107. Kris Sims: How Taxes Are Causing Financial Stress!

00;00;07;20 - 00;00;33;26
Aaron Pete
Do you enjoy paying taxes? Are you confused about how we get spent? And where the money goes? My guest today works with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and we dove into how taxes are spent, municipally, provincially and federally, and what could be done to make it more affordable for Canadians. My guest today is Chris Sims, Chris Sims, such a pleasure to sit down with you.

00;00;33;27 - 00;00;52;06
Aaron Pete
I'm so excited. I know that people can struggle with this topic. It can be discouraging at times, but you're an individual I've been having the pleasure of following for some time now since your interview with Darryl Plex. I watched that one all the way through and I really enjoyed how insightful you were, how thoughtful you were about how government should operate.

00;00;52;18 - 00;00;58;18
Aaron Pete
Best case scenario. And so I'm wondering if we could start maybe with an introduction of yourself so people can get to know you.

00;00;58;26 - 00;01;26;11
Kris Sims
Oh, thank you so much. So my name is Kris Sims. I'm the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. For folks who haven't heard of us before. We are a not for profit grassroots citizens organization. We started back in 1990 and our purpose is to advocate for lower taxes, less waste and more accountable government and myself personally. Most of my adult life has been spent as a journalist, largely on Parliament Hill.

00;01;26;12 - 00;01;41;18
Kris Sims
I was a longtime member of the press gallery. I've worked in television, radio and in newspaper print as well as here is all online. So I'm still kind of in that space, as they say. But it's switch more to advocacy now rather than direct journalism.

00;01;42;07 - 00;01;49;29
Aaron Pete
When did taxes become something that you were interested in? It's an area that can be challenging for people. And I'm just curious as to when this caught your attention.

00;01;50;14 - 00;02;10;15
Kris Sims
That's a great question. It actually first came up when I was a little kid. And so this is going to date myself with probably a lot of your audience. But when the GST was first brought in, I remember distinctly I was lining up to rent a videotape at a video rental store with my dad and the GST had just been introduced.

00;02;10;28 - 00;02;35;05
Kris Sims
And the gentleman who is a small shopkeeper, a small business owner, was so mad about the GST that he had this huge, like elephant sized bag of peanuts in the shell sitting there next to the counter. And it was super weird. And as a little kid I'm like, that's interesting. You know, can I have a peanut? And if you bought a $2 peanut from this man, he would lend you a video for free.

00;02;36;03 - 00;03;09;06
Kris Sims
Now he was doing that because he was so angry about having to charges customers GST. And that was my first impression of advocacy of fighting back and of taxes and so I, I don't love my calculator like tax time. I despise tax time like everybody else does. It is awful. I would literally rather have a root canal. But what I do really love is freedom and individualism and the ability for people and their families to be left alone.

00;03;09;21 - 00;03;35;04
Kris Sims
I think government should be small enough to shove into a shoe box and taxes are the government's way of of getting you. And so that's the real constant connection between government and people is taxes. They charge you taxes on your property. They charge you taxes on your income, they charge you taxes on your business and they charge you taxes now on carbon tax, which is basically just living your life.

00;03;35;14 - 00;03;51;21
Kris Sims
And so to me, taxes are a tool of government and it's one that we have to make sure is a small and blunt as possible. So that's when I got into taxes was when I had that awakening of realizing the power the government wields using taxes.

00;03;52;12 - 00;04;21;01
Aaron Pete
I love this because we're almost starting with the philosophical underpinnings of what taxes are to perhaps disagreeable people. They might say, well, think of all the social programs we're about to get. Think of all the social net, the safety net, that we're going to receive through those those programs and through those taxes. What thoughts do you have on the idea that the more taxes, the more we level the playing field, the more everybody gets a little bit where stopping the rich from getting richer and everybody's getting a small piece of the pie.

00;04;21;01 - 00;04;21;13
Aaron Pete
Now.

