uttering for years now. This isn't brand new, it's just worse. Well, does affordability mean? It's a lovely little phrase that every politician has been uttering for years now. This isn't brand new. It's just worse. Well, what does that mean? You mean the labor who builds a house has taken a discount? No. Do you think materials you're getting at a discount? Nope. Where's the discount? Because you haven't changed your fee structure, your tax structure around this. They're not solving this. Unless you have a radical change in government

and government approach, but then you bump into other things. It's clear that the Liberal NDP federal government wanted bigger governments. So under Mr. Trudeau, Prime Minister, they've raised the size of the civil service 42%. Well, they got about 9,000 more executives. The payroll's at a record. That's not compatible with reducing your revenues. So I'm talking it's at that fundamental a level. We could go through the provinces, maybe the sister province of the federal liberals

absolutely is the NDP out in British Columbia that also experienced some massive growth in debt, massive growth in the size of the civil servant. And then everyone who waddens around and say, what do we get for that money? That's what, he's our parliamentary budget officer, and he's very careful. I've had the pleasure of chatting with him a few times. But he keeps saying, he doesn't want to say it, but he keeps saying, Canadians have to ask themselves, what did they get for that extra tax they're sending in or the extra expenditure at government? What did they get?

Because it wasn't an improved health care system, which is number one issue for people. You know, it wasn't improved traffic in a lot of ways, you know, and I think that's why governments, by the way, generally are unpopular. It's, you know, because they talk about stuff the public doesn't want until they throw it down their throat. And just one other point about that. We have a tendency to be my optic about what's going on in Canada and the States. And something I'm going to actually do this weekend is to remind people. Donald Trump didn't cause the anti-establishment movement. He is a byproduct

of it. But as is Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, as is Marie Penn in France, as is Giorgia Meloni in Italy, as is Javier Malay. I mean, this is happening globally. It's a rejection of the establishment. And, you know, people can add in why, you know, it is because it's not ignoring their track record. That's for sure. No, it's not. And I think one of the reasons that I am so worried about sort of the what seems to be an almost miraculous global alignment in terms of these like just bad policy decisions. I think that it's naive to suggest that there's

not some coordination because the less competition there is between nation states for brainpower, the less these guys have to worry about implementing poor policy. As you mentioned there, they just shovel it down your throat and that's all there is to it, right? You do what they say and that's it. It's funny, I kind of painted this picture for someone the other day. I have a lot of still left-leaning friends. And I said, you know, when you ask people why they vote for Trump and why they don't listen to the media and why they, you know, will vote for Polyev and think the CBC should lose their funding, just imagine what the average life of that person is like, okay? You go through COVID, you return to your laptop job, and that's sort of the best case, but it's still pretty bad when

you lay it out like this. You send your kids back to school. The teacher is incompetent because they came through a program that was overcrowded, only cared about admitting as many people as they could for money and taught them kind of social justice nonsense. So your kid's not getting as smart as they should. When you look for support from the school board, they tell you that your priorities are not their priorities and you have to live by their priorities. That's not good. That's if you have time to talk to them because the job that you have, even though it's only 30 kilometers away, it takes you an hour and a half to get there and an hour and a half to get back. So by the time you get back home, you have to make some food for you and your family or prepare some food for you and your family. And by the way,

you're not eating steak. You're eating dinosaur chicken nuggets because it's the only thing you can afford because your salary didn't keep up for the four years during the pandemic. And now you're in this situation where literally every part of your life, excuse my French, just fucking sucks. And a lot of people are living this now and they're asking the question that you're asking, what am I getting for all this? I'm losing 35, 40% of my paycheck. And this is maybe a good lead into the healthcare thing. So I told you before the show, I'm going through this for a different reason. My wife is like three weeks away from our firstborn coming out. And I've been through the healthcare system a few times myself. I've had ACL surgery, meniscus surgery, Achilles tears, and like all manner of athletic injuries. And every time I always end up having to go through one bad doctor to get to

a good doctor. And you know, you're advocating for yourself and doing all these things that the Canadian sort of way of life would have you believe is necessary, even though you're paying all this money. You know, you've just gone through it and it sounds like a decent experience, but a lot of people are not sharing the experience you and I have. A lot of people are coming here and having a terrible time being diagnosed, finding specialists. You point out all the time on your program, the number of deaths on the wait list for treatment or observation or care of some nature in a country for which you have probably spent most of your working life, not all your working life contributing to with the hope that you will be able to get the

