The Paikin Podcast - Everything Political: Is It Time to “Cancel” Billionaires?

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Linda McQuaig joins the Everything Political panel with former MPs Martha Hall Findlay and Tony Clement to discuss her book, “Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax,” whether billionaires should exist, how current levels of inequality can lead to “revolution,” how Canada’s tax system needs to change, the politics around bringing in a wealth tax, and if it would cause the rich to leave Canada. They also discuss the alternate option of a universal basic income, the problem with philanthropy and foundations in Canada, and the growing conservative support for a wealth tax.Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcastFollow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE:    / @thepaikinpodcast  SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznC...X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Well, I see that one of us came properly dressed today. Tony Clement, congratulations to you. You have caught the spirit of the moment. Okay, stand up a little bit so we can see that Team Canada logo. There we go, which he's wearing with pride. And that is from, that's not Olympics, right? What's that from? No, this is for the Four Nations Cup last year.

I do have an Olympic jersey as well, but it's in the wash. It's in the wash. I've been wearing it. I've been wearing it a lot. Save that one for the gold medal game, which, God willing, our team is in against the evil empire, and we win again. Wouldn't that be nice? That would be rather nice, yes.

Let's get ready to talk about everything political. Everything political, presented by Bruce Power. Delighted to welcome back, our ex-parliamentarians, Tony Clement, the former federal and Ontario cabinet minister from the Conservatives, and former Liberal Member of Parliament, Martha Hall Finley, who's now head of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. And our special guest this week, Linda McQuag. She has a new book out called Cancelling Billionaires before they cancel us,

urgent case for a wealth tax. Linda, great to see you again. How's life these days? Well, it's very good. And it's great to be with you, Steve. Delighted to have you on board. Let's start with the title of your book, frankly, because what specifically I want to know is the canceling of us that you are referring to in the title of the book? Well, I'm referring basically to the problem that we have tremendous wealth being generated these days. But all the benefits are pretty much going to the top. And, you know, this is a really dramatic change in society from where we were a few decades ago. It has always been a big gap between the rich and the poor, but it's just gotten bigger and bigger. And so we're at the

stage now where, you know, the wealthiest 1% of Canadians, in the last decade of gone from having 18% of the national wealth to 26%. I mean, all the money is going to the top, all the benefits of this wealth creation are going to the top. And that's driving some very serious problems, one of which, by the way, is the affordability crisis. We hear all about people not being able to afford things. What that is, what that boils down to is a lack of money on the part of middle and working class people. So you're making the case, sure, you're making the case in this book for a new wealth tax. Let's just pick that apart a little bit. How wealthy would you have to be in Canada in order to be eligible for the wealth tax? Very good question to start

with. Because the wealth tax that we have in mind, and by the way, I've written this book with Neil Brooks, who's a well-known tax scholar in Canada, we want to target the very wealthy, Okay. So unless you have $25 million in net worth, forget about it. The wealth tax won't touch you at all. So 25 million. Anybody with 25 million is... Not on this call, I don't think. Well, I don't think. Maybe, maybe. But we're talking about a very small group of Canadians and a very lucky group of Canadians have that kind of money. And even then, we only want to talk. tax them at a rate of 1% a year on their wealth and only above 25 million. So if let's say you have 26 million and you only pay 1% on that 1 million of wealth. So the point is, and we gradually raise the tax like to 2% above 50 million, 3% above 100 million,

all the way up to 8% above a billion. But the truth is that people with a billion, the rate at which their wealth is growing is typically more than 8% a year anyway. So it's not even digging into their overall wealth. You think they'd barely notice it, actually? They would barely notice it. Okay, so let's figure out what that would do to the books.

Just let me make the final point about this. Even though this tax is really quite modest. It could generate $40 billion a year, which would give us all kinds of opportunities to do lots of things. So big upside. Well, it slices the deficit in half for starters, right? Well, I'm not saying that we would necessarily put it straight to the – for one thing, you could reduce taxes for other people if you wanted to. You could make all kinds of contributions to our social programs, to actions to deal with climate. change all kinds of things, right? The benefit, public transit, I mean, you name it. There's all

kinds of things we could usefully spend that money on. Let's bring our ex-parliamentarians into this discussion and find out what they think about it. Martha, what say you? Well, first, I think the intention is fine. I think we do see a significantly increasing disparity. This is global. It's not just Canada. But I would say two things. One, that money will be raised only if people stay here. So we do globally know that wealthy people tend to move away if they're going to be taxed significantly differently

in one jurisdiction than another. I would say one thing that I've been really interested in in the last number of years is the number of various, wealthy people who have simply made conscious choices to give their money away to causes. And what I find interesting about that, and I would love to encourage that more, is there's a lot of concern about how we actually spend our tax money. There are an awful lot of people who are, you know, of middle income who are also pretty ticked off at how they feel their tax money is.