00;04;22;00 - 00;04;43;28
Kris Sims
In a perfect world, that sounds like it makes sense right? But government is not run by some pure minded algorithm. Government is run by people. Government is made up of bureaucrats. So people who never have to face the electorate and politicians, those are the two major branches of government that we deal with every day. There's also the law courts that's a bit different.

00;04;44;17 - 00;05;04;00
Kris Sims
And so between the bureaucrats and the politicians, a lot of our money gets wasted. So if this were all just, you know, pure as the driven snow, as they say, and it was only going to help people with their health care and provide great schools and nice sturdy bridges, I don't think many normal people would have a problem with that.

00;05;04;01 - 00;05;25;04
Kris Sims
And so that's why we say lower taxes, not no taxes. I know that, you know, we can't live in my, you know, New Hampshire, live a little utopia on a gravel road somewhere. A lot of people use public transit and they use stuff like that. They use schools. So we understand that reality. Our problem is that a lot of times this money is wasted.

00;05;25;16 - 00;05;49;02
Kris Sims
And I'm not just talking a glass of orange juice here and there. We're talking billions of dollars being handed out and corporate welfare and also just big screw ups like the Phenix Pay System, for example, is a federal example. In a nutshell, the Phenix Pay System is software, software used to manage the payroll of the federal government. So they've got thousands of employees.

00;05;49;02 - 00;06;08;22
Kris Sims
They have to get paid. They pulled the plug too fast on this thing called the Phenix Pay System, and it's cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Now, with a be like we could build hospitals for the amount of money that they wasted on this silly computer program, And so that's where I would differ of, yes, everyone likes to have nice things, but no one.

00;06;09;05 - 00;06;16;07
Kris Sims
That answer doesn't always have to come from government. Sometimes we can get it elsewhere. And to government wastes way too much of that money.

00;06;17;00 - 00;06;38;21
Aaron Pete
I tend to agree with you, and I think that that's the sentiment that so many Canadians and British Columbians and Albertans have is this feeling that I could probably spend it better being frugal and cost effective than the government. And you hear about some of the systems they've rolled out in terms of the airline system and the problems that it's brought is that they seem to do things fairly inefficiently.

00;06;39;00 - 00;07;01;00
Aaron Pete
But this also leads to the idea, the bringing of the GST tax brings this to this idea that taxes are brought in always with the best of intentions, always with flowers and rainbows on the way. And some of them are brought in and from my understanding were brought in, said this was only going to be for a period of time and then we're going to roll it out and we're going to get rid of it and then it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

00;07;01;02 - 00;07;12;05
Aaron Pete
Are you able to talk about some of the taxes that came in with this idea of until the end of the war, until the end of this, and then we're going to get rid of it and then they've somehow just stuck around very famously.

00;07;12;05 - 00;07;30;11
Kris Sims
And now you're obviously, clearly alluding to it. The income tax was meant to only be around during the First World War or the Great War, depending on what term you want to use. That was supposed to be temporary that was only supposed to get us through the really tough spot of the First World War. But of course, we all pay income tax now federally here in Canada.

00;07;30;11 - 00;08;01;27
Kris Sims
So that was the opposite of being temporary. I think it was I think it was Milton Friedman who said that one of the silliest things we do is judge policies based on their intentions rather than their outcomes. So the outcome of this is that we are spending more than 40% of our income. If you combine all the taxes and fees and all that stuff, based on what the Fraser Institute has researched, we're now spending more than 40% of our income on taxes and handing it to an ever increasing and ever bloating government.

00;08;02;09 - 00;08;30;05
Kris Sims
And we're still not getting the sunshine and rainbows in many cases that we were promised. I don't know about you, but I don't really know anyone who's super happy with our health care system, for example. And it's been ruled several times that access to a wait list is not access to health care. And yet every time anybody tries to have a conversation of maybe we should change our system or look at Europe, for example, figure this out, figure out a better way to deliver good care and make it efficient.

