Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Hi there. Thanks for joining us this very time. Tomorrow, we'll be sitting at a desk and we'll be pouring over what the budget means that will be presented in our legislature tomorrow in Ottawa by Mark Carney. It's a little late and we're hearing that some belt tightening is going to occur and that might lead to a voting down of the budget. Joining me to talk about that today, TPL's very own Nick Dalinsky. Nick, thanks so much for joining us.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: You know, you and I have known each other a lot of years, and just last week, after Having sent you 10,000 emails, I noticed that Nicholas is.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Spelt with a K. That's true. It is with a K. I want.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: To tell you my embarrassment is mounting just telling you about it.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: People have spelled it this way my entire life, so.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Well, the X and S is often mixed up in my name, so there you go.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Well, look, thanks for joining me to talk about this because it's. It's a pretty interesting point in Canadian politics.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. And I, like a lot of Canadians, don't really know the nuts and bolts of this kind of stuff and how this actually works and what to expect, really.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, like you say, many Canadians just let what happens in Parliament happen. But for some reason, this budget is really kind of on everybody's mind. I think mainly because it seems outstanding.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Like, it's almost like something we should have seen.
We had a liberal government. We have a new liberal government. They must have some paperwork they could share with us.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: In that transition, we've seen nothing.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: No, it's all but a mystery. Right?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And then, of course, we. We did a previous episode where we were talking about, you know, how Mark Carney has traveled the world essentially doing diplomacy and handing out a lot of money, about $10.3 billion to various countries for various reasons. And he came back with one. One deal that we can say is documented with Malaysia. Aside from that, not really much to show for it.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: It seems like the consensus is that's pretty bleak. I don't think anyone's expecting to be blown away by this budget. I think everyone is sort of going to be pissed off. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this will usher in the new era of Canadian greatness. But I suspect I'm not as optimistic.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: I don't think many people are optimistic at all, actually. I think that just hearing that we're going to have major infrastructure projects and, you know, at a time where we've lost so much industry has just already vacated Canada that this budget, it means something to Canadians. Okay. So here's what I did.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: I took some notes. I wanted to be diligent about this to make sure that I explained the process properly. Okay. So if the budget is defeated, it means that the government has lost confidence of the House.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Okay. And at that moment, the Prime Minister, he has to make a choice. Either resign and let somebody else try to form a government.
Oh, that's pretty heavy, huh? Yeah. Or to let the Governor general, you know, he approaches the Governor General and asks for an election.
And almost always that means Canadians head to the polls because the Governor General usually says, yeah, okay, go ahead and have an election.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: And nobody in this country wants another election.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Good point. Didn't we just do this so many times under the wrong circumstances?
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It seems like this is a pretty. These elections are, are not very popular.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: So here's what happens at that moment. Parliament stops. Remember, we proronged a government not so long ago.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: We would be doing that again. So, you know, the government shifts into caretaker mode and campaigning begins all over again. So nothing really happens. So here, here's the situation we're in. We're going to get a budget and we almost have to go with it or we stop everything at a crucial point in trade negotiations with the US and go have an election.
Yeah.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: And that's really not what we want right now. We really want to see movement in this country in some regard.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Okay, so here's the other thing that I did. And you know, maybe after the fact we can graphic some of these. I thought to myself, okay, what non confidence votes have we had in, in the history of Canada? And it's an interesting lineup actually. 1926, Mackenzie King's government lost a confidence over a corruption scandal and the Governor General refused dissolution and it led to an election that King later won. So he came back on that.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Were you around then or.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very nice, Nick.
1963, John Diefenbaker's government lost confidence after disputes over nuclear weapons. And election was called and Lester B. Pearson took over with the Liberals. Now here's the one that caught my attention. In 1974, Pierre Trudeau had his budget defeated and Trudeau called an election and guess what he did. He had a minority government and he won the majority for the Liberals.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Okay. So it was sort of a reverse card. He actually.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And in fact, that's the scenario we're in right now. We have a minority Liberal government. If we call a non Confidence vote. You know, Conservatives could lose or the block. Really, who are the two going concerns could lose seats and we end up with a majority government.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Okay, so you think this is the most likely scenario, that this would actually help this non confidence? That would actually help the Liberals?
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Well, there's a lot of discussion about this.
I mean, first of all, will the bloc have a role in this if there's a non confidence vote, will they vote non confidence? I mean they've got a good stronghold right now. They've got a good voice in Quebec at the moment.
They might like to run the status quo at the moment.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: And then Conservatives, you think, okay, this is their chance to go grab a bunch of seats and maybe flip the government.
Not too likely. In most of the ridings where they need the support, they still don't have it.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Okay. They're still too weak to be really going into an election.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Well, they do great in the west, but in key markets in Ontario and Quebec and places like that, no, they would still have a really difficult time, it would seem. I mean, who knows what would happen.
