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Rebel News Podcast
EZRA LEVANT | Carney's grocery rebate is just a campaign stunt: how about some real fixes?
00:34:53
Guest host David Menzies says the prime minister's announcement of GST relief might buy some temporary support, but Canadians deserve real fixes to the economy.
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Foreign.
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Tonight, the Carney Liberals say they're going to tackle the affordability crisis. Do you believe them? It's Friday, January 30th, 2026. I'm David Menzies and this is the Ezra Levent Show. Shame on you, you censorious bug. Say, did you catch Prime Minister Mark Carney's affordability announcement in Nepean, Ontario the other day? Well, here's an excerpt.
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So, today we're announcing that our government is launching the new Canada's Groceries and Essentials Benefit. This will deliver hundreds of dollars more into the bank accounts of more than 12 million Canadians.
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First of all, I am just so done with these cheesy photo ops. In fairness, every party engages in this nonsense. But really, was it truly necessary for the Prime Minister of Canada to stand in the produce section of a supermarket to deliver government policy? What's more, can you just imagine the conversation before that presser kicked off, such as the PM asking a staffer say, what are all those multicolored spheres? Oh, Mr. Prime Minister, those are various fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables, you say? Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, we're in a grocery store. This is where the little people buy their food. Oh, I see. How quaint. Let's be real, folks. When was the last decade Mark Carney went grocery shopping? But I digress. Anyway, the point of the presser is that some Canadians are going to save a few hundred bucks on groceries thanks to the federal government raising the existing GST credit amount by 25%. The government will also provide a one time payment of 50% of the GST credit this year. The program will run for the next five years and Carney noted this scheme will, quote, deliver hundreds of dollars into the bank accounts of more than 12 million Canadians, end quote. Well, on the plus side, I'll say this. Delivering money into the bank accounts of Canadians is a whole lot better than the Federal Liberals freezing the bank accounts of Canadians, which Carney fully endorsed back in 2022, by the way. After all, Canadians espousing political wrong thoughts regarding the Freedom Convoy. Well, they had to be disciplined, you see. Even so, from an economic perspective, Canada needs major surgery. But with this announcement, Dr. Carney is essentially applying a band aid to a bullet wound. But it's curious to see that suddenly Carney, much like his Democrat counterpart south of the border, has hopped aboard the affordability bandwagon. After all, the elbows up strategy has been an utter disaster in terms of getting a trade deal with the US So now the Liberals are pivoting, saying they are going to fix a country that is increasingly becoming unaffordable for so many Canadians. And golly, why are things so expensive these days? Well, at the press or Carney being Carney put the blame on everything from climate change to COVID 19. No, I swear conspicuously absence regarding the so called reasons for the root causes of inflation was any mention of federal liberal policies that have been in place for the last decade. But hey, never mind. Carney also noted Ottawa will invest $500 million in a fund to help food businesses expand their supply chains. To which I have to say, what's in it for Brookfield Asset Management? Now, having said that, nothing sets off my internal BS detector more so than lefties promising affordability. Case in point, in Virginia last November, Democrat Abigail Spamberger successfully ran for governor on a platform all about making Virginia more affordable when sworn in. Here's what Ms. Spamberger stated. Quote, my first executive order as governor directs my entire administration to identify where we can reduce costs for Virginians. We must lower costs in housing, health care, childcare and energy. Families deserve relief. End quote. So what has played out over the course of the last several weeks in the great state of Virginia? Well, would you believe Virginians are now subject to dozens of brand new taxes as well as increases to existing taxes? Oh yes, one of those fiscal hits was a backdoor carbon tax that will result in virginians paying about $1,200 more per year for electricity. Oh, that's US dollars, by the way, not Canadian pesos. There will also be an additional local sales tax in all Virginia counties and cities, as well as Virginians can now expect to pay. Deep breath here. A gun and ammunition tax, a delivery tax that will hit Amazon, Uber Eats, FedEx and UPS orders an event tax, a storage facility tax, a gym membership tax, a dog walking tax, a dog grooming tax, a counseling tax, a vehicle repair tax, a home repair tax, a dry cleaning tax, and on and on and on it goes. Yikes. So much for the state's official tourism slogan, Virginia is for lovers. There ain't all that much that's lovable in Virginia these days. Oh, and besides, the hotel tax is going up too. The point is, Spamberger ran on a platform of affordability, but her policies will have the precise opposite effect. Isn't that the very definition of bait and switch? And folks, isn't it downright fascinating how positions of politicians can seismically shift on the fly? It is uncanny that what's promised during an election campaign disappears when the election campaign is toast. You know, kind of like how Carney, some 10 months ago when he was out on the hustings, labeled China as Canada's biggest security threat.