00;08;30;25 - 00;08;53;23
Kris Sims
People get upset and they call you, you know, a fearmonger and say that you just want people to die in the street. And that's not an intelligent conversation trying to say something like, you know what, my my family member had to wait four months to even see a cancer care specialist and we had to fight like crazy people to even get him in front of a doctor.

00;08;54;10 - 00;09;13;26
Kris Sims
This is someone who's, you know, owned a business and paid taxes his entire life. He's 64 years old now in a first world country. That shouldn't have to be the case. But I know that there's millions of people in our same position. And so many times the government will come out with this parade of saying, this is going to solve all of our problems.

00;09;14;06 - 00;09;38;00
Kris Sims
I'll give you another example, very recent. And in British Columbia, back in 2008, the B.C. Liberal government led by then Premier Gordon Campbell, introduced the first carbon tax. So back then they told us many things. They said it was going to stop at $30 a tonne, that it was going to be revenue neutral, that it was going to create a plethora of affordable alternative energies that would be abundant.

00;09;38;00 - 00;10;10;16
Kris Sims
They'd be on every street corner, chicken in every pot. And they said it was going to reduce emissions today. None of that is true. Not one of those promises is true. It is now the mandatory minimum $65 per ton. Alternative energy sources are scarce and super expensive for most people, and it's not revenue neutral. It was only revenue neutral for the first couple of years where they did a corresponding income tax cut, but it only took them a couple of years and they started fiddling with the books right in the budget.

00;10;10;18 - 00;10;30;00
Kris Sims
You can go back and look at them. They started cooking the books to make it magic math and look like it was balanced and look like it was revenue neutral. And the way they did that actually if you don't mind me going out, they took all the tax credits. So tax credits for fitness, converting farm property to school, just random, weird all the tax credits.

00;10;30;03 - 00;11;00;02
Kris Sims
And they filed them in the revenue column for the carbon tax and made it balance out to zero. Yeah, super, super. Sneaky stuff. And so we caught them at it after a couple of years. And then largely this is the big one I left for a lot of people. Emissions keep going up if you go back and look at the B.C. government's own data, except for a little blip when people were locked in their homes in 20, 20, emissions keep on going up steadily in B.C. even with the highest carbon taxes in North America.

00;11;00;06 - 00;11;13;06
Kris Sims
Why? Because people need to get to work and they need to heat their homes and they need to eat. So the carbon tax is the most recent one where we were sold a bill of goods. And of course, historically, I would say the income tax is the most famous.

00;11;14;01 - 00;11;37;14
Aaron Pete
When did this become something? You were like, I'm going to focus on this. I'm really interested in trying to address these problems, on helping people understand them, because I love that you have a podcast about this. I love that you're breaking things down for people because I when I think of taxes, I don't know if you follow Corner Gas, but I always think of Oscar Leroy being like, My taxes paid for this, and so many people lose that kind of connection.

00;11;37;14 - 00;11;50;02
Aaron Pete
To it. But it is true that as much as you pay taxes, you contributing to the roads, but you're also seeing it misspent and that can be frustrating for people. So when did this become something that you were passionate enough about to focus on?

00;11;50;16 - 00;12;09;27
Kris Sims
So I started out in small town radio and Courtney in British Columbia, and there I talked to well, I'm from rural working class, like the woods. So I grew up in Hope. And then I lived in the woods and outside of Courtney and back Rylan for many years. And so all of my family is like working class, blue collar tradespeople type people.

00;12;10;20 - 00;12;31;01
Kris Sims
And so I always paid close attention to what folks from that world were saying. And so I kept tabs on that. And then I moved Parliament Hill when I was working for the CTV bureau there as a producer, and I was booking interviews on kind of highfalutin things on, you know, balancing the budget or international trade agreements and stuff like that.