not being spent efficiently or effectively by their respective governments. And this could be provincial, municipal, federal, across the board, I think there's real concern. So I, one, I'd be, I'd be worried a little bit about the flight risk. Two, not happy but that, you know, you're Canadian, you don't want people to stay. But two, I think there are potentially other ways to encourage people who have lots of money to be able to invest or participate in things other than just handing it to some anonymous tax spending effort. Okay, let's get Tony Clement and his feedback. Yeah, Linda, first of all, thank you for co-writing this book.

I think it's important that we have these discussions in our society. And now I'm going to blow all your minds and agree with her substantively on what she's talking about. We have a big problem in our society and societies where the rich have gotten substantially richer. And this creates all sorts of problems in our society, including extremism. I would say it's one of the things that happens when you've got these big differences. And people losing faith in institutions, losing faith. faith, you know, I think Linda's already passed the gate, but losing faith in capitalism, you know, and so I look at this and I say, yeah, this is a real problem. And there have to be

solutions. So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is when I look at this, I see this as an externality created by market failure. The fact that we do not. not have in many instances a competitive marketplace that is supposed to exist in capitalism. And that creates problems. So we have, and Linda, I think will agree with me. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I think we have a problem with oligopolis in our society. We have had great innovation in our societies now as part of the AI revolution.

but they are being driven by, you know, seven companies from around the world, right? And that is creating problems as well. So I would look at this as a way to deal with anti-competitive behavior better in our society. You know, they call it in the United States antitrust. We call it anti-competitive behavior. It's the same thing. And so are there ways that? that we can encourage competition, encourage new entrance.

When I was industry minister, I set aside spectrum for new entrants in the telecom field because I was concerned that the big incumbents like Rogers and Bell tell us are soaking up too much capital and there's no room for a new entrant to be competitive. So these are problems in our society that I think Linda has hit the nail on the head. She's looking at it from the point of view of here's what the effect is. What I'm saying is let's try to get to what is causing this and try to fix that as well. Well, I'm tempted to ask Linda as the first follow up here, is your head about to explode, given that now you know Tony Clement agrees with you on this?

But I'll leave that question aside. I'll leave that aside for now. Let's follow up on Martha's first point here, which is, you know, this is an argument we do hear a lot, which is that if you tax rich people too much, they will simply leave. What does the evidence tell us about that? Well, okay, interestingly, it is true that we hear that all the time. In fact, that becomes the key argument against a wealth tax. The truth is, first of all, the rich always threatened to leave. They don't often actually leave. And one of the reasons they don't, in Canada, for instance, we have an exit tax.

People don't seem to realize this. But if you want to leave and take your assets out of the country, you're perfectly fine to do so. But you face a hefty exit tax. And that is that when you move assets, capital gains, all your capital gains become taxable. Just like when you die, when you die in Canada, your capital gains that have escaped taxation all your life are taxable. It's deemed realization at death. The same thing is true when you exit the country. That's not popularly known.

But because of that, it's not that easy for the rich to just pack up and leave. And the same is true, by the way, in the United States, if an American leaves, they face a significant exit tax. I'm sure you recall that Senator Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren proposed wealth taxes for the United States. And they had additional exit taxes attached to them. So in fact, just that whole problem of the rich leaving. My first point is the rich don't actually leave that off. Partly because one of the great things about being wealthy is you get to live where you want to live. And whether the cost of living is high or taxes are high, you live there because your family's there, your friends are there, your business is there.

So, in fact, the rich don't leave nearly as much as is reputed to be. And secondly, there's actually an exit tax that would deter them from doing so. Okay. What about Martha's other point that at the moment, you know, there are wealthy people who either through foundations or other means give a lot of money to philanthropy. and would this affect that? Well, interestingly, we have two chapters on philanthropy, because philanthropy is in fact kind of a problem. It's a problem in that it seems like it's all about the wealthy giving things away,

and to some extent it is. But in fact, because of the tax benefits available, particularly to very wealthy people, in fact, the cost of philanthropy are shifted heavily on to the Canadian electorate. So for instance, you know, recently held Jackman, the Jackman family donated $80 million in philanthropy to have the U of T law school named after it. Biggest donation ever, I think, to the law school. Yeah. But in fact, the real cost to the Jackmans was not 80 million. It was more like probably in the range of 15 or 20 million because of the tax benefits they got back as a result of that. So in fact, what that means is that, you know, most of the costs of philanthropy are born by the public at large. Okay. And I mean, another thing about philanthropy is that, you know, most of philanthropy are born by the public at large.