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I think the biggest security threat to.
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Canada is China, and that China these days is now our newest whiz bang trading partner. Much to the chagrin of our biggest trading partner. But again, never mind. The thing is, an enhanced GST credit for some Canadians is fine. Every bit helps these days, I suppose. And beggars can't be choosers. And I suppose for some Canadians, in the months ahead they're going to be downright giddy about purchasing a Chinese EV for less than $35,000. Count me out of that demographic, by the way. But if the Carney Liberals were really serious about affordability, then why won't they establish a Canadian version of the U.S. department of Government Efficiency, aka the DOGE? Because, as is so often the case with government bureaucracies, economic calamity isn't so much a revenue issue, but rather a spending issue. Indeed, barely a week goes by when there isn't some discovery of a government engineered economic boondoggle that's guaranteed to raise a taxpayer's blood pressure. Case in point, just two days ago Blacklock reporter noted that Ottawa is spending some $885 million per year on illegal aliens and refugee claimants. This includes free counseling, nursing home visits, transportation, eyeglasses and other supplemental health services. Meanwhile, as Blacklocks adroitly notes, 6.5 million Canadians. You know those rubes who are funding the gravy train for the non citizens? Well, they are without a family doctor. Golly, remember when Blackface said a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. In defense of those Canadians who had aspirations to becoming terrorists, well, it seems that illegal aliens now have more rights than actual Canadian citizens. I mean, is anyone picking up the tab for your Uber rides? Last year I recall shelling out about 100 bucks for a pair of prescription reading glasses. Where's my handout? As for supplemental health services, well, we're all on our own for that, my friend. Unless of course you are transitioning to the other sex. Then that boob job is on the house. Of course. So me thinks that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian is now obsolete. Indeed, a more apropos slogan would involve paraphrasing George Orwell. Namely, all Canadians are equal, but some Canadians are more equal than others. Moving forward, I think operating a Canadian doge initiative vis a vis eradicating the unneeded and wasteful government spending would not qualify as rocket science. It would be More like shooting fish in a barrel. Now, full disclosure, I've never shot a fish in a barrel, but I assume it must be very easy to do. So what I'm getting at here is one needn't do a deep dive search for wasteful government spending. Rather, examples abound. They're all around of how government spending is out of control. A simple Internet search, or perhaps just doing a freedom of information request. Case in point, I can't watch a single quarter of an NFL game these days without being bombarded by senseless federal government advertising. Such advertising amounts to nothing more than than virtue signaling at best and unofficial election sloganeering at worst. You know, claptrap like this Canada.
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It's time for more us. Because we're more than just a place on a map. We're an attitude. One with more empathy than ego, more unity than division, more grit.
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Go.
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And we got this. The more we choose to stand up as our most form flag flying maple leaf buying local adventuring selves, the more we are the true North. Unbreakable, strong and free.