care you need. And I'm going to quote you because I thought this was really good. I remember where I was when I heard this, I was walking my dog, no matter what, at some point you're going to be at the mercy of the healthcare system. And you better hope that that healthcare system has some mercy for you. And I don't know what to say about all this because I look at what's happening in terms of immigration. We'll kind of tie a knot on this with the immigration discussion, but the number of people coming in who are 50, 45, 40 years old, who have not paid for 20 years, are bringing in elderly parents, bringing in children, bringing in and expecting care without paying into it. I mean, there's a problem there. It's an unpopular thing to discuss, but it's an issue. And more and more Canadians

now are calling for the dissolution of what were formerly golden goose programs, healthcare and the pension. In your view, what is the likelihood that either of these things are dissolved in their current form by the end of, let's say, a Polyev term as prime minister or 15 years? I think it's way higher than most people realize, even though there's a lot of stink about that outcome. Well, I would say to people, first of all, they have to recognize that's a problem. You know, access to a waiting list is not access to health care. We do know that thousands of people are dying, waiting for diagnostic scans, waiting for treatment. Now, it may be they were going to die anyways.

I don't know. But we know there's a good number of people. Well, that's not access to health care. When we rank last in the Commonwealth Fund Index, for the time it takes to see a specialist after referral, and it's worse than ever, literally worse than ever, that's not healthcare. We have to admit that's not healthcare. There should be nothing sacred about that. And I want to be clear, I'm not talking about the men and women who work in that system. They are overwhelmed. I did have the unfortunate experience of waiting in emergency twice in the last couple of months for first time

was eight hours. Second time was over 10, you know, and they can't do anything about it. You don't have enough doctors to service, you know, um, waiting, uh, emergency rooms or nurses. So they're having a heck of a bad time. You put them down there, go ask somebody who's working in that side of things. It's horrible. You know, then they have closures of emergency wards. There's a closures in every province, including Ontario, Quebec, out in British Columbia. They've had emergency room closures. How is that possible that we think that we pretend that's health care so that's the first thing secondly it's a monster challenge that can't be politicized shouldn't be politicized

you find something politicized and i'll tell you you're not getting a solution you know now for it's that's a pipe dream on my part you know as for the conservatives if they do form government it'll be interesting to see. I believe me, I'll have the same lens applied to them as I do in any other party is what you're doing working. Is it following the research based in a way of healthcare though? Come on. We rank last in so many categories. Germany ain't having the problem. Austria isn't having the problem. Why? You know, why are they a more superior system in terms of access and wait times? Primary care doctors, come on one.

And, you know, we've got millions of Canadians who don't have access to a primary care doctor. So start with, this is not working. All gloves are off. Where is it working? What can we learn? And I'm still saying it's much more complex than that. But I mean, we aren't even on that page yet. We're not even on the page of, I wonder if there's any lessons to learn elsewhere. Instead, we have a lesson learned from North, yeah, North Korea, no private care. Well, actually, that's not true. Because if I was

a provincial cabinet minister, if I was a federal cabinet minister, if I was a federal prisoner, if I was military, I would get access to private care. And I'll give you one more example, just because people who aren't across the country may not know this. It is a laugh. There's no jurisdiction more than British Columbia who fought private care, including when the Cambie Street Surgery Centre is a private clinic that was set up under the urging of the NDP in the early 90s. Okay, so we still have it in British Columbia, not in Quebec, but in British Columbia,

you can't access private care on your own. I can't go and get private care, just eat up the wait list. As I said, these other categories of occupations can but the real farce is after they fought dr brian day a former head of the canadian medical association a real hero of patient care you know not not the system after they started to send cancer patients to private clinics in bellingham it's insane it's insane it's it's 16 million bucks so far and counting why because you were killing them waiting for treatment well