Okay. And I mean, another thing about philanthropy that's a real problem is that most philanthropy ends up in the private foundations of the wealthy, of well-to-do families. There's something like 7,000 private foundations in Canada that are set up by wealthy families. And in those foundations are something like a 107 billion of assets that sit there year after year and aren't paid out. In fact, they're only required to pay out five to disperse 5% a year to working charities. So what that means is tens of billions of dollars of Canadian money that's, gotten all this Canadian tax benefit is sitting in these private foundations, controlled by these wealthy families, very little of it actually is paid to the charities that are really doing

good work to help Canadians. In fact, we looked at the 50 top private foundations in Canada. We did a little study of them and showed, oh, first of all, how little money comes out because they're only required to pay out a little bit. And when it does come out, where it goes tends to be not the same priorities as ordinary Canadians would have almost, you think of the charity as helping the poor. Almost none of it goes to the poor. Most of it goes to, you know, universities, hospitals, opera houses, places like that where the wealthy can have their names plastered all over the building and get attention from their friends. So we actually argue in the book that private foundations should be wound down and the money that more than $100 billion that's stored in

them should be paid out to act of charities in Canada. Totally. Let me get Martha Hall-Findley to respond to all of this because you've now heard Linda react to your initial concerns. Yeah. Well, first off, I think there are an awful lot of universities and hospitals in Canada that have benefited immensely from that kind of philanthropy. And the numbers may not be the same as what's actually sitting in the foundations. But I think the system may not be perfect, but it does benefit some of those things tremendously.

And they actually benefit people who may not have a lot of money because the more on opportunity is, I'm a bit biased. I work at a university. But tuition for students is a huge problem. And if there is more available to the university, I know in our case, an awful lot of philanthropy goes to scholarships for students.

Well, that's directly helping people who actually don't have the wherewithal to do it. I'm not saying it's perfect, Linda. I'm taking a little bit of exception to, you know, this money is all going to foundations and it's only going to universities and hospitals. I would say those activities, in fact, benefit lower income people tremendously. I would also say, you know, the exit tax, you know, it doesn't really. make a difference if some of these wealthy people and a lot of them already do already have massive assets outside of Canada. I would prefer many of our wealthiest pay a fraction of the

percentage on their income than then, you know, dare I say you and I do, because they are, a lot of their assets are not actually held in Canada, a lot of their opportunities, a lot of their businesses might be somewhere else. So, it's a bit simplistic to say, well, listen, there's an exit tax because I think we already have a tax system that isn't doing its job. I would much prefer to see us get rid of some of the loopholes to get rid of some of the challenges that we already have in the tax system, the opportunities to avoid it where we have. Notice I didn't say evade. I just said avoid. But those legal opportunities, I think there's lots more opportunity to tighten that down. I do not disagree for a minute that the wealthy in this country should be paying their fair share.

You would agree they should be paying their fair share. Oh, absolutely. I just think there are ways to do it without putting something on top that might frighten people away. I think we need to do a better job of managing the whole system. But can I just say, Martha, the problem is the tightening you're talking about, and I'm all for that, of course, that's through the income tax, okay? But as I was saying, the wealthy are able to largely avoid the income tax, okay? Because they're able to finance their lavish lifestyles basically by borrowing,

borrowing using their, yes, that's right, by borrowing by using their wealth as collateral, that's what they do. You may be surprised, but that is what the wealth is. No, no, but borrowing creates debt. You can't, you actually need income. Well, no. At some point, right? No, no.

No, no. If you're borrowing from private banks that are very glad to lend you money because you're using them as a place to store your money, they are more than happy to lend you money. They are more than happy to lend you money at very low rates of interest. And with those, and that is way better for you financially than cashing in your capital gains that you would have to do otherwise because that's the source of your wealth. you'd have to do that to finance your lavish life cells. They don't do that. If you talk to tax experts that work in this field, they will tell you that. So as a result of that, as a result of that, the wealthy are able to largely avoid the income tax.

But the income tax act deals with capital gains. Capital gain is a form of income, right? Yes, yes. So I'm saying the tax act, our entire tax jerk. approach to Canada. One, we should be way more efficient and way more effective in how we spend it. Because frankly, I think if that were the case, more people would say, yes, I understand why I need to pay tax because we're doing all these important things with it. But on the other hand, I think we can significantly improve the management of our tax regime, which covers capital gains as well.