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Now folks, when it comes to any ad, there's typically a call to action. When Ford advertises its F150 pickup, Ford is hoping you'll actually come down to a dealership and buy a truck. But what's the call to action with this ad? Well, there isn't one. It's just 30 seconds of rapid fire nostalgic clips paired with cliched slogans. Why was it even made? Other than enriching the coffers of liberal friendly ad agencies, that is. In any event, scrapping useless federal government advertising would be taking a line item off the books totaling some $76.4 million. That's what the federal liberals spent on their orgy of self congratulation for the 20232024 fiscal year. But 76 million is chump change when it comes to the egregious gun grab. According to the Fraser Institute, when all is said and done, this fiasco in the making could end up costing Canadian taxpayers and as much as $6 billion. That's 6 billion with a B. And why? To make Canada safer? No, rather, it's exactly the same reason the feds air those pointless TV ads. It's all about virtue signaling. It's all about Ottawa pretending to do something about gun crime. Going on a jihad against legal gun owners while turning a blind eye to gang bangers won't move the safety needle one iota. And that makes this gross gun grab equal parts fiscally irresponsible and downright useless. And you want to know the worst thing about it? The Carney Liberals, including Gary what's his name, fully know this gun grab is a fool's errand. But they don't care. They shall proceed. By the way, a great reference for other government fueled boondoggles is the website of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. If you thought Stephen King was the master of horror, well folks, you got to check out what the Taxpayers Federation reports on a routine basis. Why, just the other day the CTF noted that about 8. 98% of government executives took a bonus last year. 98%. And these bonuses were doled out even though departments missed nearly half of their performance targets. How does this always happen in government, but it never happens in the private sector? Oh, I almost forgot. In Ottawa, one always fails upwards. And then there's the never ending litany of ludicrous research grants. In a CTF report fittingly published the day before Halloween last year, the Taxpayers Federation noted how Ottawa greenlit taxpayer funded projects that are nothing short of surreal. The federal government's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council spent more than $1 billion of your hard earned money last year on what, you ask? Well, allow me to cherry pick a few examples, such as 105,000 was spent on a study examining the life cycle of a grocery cart entitled Cartography Tracking the Birth, Life and Death of of an Urban Grocery Cart From Work Product to Work tool. This was led by Kate Elliott of Simon Fraser University. Elliott's work documents the relationships between carts and the humans who design, assemble, use and repurpose them. Why? Well, that's the thing, folks. Elliot began researching this report almost eight years ago and it's still not done. Not that anyone is breathlessly awaiting its conclusion, mind you. And how about this one, folks? The feds also dished out $20,000 on a study called Gender Politics of Peruvian Rock Music. Fabiola Bezos, work at the University of British Columbia, is, quote, informed by the feminist and queer perspectives and and theorizes music as an extension of sensual and sexual practices and dynamics of power. End quote. Well, apparently not even Ms. Bezos, the study's author, knows what she's saying. And so it is that she plans to curate an exhibition as part of her doctoral dissertation because presenting her findings is, quote, unquote, impossible in a written text alone. End quote. Yeah, no guff. And here's one. The government spent $94,000 on a study entitled Rhetoric of the Selfie. The study, led by Amy Morrison of the University of Waterloo is, quote, grounded in the politics and narratives of self representation online. End quote. Does anyone other than narcissist Justin Trudeau really care about the science of selfies? Of course, it goes without saying that defunding the CBC would make for a nifty 1.4 billion off the books too, wouldn't it? And that's an annual savings. But there's no chance Carney will steal that particular platform plank from Pierre Poliev. The Liberals love their bought and paid for Department of Propaganda. So despite plunging viewership, expect to see more investment in the CBC under Carney in the months and years to come. In the final analysis, if Carney really cared about the affair affordability crisis, he wouldn't hand out crumbs to Canadians vis a vis a fortified GST credit for groceries. Rather, he would take a flamethrower to all the aforementioned government spending that I just outlined. Wasteful government spending. And believe me folks, there's just so much more. Alas, that's not going to happen. It's just not in the DNA of of a Carny Liberal to be fiscally responsible these days as well. Many observers couldn't help but notice that the GST announcement had a very election campaign vibe to it. And Ottawa is abuzz these days that a spring election might very well happen. After all, Carney did try to get his coveted majority government by wooing opposition MPs and into the Liberal fold. And it almost worked. But to quote Agent86 missed it by that much. And so it is. Carney is now opting for Plan B, a federal election perhaps less than 12 months after the last one. Time will tell. In the meantime, when it comes to spending your tax dollars, the Carney Liberals say seemingly subscribe to a lyric lifted from the song Disco Inferno. Well, folks, Calgary is abuzz with the Conservative Party of Canada conservation convention that just kicked off today. We have an entire team on the ground here. Check out this report.
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Sheila Gunn Reed for Rebel News. I'm here in Calgary at the Conservative Party convention, the largest Conservative Party convention to date. I'm here with Conservative MP and immigration critic Michelle Rumpel Garner. Michelle, I wanted to talk to you about the complete and absolute destruction destruction of the immigration system under the Liberals in the last 10 years. But really, since Justin Trudeau's welcome to Canada tweet, even just this week, new information has come out about the abuse of the temporary foreign workers themselves. Not just the system, but the workers themselves. 10,000 complaints in six months and only 200 or so investigated. It's not just, you know, employers abusing the system so that young Canadians are underemployed, but the temporary foreign workers themselves are being exploited.
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Absolutely. Well, first of all, thanks for having.
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Me on the show.