00;12;31;11 - 00;12;51;19
Kris Sims
But I always kept a good tab on like what things were costing in the grocery store and what the heating bill cost people. But then I really got a chance to be active about it when I was hosting talk radio. And that's where you're really listening to people there, getting up in the morning. They're going to work, they're driving home, they're worried about picking up their kids.

00;12;51;19 - 00;13;13;17
Kris Sims
And if they're going to be able to afford like the bike that their kid wants in the spring or how much their heating bill is going up. And what really crystallized it for me was when I was hosting a CFR Rae Radio, and I was listening to people, especially people on fixed income and single moms and stuff who were phoning because they couldn't afford their power bill.

00;13;14;24 - 00;13;38;00
Kris Sims
And so this sounds like it's not connected to carbon tax, but it is because they were phoning and saying crazy things like I have taped off the doorways in my house to the in the winter, so I'm only in one room. I'm not kidding. This one older lady said that she'd gone back to her oil lamp like I couldn't believe the stuff I was hearing.

00;13;38;12 - 00;14;10;06
Kris Sims
And it was because the then Ontario Liberal government had made hydroelectricity so one affordable that these people could not make it. Just anecdotally, our tiny three bedroom rental in Ottawa were it wasn't included with heat. This was just LED lights. And I was doing dishes at midnight type thing that was more than $400 a month. And that was like ten years ago So the reason why I'm telling the story about the power bill is because that was a direct cause of government.

00;14;10;17 - 00;14;39;03
Kris Sims
Governments did that because they signed these ridiculously overpriced contracts for solar and wind energy that wasn't available. They made people pay a 78 cent per kilowatt hour markup for no energy they were using. It was madness. Those same people are the ones who constructed the federal carbon tax. So when I break it down for people and explain it's costing you 15 bucks extra every time you're filling up your light duty pickup truck just in the carbon tax.

00;14;39;20 - 00;14;56;27
Kris Sims
And that's real money. That's a roast chicken and a jug of milk right out of your grocery cart. When I tell them that it's $30 extra for heavy duty pickup. So I'm here in Lethbridge, Alberta. There's lots of people driving heavy duty pickups because they're hauling horses or they've got their trades tools and stuff like that. 30 bucks.

00;14;57;06 - 00;15;18;05
Kris Sims
That's a lot of money extra. And so it was when I was really hearing those phone calls, literally in my in my headphones day after day after day, and people saying that I'm working a job, but I still need to go to the food bank because I can't afford the power bill. And it was the government's doing. That's when that really, I would say, activated me.

00;15;18;22 - 00;15;41;27
Kris Sims
And I, I mostly want to give people hope by telling them they're the boss. They're the ones in charge. As a taxpayer, you are the boss of your member of Parliament or your MLA you are not a feudal serf. These are not dukes, okay? They are elected to represent you and to be a voice for you in Parliament.

00;15;41;27 - 00;15;59;22
Kris Sims
Parlay to talk. They are there to speak for you. You pay them quite handsomely. And so I wanted to be able to give people back that voice in that agency. Because I was hearing a lot of hopelessness. So I would say that's what caused it. It was about ten years ago and it was hearing folks with their power bills.

00;16;00;19 - 00;16;22;29
Aaron Pete
The story really resonates with me because I'm my community is to our first nation right near Hope. And the challenge that I see is that we talk a lot about First Nation communities but not in the realities of what they're facing. So, yeah, the challenges is the fact that their rent bills are less than their hydro bills, the fact that they don't have large incomes.

00;16;22;29 - 00;16;47;01
Aaron Pete
So when there is increases, it puts a lot of strain on them financially. When I saw CERB coming in, my concern was this is going to inevitably eventually lead to inflation. And we were promised that that wouldn't happen, that there was a plan in place. And then and everybody's so excited about these government programs. And again, I think for good reason, I don't think you can fault people for being like more money coming in, thank goodness.

00;16;47;10 - 00;17;04;13
Aaron Pete
But these decisions have long term consequences. And it's hard to tangibly see it. And then when governments say we're going to do what we can to reduce any impact, we're not really worried about inflation. And then here we are a few years later and all of those government programs are coming to an end and the impacts are shown in the show.