Capital gain is an income as well. But just second, Martha, capital gains, when you, when you realize them, when you cash them in, are taxable. Okay, they're taxable at an advantageous rate, but they are taxable in the income tax. If you don't cash in your capital gains, if you instead use your wealth as collateral to borrow and get a huge source of revenue through borrowing through the private banks, you don't interact with the income tax system. Okay? That's why, no, no, don't.

Well, you can't. You can't just live on debt. I wrote this book with Neil Brooks, who's a leading tax scholar. He was head of the graduate program in taxation at Osgood Hall Law School. I actually took a class. I took a class with Neil Brooks in tax. So I have a huge amount of respect for both of you. I'm just saying you can't, it's living on debt ultimately is not tenable either.

But anyway, I'm not going to. Let me get Tony in here for a second on this. An issue was raised earlier. I can't remember Tony if it was you or Linda who raised it. I think it was you. That there are too many people in the country today who are actually because of our tax system and because of the nature of the economy today, losing faith in capitalism altogether. That's a word.

What are you seeing out there that leads you to that conclusion? Well, I just think that the point of view that the system is rigged has become quite a talking point now amongst people. I don't think it's just out of thin air. I think that people genuinely and legitimately feel that it's harder to get ahead. If you're in the middle class, it's more likely that you'll slip down over a generation or two to the lower class rather than slide up to the upper class. That becomes a mirage. And that's just not good for society.

That's when revolutions, you know, happens. So from my point of view, we do have to fix this. And I still think that capitalism or the market or whatever you want to call it is the greatest place to create new things and innovation and wealth creation. It's just as Linda has pinpointed, the wealth creation is all going to a subset of people. I prefer a system where everybody gets, the high tide lifts all the boats, not just 25% of them. So that's what I think the problem is. And people are expressing it in different ways. We're seeing a reassembling in the United States.

There's just reading an article in the hub about this, a reassembling in the United States of conservatism. But we're also seeing reassembling in the United States of what would be, you know, know, the opposite of that, the idea of more redistributive politics. And it's all happening because the system isn't working very well. So this is the horseshoe theory of politics, right? Where the left and the right are sort of coming together. You know, there's on some of these issues around unfairness. Donald Trump agreed with Bernie Sanders on some stuff, you know, so he did indeed. So that that to me is an indicator. It's a canary and a coal mine that, you know, if you believe. that that that will lead to extreme results, either on the left or the right, and you want to

avoid that. We're not doing a very good job of avoiding that. Well, here, I mean, the name of this show is everything political. So I want to get to the political angle on this. And Linda, I don't mean this to sound like a naive question, but I think it bears asking, which is to say, under your system or other examples of wealth taxes that I've seen advanced, you know, probably 99.99% of either Canadians or Americans are not going to pay them, which you would think in politics, any issue where 99.99% of the people are on one side and 0.01% of the people are on the other side,

that's an issue you can probably champion. And yet there seems to have been zero progress made on this idea on either side of the border. Why not? Well, okay, that's a very, very good point. And in fact, polls even show that you ask Canadians, almost 90% or something like 88% in fact favor a wealth tax in principle, the idea of a wealth tax aimed at the very wealthy. So why doesn't it ever get onto the political agenda?

Well, I think to some extent that that underlines or illustrates the enormous power of the wealthy to keep it off the agenda, despite how enormously popular it is. Can I just say, but by the way, Steve, there is more. progress on the idea of a wealth tax than we might be aware of. Certainly, in Europe, there's quite a push in certain circles. There's a group of economists led, of course, by the famous Thomas Piquetti, that have developed the idea of a new type of well tax, unlike the earlier well taxes that they had in Europe that were deemed to be failures largely because their thresholds were too low. So they hit people that were really upper middle class. And therefore, just as you were saying,

we're unpopular, unpopular with some very influential political people. These new wealth taxes are aimed much more specifically at the very wealthy. In fact, Gabriel Zuckman, a big advocate of the wealth tax, a leading economist in Europe, argues for a wealth tax just for billionaires. In fact, the idea of a wealth tax has gained some traction, even unbelievably in the United States, with the dominance of billionaires down there. In fact, probably because of that. You know, we now see in California a move to get a wealth tax on the ballot as a ballot initiative. We're also seeing in New York. We've just seen the election of this incredible new mayor, Mandami, who's favoring higher taxes on the rich, and there were all kinds of threats that was going to destroy New York

City. It doesn't seem to have happened yet. So I guess I'm just saying, I think there are moves afoot. And if we could ever get a kind of coalition of interest that would benefit from the wealth tax and would be behind it to really put a political effort behind it, I think it could catch on enormously if people were more aware of it. So I do think that there's some, I think it's an idea whose time is coming. The question is how quickly we'll get there. Yeah, I'm going to jump in for a second here because I want to have our parliamentarians respond to what was taking place in the House of Commons during the time they were there and whether this idea was ever advanced or had legs. But before we do that, Linda, we have a funny thing here in capitalism called Keeping the Lights