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It's exciting to be here. Great backdrop too. So, temporary foreign worker program. When we announced earlier this fall that the Conservative Party's position is to abolish the temporary foreign workers program, one of the key points that we included in there was because like, and it's not just us as the Conservative Party saying this United nations talked about this program being akin to slavery. And that's because essentially what happens is, especially in like the low skilled workers streams, you see employers bringing these temporary foreign workers to Canada, but they're tied to that employer. So there's, it's, it's been rife with abuse. This is why when we were actually in government, I think it was 2013, we made major reforms to the program because the abuse was rampant back then. Justin Trudeau reversed all of those reforms. Fast forward to today. Rampant abuse. And then also I think you made a very good point too. Employers have abused this program also in a way to depress wages. And with a 20% youth unemployment rate across this country, it is, I haven't heard an argument yet from a lot of these lobby groups who want to keep the program, obviously that it somehow, it somehow benefits Canadian youth. I think what we need to be doing more is saying, no, we're, this doesn't work. We need to train Canadian youth, make sure that they have first crack at those opportunities. And otherwise the abuse and that wage depression is only going to continue to grow over the years.
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And I think there's a knock on effect for the economy at large. Right. When you have an entire generation of people who don't know how to work.
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Yeah. And it's, I mean, what was your first job? Mine was an ice cream shop in Winnipeg.
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Bingo hall, coffee cart.
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There we go. So you learn how to show up for work on time. Basic customer service skills. These are, these are skills.
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Smoking. It was a bingo hall.
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So, you know, you learn basic skills and that's part of the contract of Canada. Right. Employers get to work in a, and thrive in a free market economy and train Canadian youth who then become the next generation of leaders and you know, our society. So I think that to your point, somehow that's, that's gotten erased because I hear this, I hear this from lobby groups like, well, I just can't train somebody. It's like, I don't think. Think you've tried.
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Right.
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And if you continue to have an endless supply of temporary foreign labor that's essentially indentured to an employer. There is no incentive to, to train or even to look at productivity increases as well too. So yeah, it's, this is a no brainer and I, I think the Liberals, the fact that they haven't moved on this at all, I think it just shows that they don't know which lane to pick. And of course Liberals are always going to pick a lane that's not Canadian.
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Youth, Canadian jobs, and the entire system is rife with abuse. An order paper earlier this week came back that you were telling me about that shows this stream of asylum seekers, it's not refugees, conventional refugees from horrible places of the world, it's people who are coming here under one pretense and then switching lanes once they get here.
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Yeah. So we've been so busy with the convention this week, I meant to reach out to you, but we did. We got an order paper question back earlier this week and I had asked the government essentially who was making asylum claims because just to be clear, in December the amount of asylum claims hit a record level. There's 300,000 pending asylum claims. Okay. Right now many of those won't be heard from for sometimes up to a decade. So problems. But what that order paper question showed was like how did somebody enter the country and then make an asylum claim? And a huge spike in the last year of people who entered the country as foreign students likely have expiring visas and are now making asylum claims. And that's abuse of the asylum system. Right. I refer to what happened between 2022 and 2020 24. Please feel free to plagiarize this term as the Fraser wave of foreign students. This is when Sean Frazier permitted, I think it was what, close to a million? More than that.
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Yeah.
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And you saw, and again, it's not these kids fault for wanting to come to Canada. But you know, you see things like Conestoga College, where the, the city that the college is located in, it's like population of roughly a hundred thousand. This brought in 30,000 kids in a year and a half, you know, and so now, and they did, the Liberals did it with a winking on odd like you can stay but temporary has to mean temporary. There are now at this moment, according to recent reports, 2.1 million people in Canada who are here with expired or expiring visas. They don't actually even know how many. And so the question becomes this.
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It's like twice the population of Saskatchewan.
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Think about that. So now. But on Top of that, they've set new levels at a rate that assumes that many of those folks will voluntarily leave. So there's a lot of work left to do for us as opposition to hold the Liberals to account, but also to propose ways to solve these problems. And that's what we've been doing as a team all fall, a huge heavy lift, amending bills proposing major policy changes, changes like the abolishment of the TFW program, changing the rules around passing on citizenship to descendants of people who are here just as foreign or, sorry, as temporary visas. We want to see people have parents have at least PR status, at least one parent have PR status, like every other country in the world, virtually. I could talk to you for hours about the changes we've proposed, but I think that the changes that we've proposed would restore order. But I mean, then there's also the question of the Frazier wave. Right, right. What are we going to do about that question? Like, right.
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And it's been a series of inept ministers who don't really know the file.