00;17;04;18 - 00;17;12;17
Aaron Pete
People don't see the connection between the two. Do you ever find that it's challenging to help people see the beginning and the end and that affects in between?

00;17;12;21 - 00;17;29;24
Kris Sims
Oh, you nailed it. You nailed it perfectly there. And I didn't realize that we're almost neighbors. So, yeah, I grew up actually just near the first nation near Yale. So right up the highway there in the Fraser Canyon between between Hope and Yale. So that's wonderful. I didn't realize we were that close. Yeah, there was a big misunderstanding there.

00;17;29;25 - 00;17;52;18
Kris Sims
There's a big gap and I think it's because most working people are so busy, right? They they're raising their family that might be having problems with their family. God forbid, they're working really hard. They're fixing their house or doing something they're always busy doing living their lives. And then government is just this big ever growing machine over here somewhere.

00;17;53;05 - 00;18;19;13
Kris Sims
And I think because government does so much or is so ubiquitous, I think people start misunderstanding the nature of government. I think they start thinking that it generates wealth. It does not. So it's not like you can give the government a dollar and they take it for you and make a really wise investment and then cash it in and then give it back to you.

00;18;19;13 - 00;18;39;27
Kris Sims
At like a dollar 80. That's not what happens. So taxpayers, us, all of us talking, all of your listeners, all of us who pay taxes, we are the ones that's our money. We're the ones giving that money to the government, often by force because you don't have a choice and it goes into this pool and then the government redistribute it.

00;18;40;10 - 00;19;01;29
Kris Sims
And so while I do not begrudge anyone who needed CERB because their business was shut down by force by the state or, you know, they absolutely needed the help, that's understandable. But it's coming from everybody else and we're going to have to pay that bill. And in Trudeau's case, in Prime Minister Trudeau, his case he just printed money out of thin air.

00;19;02;19 - 00;19;30;11
Kris Sims
So he printed around, I think it was $300 billion with a B, and every time you get more dollars chasing fewer goods, you're going to have inflation because you are naturally reducing the value of that stuff. That stuff happens to be dollars, right? And so yeah, the CERB has contributed to inflation and the printing of the money has contributed to inflation.

00;19;30;22 - 00;19;44;03
Kris Sims
And then if he turns around and he starts hiking carbon taxes on top of all of that, you know, that's a really bad perfect storm for a lot of normal average working people, which is why we are seeing the affordability crisis right now.

00;19;44;25 - 00;20;06;07
Aaron Pete
We've been bouncing around a little bit, but there's three different levels usually municipal, provincial and federal is there. You've focused on on all of them at certain points. I'm just curious, what are the right kind of suites spots living in Chilliwack? I do feel like our municipal government here is actually very frugal and works to keep taxes where they've been.

00;20;06;18 - 00;20;29;12
Aaron Pete
And they often say that municipal governments impact people day to day lives. Likely the most probably and and a unique case, health care being being one that stands out as a differentiator. But often we feel the effects of our road being paved or our lights being on or a new park being built in our communities, whereas a lot of the larger federal government spending is harder to tangibly connect ourselves with.

00;20;29;17 - 00;20;33;07
Aaron Pete
What are some of the sweet spots you see for a municipal, provincial and a federal government?

00;20;33;15 - 00;20;59;15
Kris Sims
That's a really good question. And so I like to envision it. So if I use Chilliwack as an example, you're right, it's local government that affects you most immediately. So say you walk out your front door, literally your recycling bin in your garbage can, or there that's municipal. And now let's let's walk down the street. You go past the hospital, okay, that's provincial cray schools as well.

00;20;59;15 - 00;21;21;19
Kris Sims
That's a mix of local and provincial depending on funding and governance. And then keep walking, though. Keep walking all the way out to Sardis and keep walking all the way. Oh, go, go all the way down to the border crossing your Abbotsford boom, there's federal. Okay, what you can take across the border back and forth. You know what job you could have green cards, all that stuff.