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C and Canada's clean energy future at this website, brucepower.com. Okay, Tony, come on in here and tell us whether, when you were in cabinet during the Stephen Harper years, did anybody discuss the idea of potentially bringing in a wealth tax? If they did, how far did it go? Help us out with that. Yeah, no, that was not specifically the direction, but the direction was, and I was kind of leading the charge as Minister of Industry in my time there, find ways to be more consumer-friendly against the oligopoulists.

And so I mentioned already the case of the telecom industry and allowing new entrants like public mobile and wind mobile, etc, to have specific spectrums set aside for them so they could go compete. And, you know, things like that were, our opposition to the Netflix tax is another good example of that because that would that would help the cultural sector but it was dinging people who were of modest means and so it's interesting I mean Stephen Harper was a you know had this very deep populist part of the base of the conservative party and you'd swear this would be a winner with that part of the base yeah and why why was

nobody championing because that was that was 20 years ago Steve oh so I think things things have changed. The problem's gotten a lot worse. The problem's gotten a lot worse. Linda's right. I think Linda's best chance of getting some changes to the tax system and changes to the structure of her economy are with a conservative government. I really do believe that. I don't think you're going to get that from Mark Carney and the liberals. for discussing this kind of an idea, a wealth tax?

So not really, but I actually agree with both Linda and Tony. I would say the problem has become much worse. This is global. Remember, this is not just Canada. And so it has become more and more people have become aware of just how much the disparity is increasing. And I'm with Tony and agreeing that this is creating more and more. concern. There are figures, public figures who are frankly capitalizing on it, pardoning the pun, but capitalizing on increasing discontent, maybe too much so. So we're really seeing

some real, some increasing discontent in society at large, again, globally. What we talked about more, Steve, when I was there, was the concept of a universal income. So it was not focused on the wealthy, it was really focused on how do we make sure that the folks who are at the lower income, lower end of the income spectrum were kept more whole, right? Now, of course, that begs the question. Where does the revenue come to make sure that you can do that? I don't disagree with that at all. And so I go back to the agreement with both Tony and Lynn. And I think this is a very interesting thing. I don't think that we would have seen this 20 years ago. I think it's absolutely, you know, this is it, this is becoming, more and more people are becoming more of the problem.

I would say to Linda, it's not any one particular party that is going to do this. I think the success of something like this is to have the general public know more about just how challenging this has become, just how frustrating the level of disparity has become, to get public opinion to support all of our politicians, to look at this more closely. There are issues in this country where we've actually had commonality or at least pretty close to commonality and I think those are areas

where we've seen the greatest success. I think public health in the long run has been something that we're all very, very proud of as Canadians, for example. I think a fairer tax system could actually generate maybe not all party support but multi-party support.

And for me, that would be really extraordinary if we could accomplish something working together. Linda, I'd like your view on Tony's assertion that we're more likely to get a wealth tax from a conservative party than from a liberal government. What's your view? Well, I'm certainly delighted to hear that. I hadn't heard much support for the idea coming out of the conservative party, but I'll take it wherever it comes. And can I just say that Tony's comments, you know, are not only very surprising to me, but they're very well received.

I think your opening comments were eloquent about the problem of wealth concentration today. You defined it extremely well. So whether or not this is an issue for the parties yet, See, one of the reasons it doesn't become an issue for the parties. Of course, you know, the public would get behind it, up to 90% of Canadians support it. But billionaires are very rich and powerful, and they tend to have a very big influence on political parties. Yeah, but they can't give money in Canada the way they can in the United States. We don't have a citizens united here.

They are limited to how much money they can give. Absolutely correct. Okay, and that's an important difference. But the wealthy influence politics and policies in so many different ways that aren't just directly through the political system, through their control and ownership of the media, through their think tanks,

through their influence over investment decisions, through all their impact on, Their impact on planning councils and lobbying. They have enormous, we sort of go into the list of all the ways they can influence politics in the book. The point is, you know, yes, we're lucky. We are not nearly as vulnerable as they are in the states because of their wide open doors for money and politics. but they still have an important footprint in very important influence in politics. But can I, I just want to also, Steve, can I quickly just sort of address, like Tony was making

the point that, you know, capitalism isn't so bad and that, you know, people are losing faith in it. And can I just say, you know, I agree with that. Like, in other words, capitalism comes in many different forms, right? Or markets, if you want to say, can come in many different forms. You know, they have market economies in the Nordic countries. And they're very... Market economies in China brought, you know, hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Absolutely. And let's not forget. Like Tony's talking about how we're losing faith in capitalism here. I completely agree that that's a danger. We're losing faith in all our institutions and the way our economy functions, all those things. If you look back to the early post-war years after the Second World War, there was a much more, it would be wrong to call it a galitarian. We weren't a completely equal society by any means. But the gaps were much less pronounced.