And then the other thing is, well, let's look at the ndp.
They're already starting to give indication that they will abstain from the vote altogether, which makes me absolutely crazy.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Okay, well, why is that?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: I think it makes a lot of. Because it feels cowardly. It feels like they're doing nothing.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: They're just fence sitting.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. And really at a moment where they need to be representing their constituents and showing government that they mean business, if that's what they want to do, they're going to sit there quietly because they don't know which, you know, which side of the table to place or bet.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Okay, so if say abstaining was not allowed, how would they vote?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: You would have to ask them. I mean, I don't know, but it would be great if they did something.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. Would, would you think that they would side with. Well, we don't know the budget yet, so we don't know if they would side.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Well, they're actually talking in the news earlier today. I saw a clip and their, their whole thing is, well, you know, we're going to take the, the budget at face value. We haven't seen it, so we don't know. And da da da, da, da da. They don't seem to have a game plan, you know, that actually feels the same to me with the Conservatives, if I may be honest with you.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: That if they had to be put into an election position at the moment, they'd be Better off complaining about the budget than actually taking an election on at this moment where they may not have any better strategies. They're saying Carney took their plan, so what strategies would they have?
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it seems like.
Well, this is the major complaint from, you know, a lot of sort of typical liberals, people like my parents and things like this, that the conservatives have not really presented any kind of plan or any kind of. They've presented problems but not solutions.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: This is the big criticism, I think it's pretty common, is that Poliev just seems to have a platform of complaining and he gets a lot of support from that because people are not happy with the current state of affairs. So a lot of people side with him, but there's just this other chunk of the population going, okay, well, what have you done for me lately? Polyavies.
What, what's your. What's your solution to this?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: I think as we got less information about what their plan would be in that last election, that's where they started to lose. I mean, the polls for so long showed that Polly have. I think the Trudeau hating.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Was driving those polls, but so many of the illegitimate polls out there. And I say that about many polls, although I think we'll start polling right here because people seem to want to tell the truth to us.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Having said that, the polls were huge for the conservatives, and as we got closer to that election, it wasn't long before we were starting to discover that there wasn't a lot of meat on the bone.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: And especially in their key ridings.
What do you think, Nick, is going to happen if the budget gets voted down? What do you feel? Canadians. Where are Canadians at in their heart about this?
[00:09:12] Speaker A: I really can't say, but I could say that it's.
Well, this whole thing is very dismaying and the whole thing is very.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: You.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Know, it's so negative right now in terms of what this budget will be, and there just seems to be no hope in sight in regards to.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: If Carney gave you some clues about what was going to be in the budget, how would you feel a little bit more relaxed about this?
[00:09:37] Speaker A: I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not a big, you know, maybe not everyone watching would know this, but I tend to. I tend to lean towards the left of the spectrum.
Left of the Liberals.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: And so for me, you know, a liberal budget is probably a lot of. A lot of more neoliberal policy and a lot of status quo kind of stuff that I'm not particularly excited about in general.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: If they start cutting that budget, I wonder if the Liberals do lose, instantly lose votes out there because so many programs, I mean, I don't know what they're going to do except bureaucracy has to become smaller. That's been on the cutting block, I think assumed anyway, since day one.
And then it starts to head toward programs and taxation.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Right, Yeah. I mean, I'm for programs in general.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, programs could include your hospitals and proper care and nutrition, which actually elevate the country.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Of course. Of course. And you know, my biggest complaint, and maybe this is off topic, is just where is the left in Canada in any of this?
Who is speaking for the left in Canada?
We have this NDP party which I don't know what they do. Maybe it's because I'm not in tune, I'm not listening to them closely. But there's this huge, there's this huge desire for economic populism around the world.
I just find it very sad that we see stronger leftism in the states than we do here. There's, you know, Bernie Sanders, aoc, Zoran Mandani getting a lot, getting really popular in the states. He seems unstoppable at this point.
Where, where is the Canadian Bernie Sanders?
[00:11:25] Speaker B: It's so true. We all seem to be standing close to the middle someplace.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: And, and the ndp, you expect to be hanging off the ship on the left so far that they can taste salt water.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: And it doesn't appear that way or they don't have any force of movement.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Is this just strategizing? Is it just that this doesn't seem like a popular time to bring up, say, public housing or perhaps holding the grocery stores accountable, stop them price fixing and shit like this?