that's the story that's my story yeah it really it really is not that hard to see that so i'll i'll know two things i'll get your thoughts that the first thing i would say is private care here in ontario is completely invisible if there is any, but I know of one through the time I've spent in various weight rooms over the years. There is one clinic here, not far from Toronto that does hernia repair. And this hernia clinic, Mike, is the most, it's the most popular place. Every guy over 50 who's had a hernia wants to

talk about this place over a pint. As soon as you bring up that you think you have this, all these guys want to talk about it. It's the most pleasant experience. It's not that expensive. The care is incredible. They keep you there for a day before, keep you there for a day after you're playing cards, you're taking walks. It's incredible from start to finish. It's something that a hospital cannot match and maybe is not intended to match, which brings me to my next point. The administrative state here in Canada has become so burdensome and so detached from the problems and the realities on the ground that when I think about what happens in a high-level meeting at a major Hamilton hospital or major Toronto hospital, major Vancouver hospital, the waiting list is too long.

What do we do? Well, here's what we do. We try and turn this into even more of a conveyor belt and call center sort of model and just get people the hell out of here as soon as they come in. Even if we're wrong, they're at least moving. And what people want to feel like is they're moving. People want to feel like they're better. They don't want to feel like they're moving because now everyone is kind of in transit, as you mentioned, between specialists and family doctors and different agencies. And in the worst case, you're still not getting a diagnosis. You don't know what's wrong with you

and your condition is deteriorating. You're not contributing to the economy. It makes your family life more difficult. All these things, none of which, to bring it back to the beginning of the show, should be part of the Canadian way of life. And we've been sold this false bill of goods when it comes to these golden geese. I don't know what the fix is, but I know it's not the way we're doing things now. Now, we've been blackpilling here. I don't know if you know that, but I know it's not the way we're doing things now. Now, we've been blackpilling here. I don't know if you know that term or not, but we've been blackpilling here for the last 45 minutes. Blackpilling is when you're talking about all the things, all doom and gloom. We're going to stop with the doom dealing for now.

And let's wrap up with a couple of bright spots here. Just one sec. I've got to say one thing. Go. You talked about the hernia, private clinic. Well, Jack layton used that after all the talk check out buzz hardgrove forward head of the caw when his name you said your knee was torn you know acl yeah ask how many people got in and out within a week

he did if we don't this farce that we don't have a two-tiered system is absolutely a red herring. As I said, there's certain occupations, certain politicians that can do it, that have a two-tiered system. If you think a professional athlete, if one of the Maple Leafs needs something, you don't think he's getting it quicker than the year wait list for orthopedic. So I just, let alone all the other farce about that private care debate, when your doctor's office is private, for goodness sakes, chances are the x-ray people have a private clinic. There may be an MRI private, depending on where you are in the country. You know, it's been a farce and that's really the challenge. We've allowed BS and nonsense to dominate this debate. And finally, it's catching up with Canadians in general,

not just specifically, but in general. I've enjoyed seeing it catch up. I mean, the thing I want to close with, you know, on Money Talks, first of all, people are not listening to Money Talks. They should be. I tell our guests this fairly frequently because I always say like,

man, I heard this on Money Talks last week. We got to talk about this. The show revolves around two things, okay? Aussie jerks, bad jokes, and ways to protect your wealth. And you guys have done such a good job over the years. I've heard uranium. I've heard gold. I'm on there talking about Bitcoin. You got guys talking about real estate, guys talking about small caps, guys talking about foreign investment, domestic investment, energy, you name it, anything. What does Mike Campbell think? You're always asking the questions. Now, I get to ask you, what do you think over the next 10, 15, 20 years? We're talking about a

generational shift here in the way people think both about wealth and about protecting it. Because now you're not just protecting it from the markets, Mike. I think you're trying to protect it from the government too. So what do you think? Number one, if you think the government's coming to the rescue, you don't have any evidence that's going to work for you. I mean, they caused the healthcare problem. They caused the housing problem. They caused the inflationary problem that's troubled for so many people. I mean, I think it's delusional to think government's going to all of a sudden transform itself and get accountable and get results. It hasn't, you know, it's just, let's get real. So that's one. Secondly, so what does that mean? We're in a monetary shift here right now, and you better be protecting yourself. And the number one issue is how we