And ordinary people could have a pretty good life. And therefore, they had a lot of confidence in the system. They respected the way our economy worked. They respected the institutions of society. And as we, and by the way, back then, we had very high taxes on the rich and very strong economic growth. Let me pluck a little piece out of your book here, because here was a quote that was unknown to me and therefore I took note. You say in the book, in the early 1900s, leading nations abruptly adopted progressive taxation, forcing the ultra-wealthy to pay taxes

essentially for the first time. This greatly diminished their dominance while adding huge revenues to government coffers, enabling the rise of the social welfare state and creating what had never really existed before, the middle class. Tony, I want to get your view on whether, I mean, you know the politics on Parliament Hill right now. Can this really happen? Well, I think that we are getting to the stage in our discussions in Canada where people, and again, I'm not trying to light a fire here, but people, more people than ever before, think the system is either rigged or broken.

And I know some people don't like hearing that, especially coming from a conservative, but that is a common point of view that I hear time and time again, young people trying to buy a house, anybody trying to buy groceries, middle class people in my communities who need the food bank. None of this is good, okay? Like, how could you be in politics and think that this kind of status quo is what we want as a country. We don't want this as a country. We are rich in so many ways, including the richness of our peoples. So gosh, what the heck has to change? And I think that the appetite for something

meaningful is higher. Now, I went through politics for 25 years, Steve, and one of my sayings was people vote for change. They don't vote for chaos. So I'm not voting. I'm not advocating. chaos, but something's got to change here. Well, let's find out from Martha Hall-Finley whether she thinks the current liberal government led by a man who, I guess it needs to be said, was once a pretty big deal at one of the richest companies in the world, Brookfield, whether he should be the guy we're looking to to bring in a kind of a billionaire's tax in order to help the bottom line of the country. What do you think? Well, I think Mark Carney first has been pretty capable of recognizing his role as

Prime Minister of the country. Look at some of the positions he's had to take from an environmental perspective that he did not have before. I give him huge credit for being able to recognize the pragmatic realities of what we're dealing with in Canada on a number of fronts. I would say, Linda, I don't think we're going to get anywhere by continuing to say the wealthy or awful and their lobbying and they're, you know, I think, I do think that there is, especially among Canadians, a recognition of the importance of what we do and contribute to this country. So vilifying anybody, I don't think is very helpful. I think rather than saying, you know, whatever we do, you're going to have all these lobbies and all this influence, let's recognize we're democracy and votes matter.

And there are a number of issues where the voters have made their positions and their concerns known, and I think have had significant influence on where the politicians actually go. So I will go back to the more the public is aware of this, the more some of the wealthy of our country really are engaged in terms of understanding just how unfair this feels like it's becoming, that there are opportunities there. I totally agree that this is a moment. If anything, I'm not here to give advice to the liberals. I'm significantly less partisan than Tony. And Tony and I had a fun chat about that the other day when we were in Ottawa.

But I'm not as partisan and I'm not here to give advice to the Liberal Party. But what I would say is listen to what Tony Clement is saying. Listen to what conservatives are saying. And they're saying they're developing. significant support from parts of our society. For example, you know, factory workers that used to be 100%, you know, NDP, whatever, not so much anymore. And young people and people on the lower end of the income spectrum are increasingly turning to conservatives.

So, you know, from a liberal perspective, if I were in that role right now, I'd be looking at, well, what's causing that? and how are we losing that support and how do we regain it? And one of those areas of support might be because there's a sense of unfairness and a growing sense of unfairness. I would also point out, yes, this was happening in the early 1900s because people were seeing what was happening in places like Russia, right? And it wasn't just a tax on wealth over those decades that actually created the opportunity for more social welfare, more middle class. it was taxation writ large, right? That was also brought on significantly by World War I and World War II.

So it wasn't just, oh, maybe we should tax the rich. It was a system of taxation across all of our economic activity. And some countries were just more progressive, if you will, than others. Linda, let me give you the last word on this. Well, I just want to say, first of all, Martha, I'm not saying the rich are awful. Those are not my words. I'm saying they are extremely, they're extremely powerful. They have an enormous ability to influence policies through things like their control and ownership of the media and, you know, think tanks, et cetera.