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Well, I think the budget needs to show us some clear action. For example, are we putting shovels in the ground, you know, and who's actually holding them accountable now? I think, you know, I don't lean far to the left, although I don't lean far to the right either. I'm almost one of these people standing in the middle with my head spinning, wondering who wants to have an opinion, aside from nobody.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: We seem to have zero opinion on what the government is doing and it seems to be doing very little at the moment, to be honest with you. And then on the, on the opposition side of things, we don't seem to have a lot of solution makers out there.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: No, no, I, I, I seldom see any productive solutions.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: You know, I actually feel that if the NDP doesn't take action in government, it's time for people to really look at them as a party for real. I don't even know if they should be a party if that's the case. Because you go there. Abstaining is such a weak stance to take. It shows your constituents in a lot of ways that you're just non conformist, not a solution maker.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Well, it just seems like it's a. Right now, it just seems to be an anti vote to the Conservatives, I guess. Yeah.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Although they don't profess that, I guess that that's their mainstay. Right. They're not saying, you know, we want to keep conservatives out of power necessarily. They're not saying they want to keep liberals in power.
They're sitting there and they're going for lunch. Yeah, that's what it feels like to me.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, but you know, I felt this way about the NDP for years now. What have you done for me lately? You know, Jagneet Singh, what did he do? What did he say? Did he even say anything?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: I think so many Canadians even feel that he just hung in there to get a pension.
I think that's a common thread among people because as soon as he got that, he's gone. Yeah, well, you know, not even really all that present now with the NDP as a supporter.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Now if, if the ndp, you know, this is hypothetical, the NDP was disbanded, would that, would that leftist mindset carry over to the Liberal Party? Would they have to satisfy the left more with their policies or would it.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Create a more libertarian opening out there where on the right people become more, more extreme and then on the left there's a gap that needs to be filled that becomes a new party of really left thinking people.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Right. And it could also be said that the NDP is sort of splitting the vote a bit from the Liberals. They're actually taking votes away just like the Green Party in the United States. Remember there was the whole fiasco with Ralph Nader and the 2000 election. Stuff like that.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: It feels like a destroyed vote.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: You know, I hate to say that and I know, you know, I think it's easy to be polarizing in politics except right now because none of the parties seem to be have a polar opposite solution.
Then again, we have not seen a budget, we have not seen a plan at all from this government and it's been a lot of months, Nick.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It just seems like a mystery and we've been waiting with bated breath for months now for this budget and I don't know, just feels like it's a ticking time bomb for drama.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Let's make some predictions. What gets cut?
I definitely think bureaucracy gets cut, but not cra.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Oh, of course, of course, of course. And it seems like immigration's on the, on the chopping block.
Say what, Say what you want about that.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: I think we'll be seeing increase in border security expenses and military defense because we've made a lot of commitments out there.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Is this just appeasing Trump?
[00:15:43] Speaker B: This kind of stuff feels like it, yeah. It feels like a NATO, if not Trump, then on the other side it feels like, you know, trying to hold up a NATO promise. I wonder if things will be mentioned, like the status of our military and how it needs to be upgraded and updated.
That's, you know, because we have people living in housing right now who are military personnel that it is unsuitable for them to be living there. They've dropped, I don't know if you know this. Do you know the military dropped the health standards to become a serving member of our military?
[00:16:17] Speaker A: I think they did in the States as well.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: I mean, how.
Who.
I mean, I guess you still have to pass boot camp or something.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, no, you don't have to pass.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: No. And in fact, if you, if you can't do it, they'll put you into a program to get into better fitness, but you will still become a member of the military.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: I mean, if it's, if it means that they have to go to a fitness program, I. If. And you can't find physically fit people, that seems fine.
If we make people fit because of McDonald's and, and sedentary lifestyle, I could see that this is an adjustment to, you know. Okay, well, now we have to actually put them on, you know, the Jillian Michaels workouts.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Okay, well, if that's what's gonna happen.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, if that's necessary, then sure.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Jillian Michaels.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah, the Jillian Michaels. Remember those?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Of course, the 20 minute workout.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, the 20 minute shred.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: So a couple of the notes that I made were that I didn't think the Conservatives, they're not going to be eager for an election because they win big in the west and rural areas, but that doesn't guarantee them enough seats in Ontario and Quebec. And they also don't want to go too soon and risk being seen as reckless and opportunistic. Canadians don't really want that. I think they must know that at this moment.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: So what you're saying basically is that aside from the liberal political class, there's not really much to, to be excited about unless you're, again, part of that liberal political class.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder what happens with this budget, though, because if it cuts a bunch of people's programs, I think some liberals are going to start to change their tune, to be honest with you.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: We'll see, I guess.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: All right. Budget day is tomorrow, and we hope that you'll be with us.
We will be posting on Wednesday, so make sure that you're along for that. Ride on Budget 2025, brought to you by the Liberal Party. And Mark Carney, thanks for joining us. Right here on tpl, don't forget to subscribe. It supports the channel and we want to continue doing this. So we need your help to do that. And you can do that at TPL Media ca, where you'll find all of our content. Thanks. See you next time.