measure our wealth, which is money. Well, the money is being debased. You know, when they came out with the capital gains change and I thought, what a farce that there's a debate about that, but there's also debate about whether you gained any money. So if you bought a house, for example, in 1990 for 400,000, sold it today for 870, you didn't make a cent in terms of what you could buy with that. Because it takes 850 to $870,000 today to buy what 400,000 bought in 1990. Well, that and we

could break down every year for that, by the way, you know, it takes $1 today, what 54 cents bought in the year 2000. Well, that's a huge problem. So the number one issue is how do you protect yourself? So that's why we were cheerleaders for gold, you know, big time, never stopped. And that's because I'm not a trader. I'm personally not a trader. I want to be positioned in the right stuff. So as you know, I liked Bitcoin. I still don't trust government by the way on it. So I'd like to have an exposure. I call that even though it may end up doing it's done very well but government i still don't trust the whole reason that people buy bitcoins they don't trust government i still don't trust government on

bitcoin uh you know i i like it but i don't trust the government's impact with it just like we've seen with housing come on housing is a cash cow for government. That's my reservation about housing now, you know, as an investment, sorry, as an investment. But I mean, gold is money. Bitcoin is a substitute, a newer one for sure. Obviously, I like commodities. I think in the end, I think oil could have another dip here, by the way. But in the end, we've learned this lesson. I hope we need energy.

And if you need energy, you need nuclear. So I'm always on, and we we've made, we've made a lot of money on nuclear. We started a long time ago saying, but it wasn't some deep thought. It was, oh, you want clean energy? You know, you don't want emissions. Oh, I've got something it's called nuclear and it's worked for about 30 years. You know, gee, that's a deep thought. It was just simply aligning with it and aligning. And I still, as I say, we're not off of fossil fuels for, I mean a great example of investment is I don't look for things I agree with. I look for things, what I think people are doing. So I knew we were going renewable, whether it didn't make sense or how much sense it made. Oh, that meant copper shortages, you know? And so longer term, I still like copper, you know, you need it for electrification. And

plus we've got whatever percentage of the world is it 80 don't have sufficient energy with a huge percentage have no electricity at all all of those themes i think are still in play you know amongst government printing up a ton of money and one final thing because it's a warning um i think owning long-term government bonds is really dangerous and one of the most peculiar things you're seeing right now in the market, and people should be aware of this, and we talked about it on Money Talks, which is the Bank of Canada, as you alluded to, will lower rates again this week. You know, whether it's a half, most people are saying a half.

We've already lowered them 75 basis points, you know, three quarters of a percent. Well, why is the long-term bond going up? Why are long-term rates going down with it? In the States, it's very clear. Since the Federal Reserve dropped their rates in September by half a point, the 10-year bond is up. The yield is up six-tenths of a percent. Why is that? People are confused because in the

end, and this is going to be a huge key component, I may need to borrow money, but you don't need to lend it to me. And that's why central banks jump in. They've done it. People may recall this. They did that in Great Britain. They had a pension crisis, I think it was October 22. Well, they came up with 60 billion pounds in an hour. Nobody else wanted those bonds. Silicon Valley Bank, what happened? They needed to liquidate. Well, sorry, we don't want to buy any of those. So again, the problems start. That I still think is a big problem, but that's why I'm convinced of the devaluation of the currency. Do you know, I didn't plan on saying this, but since we're talking about bonds, I'm going to look this up quickly.

Do you know what Tether is, Mike, the stable coin? Are you familiar with any of this stuff? Okay, so Tether has an insane amount of US treasury holdings and they refuse to buy anything longer than 90 day. They are closing in on $110 billion in short-term treasury notes. And sometimes I think to myself that like, you know, you're going to start to see countries too, by the way, pick up these indicators that

something is not right on the horizon. And the speculative attack you're going to see is going to intensify. And we've seen it in Bitcoin a few times already with guys like Saylor taking equity in his company and buying more Bitcoin and just running this hamster wheel that seems to be working so far. Tether doing it is a different story because you're going right to the source, taking the interest from those 90-day notes and buying a digital currency that's there because they don't trust that you can do anything past, in their case, 90 days with any sort of... They don't trust that you can do anything past, in their case, 90 days with any sort of... They don't have faith in them past three months, basically. But let me give you two things on that. One is if you had just said they were buying US