That's not, that's their right to do that in a democracy. but it's the role of government and the people, you know, in a democracy, to not let that power to get out of control. And so my point, you know, a wealth tax in many ways, it's not meant to be punitive towards the wealthy. It's meant to be pragmatic. We have a problem that essentially the wealthy have gotten so far ahead of everyone else. And our income tax system isn't properly capturing that, or isn't properly dealing with that because it doesn't really, it doesn't tax wealth. It taxes capital gains in only a limited way and only if you realize them. So we need a mechanism to deal with this what is essentially really a new problem, this enormous concentration of wealth at the top.

I don't know if you want me to address the changes earlier on. Well, actually, I'm just keeping an eye on the clock here, Linda, and I think what I'm going to do at this stage is to remind people that the name of your book is called canceling billionaires before they cancel us, the urgent case for a wealth tax, which we've been discussing. And now we are going to go to the part of our discussion where we give props to some folks that have actually done some good things in public. public life over the last couple of weeks. We call this segment Good On You. And Tony Clement, why don't you get us started here and tell us who gets your good on you this week. Sure. Well, of course, we were all deeply affected by the shootings in Tumber Ridge. And to see Mark Carney

cancel his trip to Europe, which must have hurt, but he did it. And to go with the leader of the opposition and with the governor general and hold. hold hands with them at the at the memorial service or at vigil in in that community i thought was absolutely striking it was the right thing to do and uh course all the commentary has been you know would that have ever occurred in the united states and the probably answer is no uh so probable answer definite answer uh so so you got to give props where they're due i think the prime minister handled that very well. I also think the leader of the opposition handled it very well, but the point is the prime minister is the leader of the country, and I think he acquitted himself

well. That's Tony's. Martha, what's yours this week? 100%. And so for Tony to say that about the prime minister, I will say the leader of the opposition, both of them. And I, if I can add to, this shouldn't be a thing, but it still kind of is, these were two guys. right, holding hands. That's now, whether it has anything to do with heated rivalry, who knows, you know, here we are, we're Canadian. But in all seriousness, that's a gesture that comes harder for men, I think, still in our society. And so not only is it a good on you to, I mean, the whole group of them, absolutely, right?

This was extraordinary. But I would say for both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, there's almost for me a little, almost a little extra good on you because that, that kind of gesture of holding hands doesn't come easily. And I thought it was really, really poignant and sent in an incredible message. So there you go. Thank you, Martha. Okay, Linda, have you got a good on you for us? Well, I don't know if I can match those. I agree the whole Tumblr Ridge thing and how it brought the country together was very moving. I'll go with something a little more down to earth.

I was rather impressed with the conservative MP Mike Dawson from New Brunswick. Last week, you know, requesting that his pay, his parliamentary pay raise be frozen. Outrageous. which was denounced apparently by the caucus. But, you know, out of sympathy, out of respect for the struggle, ordinary people are going through, it just was a sort of a lovely moment. Good on you to that conservative member of parliament. I want to, if I can sort of use my moderator's prerogative here,

just to give a good on you to a guy who I worked with many, many years ago, who just died this past week. His name was Ellie Alboim. He was 78 years old, and Ellie used to run the Parliamentary Bureau of the CBC, obviously in Ottawa for many, many years, I think about a decade and a half or so. And I never met a smarter guy about politics in my life. This guy was absolutely brilliant. And I'll share one quick story here with you. I think probably four or five days before the 1990 Ontario election night. This was the one where Bob Ray won a majority government over David Peterson, who was the current Premier at that time. Ellie pulled me aside because I was anchoring the CBC's election night coverage, and he said,

I want you to get your head around this notion. This is five days before election day. He said, Bob Ray's going to win a majority, and David Peterson is going to lose his seat. And I said to him, okay, Ellie, you know, you spend all your time in Ottawa and you know the federal scene, but I've lived in Ontario my whole life, and I can tell you that's not going to happen. I mean, yes, David Peterson's going to get kicked down a peg or two, but there's not a chance the NDP is going to win a majority government. And, you know, a premier in Ontario hasn't lost his seat since the 1940s. So thank you for that admonition, but I don't think so. And he said,

well, just start to get your head around that idea, because in Alberta, in their election recently, when the liberals won a seat, somewhere they'd never won before, the anchor was so caught off guard, she actually stood up and said, holy shit, look what's happened here tonight. And I don't want you doing that in this broadcast. Well, son of a gun,

if Ellie didn't know, and if I was full of you, know what, Bob Ray won a majority and David Peterson lost his seat in London Center. And from that moment on, I learned you don't second guess

Ellie Alboim, the guy knows. Anyway, he'll be deeply missed by those who knew him and were so deeply impressed with his intellect and humor.