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And also not, not giving political imperatives and direction to their bureaucrats. You know, I think there was another black Clocks reported this week, week that the government spent over $250,000 just training their bureaucrats. I think it was mostly me on how to, like, deal with me at committee. And it's like, well, instead of spending that, why don't you just do your job? And you have to have that. You have to both have a plan and an imperative and move, you know, the public service and policy makers and stuff to say, like, look, Canada can be an open and welcoming country, but you can't bring in so many people that housing, health care, jobs, other things can't, social infrastructure can't keep up. And that's clearly what happened. And nobody benefits from that, no newcomer or, you know, Canadian citizen alike.
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So I'm going to ask you to speculate as my last question. Why are they doing this?
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You're asking me to get in the mind of, like, then get right back out. I think it's a variety of things. First of all, let's go back to one of the first changes Trudeau made back in 2015, the reversal of former Mr. Jason Kenney's reforms of the TFW program. That was clearly in response to lobbies that were asking for endless supply of foreign labor so that they could increase their profits on the backs of essentially indentured labor. I think that's part of it. I think that they were heavily lobbied by you know, these diploma mills and provincial colleges that wanted an easy supply of revenue. And then, you know, there's. With the hashtag, welcome to Canada tweet. I think it was a way to sort of poke the American administration in the eye and not really thinking about, obviously, the logistics are what that would mean for integration or. And. And by that I mean, like, housing, jobs. So I. I'm not sure. I never try to ascribe one motive to the liberals for incompetence. And just like, fair enough, you know, that's what I've seen. I've been immigration critic, not always malice.
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Yeah, but you should.
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You should. You shouldn't dismiss malice either. But the bottom line is it doesn't matter. What matters now is that the Liberal government has to implement conservative proposals to restore order and fairness. I've literally given them everything they need to do an entire roadmap. And we amended their bills to make sure that they couldn't do sneaky things like Bill C12. It's this bill that had a suite of some immigration reforms. They wanted to give more powers to their bureaucrats. On the surface, it looked like, okay, well, maybe they could cancel applications. But I'm like, maybe they could also change status from temporary to pr. So we. We did all of these amendments to make sure that that wouldn't happen, but, man, there's a lot of work left to do. But that's my job. Working on it.
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Yes. Michelle, thanks so much for taking the time to speak.
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Thanks for covering our convention. Thanks for being here.
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Well, folks, a lot of feedback on my monologue the other day on how the dystopian science fiction film A Clockwork Orange is basically becoming government policy in certain parts of the world, including right here in the Dominion of Canada. Let's get to some of the feedback from Robert. I'm 74 now with quadruple bypass. Thankfully, I will not live long enough to. To see the final outcome of this insanity. Elbows down. Hey, Robert. I hear you. Meanwhile, I'm really getting curious how that bet is going to work. What's going to happen first, the Leafs win a Stanley cup or that I die? As of now, the smart money is on the grim reaper. And Mr. Fu writes, is it so odd that a criminal becomes a police officer when we currently have politicians who are criminals? And that's no exaggeration. I mean, Minister Guibo, that guy was arrested, I think, a couple of times, once for climbing the CN Tower. And yet somehow he becomes a cabinet minister. Wow. Talk about the right stuff. Indeed. And a B, R, H positive writes, I asked the liberals if I could keep my eye clamps. They said no and assured me I would watch nothing but CBC for the rest of my days. Well, my friend, that's what you would need for me to watch the cbc. Put in a straight jacket with eye clamps, making sure I can't even close my eyes. And CDC101 writes, A Clockwork Orange does not promote dystopia. It promotes the idea of free will over determinism. You know, that is actually one of the themes in the book and the movie. What I was getting at is some of the elements that we saw in the film, such as, you know, criminals becoming law enforcement officers, clearing out the prisons of actual felons so that police political prisoners could be incarcerated, and how that is becoming true. That's what I was getting at with my analogy. And finally, Andy writes, stanley Kubrick died after Eyes Wide Shut. That movie exposed elite satanic cults similar to Epstein Island. Yeah, I can see where you would draw that comparison. I found Eyes Wide Shut to be incredibly disappointing. At the end of the movie, when the credits were rolling, I was going, what's the point? I wish Mr. Kubrick ended on a higher note than that particular film. In any event, folks, thank you so much for tuning in to tonight's edition of the Ezra Levent Show. The big boss man, he'll be back on Monday. In the meantime, as always, stay safe and stay sane.