treasury, I'd be going, oh no. But they're doing it exactly and recognizing that there's a liquidity risk. I think they're right. People ask, oh, it's a U.S., you know, the big sovereign bond problem. Oh, is the U.S. going to go bankrupt or assist? No, they're not. They've shown us what they're going to do. They've shown us the central bank will print the money. I mean, I've got, I gave you two examples. I can give you 52. Okay. So that's one thing. Here's the other thing that I don't think is being noticed. So how come the US dollar is still up? How come we just had a report that there was record amounts of US treasuries held? What they didn't get, it was short term. It used to be long-term treasuries. So not what you've

seen is, I looked at the account of the Grand Caymans for God's sakes, you know, and small, fast money, things like you're discussing, oh, we'll buy 30 days or 90 days. That's why it looks like there's bigger treasury holdings. No, it's very precarious. It's very short term coming out of these hot money places replacing, let's go back 10 or 20 years replacing. Yeah, we buy them for 10 years or 20 years and we hold them that's not the case anymore no it's the us t bills have been unloaded down to the short term and and sorry

i mentioned easer low head of the parliamentary budget office this is going back in november of 220 when interest rates were like under two percent and I said to him, well, why aren't we selling long-term bonds? He said, because you need to have a buyer. And we did not have a buyer. It wasn't that they didn't want to, they couldn't. That's so bad. It is so, so precarious is the right word. You used it. It really is like, we are dancing on a knife's edge. That's a good place to wrap. That's why the episode's called This Can on the Brink. Mike, you've been great as always. Tell people, as if they don't know already,

Mr. Most Syndicated Show, but tell them where they can find you, about Money Talks, all that good stuff. The floor is yours, sir. Well, I'd quickly say, if you need a headache, things are going too well, just listen to me, as I've proven.

But you know what? You should go to mikes money talks.ca Mike's money talks.ca. You can get, you can sign up. We have a newsletter called five, five minutes with Mike. That's free. And I just throw tidbits. What I do is I assess what's, what should be known, or it's important to know and what's not in the mainstream. Cause keep in mind people who are in the mainstream, very rare, rarely understand economics or finance, especially on a macro level. So you can fill in the blanks there. So go to Money Talks tweets.

I tweet a ton of stuff. Yeah. Just because I haven't seen it elsewhere. And then you can discuss. I don't want to change anybody's mind about anything. I don't care. I really don't. You know, but you should have the information. anybody's mind about anything. I don't care. I really don't.

But you should have the information. It's the old line, give the people the facts and democracy is safe. We don't give them the facts. There's many times we don't. So go to Money Talks Tweets, Michael Campbell's Money Talks on Facebook. We produce Money Talks once a week that you can find on Mike'sMoneyTalks.ca. This coming weekend, you mention him, it's Martin talks.ca this coming weekend. You mentioned him. It's Martin Armstrong. Is it really? Wow. Good timing. Election coming up. That'd be great. That'd be great. Okay. You got to tell Martin though, make sure his phone's off. If I have to listen to one

more Martin Armstrong interview where his phone's going off, he's got that, excuse me, boss. Is that a text message? Well, I've been to his office, you know, down in Florida, and he's got like nine screens. I'm not saying it's his claim to fame. The Washington Journal called him the highest paid financial advisor in the world. He still advises around the world. But what was so pioneering for him is he understood that currencies were the key and international flows were the key to understand. So we've come to understand that a lot more. You know, as money, you know, Europe gets nervous, they pour money into the US. That's why we have been bullish.

I was looking back for some other reason today. We have literally been bullish on the US dollar since 2009 and the US stock market. And again, I'm not talking trading. Inevitably, it had to go up because cash was coming in from the rest of the world. I mean, we may not like the US, but do you think it's safer than Europe? I think so. You know, that's the key. Certainly safer than anything in South America, in Africa.

So it's the beneficiary that way. So he was the pioneer in looking at the global currency capital flows. And so, yes, he's got like all these screens around him. And they go go bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I interviewed him once where I called bingo during it because I was sure I had won by then. I look forward to it. If you guys are not tuned in to Money Talks, you're missing out. That's been Mike Campbell. Thanks, everyone, for listening, watching.

We will see you on the next one.