And yeah. Just a great, great guy. Now, Tony, what, I got a little message here from someone in your fan club, which I want to read to you. Oh, no, wait a second. Wait a second. The exact opposite of your fan club. Okay, sorry, I got that wrong.

This is from a guy named Rick Humphreys who writes, I enjoy your podcast for the most part, but I can't listen anymore to Tony Clement. He is so close-minded. Anything a liberal does is bad. Having a conservative voice is great, but he is not it. You need a conservative voice that is open and, God forbid, is able to agree. with non-conservative views and actions. Sorry, but I will not listen again until he is not on your podcast.

Okay, just so you know, I wrote Rick back and I said, Rick, thank you for the comments. We always love feedback, but I will miss you. We're not getting rid of Tony. But Tony, go ahead. Do you want to respond to Rick? Well, I think, sure, I'd love to. And I do, I actually do appreciate the feedback. And it forces me to sort of check, do a circle check of what I'm saying.

And so it's all good. I don't mind critical feedback. Upon reflection, I think what I want to say to our listeners and viewers is that I am a partisan. I've always been a partisan. I bleed blue. And so that it's hard for me to change that, change it in a way that is authentic, I guess is the way to put it.

I look back at what I've said. I don't think I've said anything. that I disagree with. I haven't said anything just for the sake of being partisan, but I do have a worldview. And I don't mind sharing it on the program. I think if I'm being honest, mainstream media has a posity of true conservative voices. They've, you know, they've got conservative voices. I'm not sure how much they are advancing the movement that is conservatism, but that's, I'm not making that more obvious here today as to whom I mean. But for me, yeah, I wear it on my sleeve.

You know, it's one of the reasons that I'm probably the only person in the concerted party that likes Jerry Butts. Because like he wears it on, he wears it on his sleeve. Everybody knows where he's coming from. There's no, you know, he's not trying to pull a fast one and by the back door, say something. We all know where Jerry's coming. from and I respect that. Well, I should also say this, Tony, and that is that you and Martha, at the end of the show, we always do a, you know, good on you, where you are capable of saying something nice about

the other side, because that's the time for the show when we definitely sort of expect it. And you do it. So there. Yeah. And I think that I think it would be, if I may say, a poorer show if we all agree all the time. What's the fun in that? What's, let's make it dynamic. If I'm the outsider disagreeing with the consensus that Martha has or that you have, that's fine.

Why not have that point of view out there? And why not have a point of view that is represented at the voting stations in the last election on the show? And people are free to disagree. They're free to say, I'm full of, you know what? But that's fine. That makes for a dynamic show. Okay. Let me do a few other things here just before we leave.

We've started up this Patreon page because we want to keep this show free forever. We don't want anybody having to pay for it. And right now it's free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. And we have a Patreon page that we created in case people do want to support what we're doing here because there are costs affiliated with it. We've got a new interview up on our Patreon page. If you become a member, you get some web-exclusive video. So we've got Jeffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist with an interview on the future

of artificial intelligence on education. There's an interview with Robert Picardo, who's one of the stars of the new Starfleet Academy show, which is being shot here in Toronto. There's a place on the Patreon site where you can suggest story ideas and guest ideas to us, and we will take you up on those. And we have a bunch of people who've joined,

and I just want to thank them. And I have their permission to do so. So I want to thank Charles Beer, who coincidentally enough was one of those guys who lost his job in 1990, as a David Peterson cabinet minister when that election went south for the liberals. Charles Beer, thanks for your contribution.

Donald Bigioni, Helen, Fertin, Crabb, Cheryl Davidson, Karen Demers, Denise Howe, Shelley Lewis. You know her, I think, Tony. She hangs out at the Albany Club, yeah. Janine Loring, Seamus O'Connor, Matt Tarigian, Kathy Rizzden, let us sing a song

for good old Mazinaw, Kathy. Claire Roger, who I remember having had on Studio 2 as a guest, she was a jazz singer back in the day. And Claire, thank you for your support on this. Janice Schick, David L. Smith. Now, this is a hockey buddy of mine named David Smith. And what do you think my nickname for him is?

Smitty? Senator. No, I call him Senator, because of course, after the other David Smith, who was a senator, and Andrew Trombly. Okay, we want to thank all of them for joining Patreon this week, and we look forward to saying more names next week. And with that, once again,

Linda McQuag, thanks to you for joining our little gathering this week. Martha and Tony, we'll see you again next time. Peace and love, everybody. Peace and love, everybody. Peace and love. Peace and love.