00;21;21;29 - 00;21;40;23
Kris Sims
And so that's a good way to visualize the levels of government and how it affects you. So right outside your front door, on your front lawn, that's local, that's municipal. A little bit into your town. That's often provincial, especially for major infrastructure. Once you hit the border, of course, now you're dealing with things like national defense and all that stuff.

00;21;41;02 - 00;22;07;08
Kris Sims
And so it depends rates. So locally, if you see Chilliwack doing a good job so far, that's great. I find quite often it's easier for local governments to be more accountable because they're literally living there with you. So like a city councilor ideally is going to be someone like a retired police officer, a retired teacher, a local business owner.

00;22;07;17 - 00;22;26;08
Kris Sims
Maybe they're a former you know, maybe they're a faith leader or something. Maybe they were a stay at home mom their whole lives and now they've got time to give back. And so all of those folks, you don't get more local than that. And so they're it's easier for them to be accountable because it's like, hey, Bob, why did you increase our property?

00;22;26;08 - 00;22;54;24
Kris Sims
Taxes by, you know, 6%? It's like, oh, that gets awkward. Whereas provincially, Bob's not there most of the time. Bob's over in Victoria and Bob has his apartment paid for, and he's got a travel expense and see the separation. Now, there's that separation where people feel that they don't have as tight a hold on their politicians. And then your federal well, heck, they're way over there in the Emerald City known as Ottawa, and most people haven't even been there.

00;22;54;26 - 00;23;16;18
Kris Sims
I'll never forget the feeling when I stepped off the plane, wide eyed from Courtney. I'd never been to Ottawa before, and I felt like Dorothy in all eyes. And it's like, Oh, this is where all the money lands and all the power lands. And so they're it's harder quite quite a bit harder for average folks to keep their federal parliamentarians in check.

00;23;16;24 - 00;23;42;08
Kris Sims
And so I would say, generally speaking, local governments do a better job of having a balanced budget that in the can't run deficits they're not allowed to technically, they're more accountable because they're they're in your town and they're dealing with more immediate issues like policing garbage, pick up potholes, all that stuff. Whereas with federal, they can keep on getting bigger and they are under Prime Minister Trudeau.

00;23;42;08 - 00;24;07;27
Kris Sims
Government is expanding at a rapid rate. And you can get more philosophical. Then you start getting into kind of like international agreements and treaties and how much do we really need for national defense. And you get into a lot more arguments there. You know, it's not as obvious as a pothole. And so it's easier then to fill that gap with misspending of money.

00;24;08;06 - 00;24;10;15
Kris Sims
So generally speaking, local is more accountable.

00;24;11;17 - 00;24;38;10
Aaron Pete
On the note of provincial politics. You've worked in B.C., you're now in Alberta. I'm just curious, obviously, Alberta has gone through, let's call it some waves of different political viewpoints. I'm just curious, do you feel like certain regions, certain provinces do a better job that are more financially accountable, that are more open to scrutiny? What are your perspectives on some of the provincial challenges that communities can face?

00;24;38;21 - 00;25;02;20
Kris Sims
So at the Taxpayer's Federation, we think all of the expenses should be posted online all the time. So it's your money, it is your money, it's your producer's money, it's your listeners money. Every politician or bureaucrat or the ministry head who spends your money. So on hospitality, travel, anything like that, that should all be public immediately. It's called proactive disclosure.

00;25;02;25 - 00;25;30;29
Kris Sims
You shouldn't have to ask for it. Alberta is pretty good for that. Now the Taxpayers Federation was born in 1990 and they were born out of a merger between the Alberta Ratepayers Association and the Saskatchewan Ratepayers Association, largely in protest against Brian Mulroney's GST, because the prairie populists who started our group didn't want to pay the GST. Very similar to the gentleman with the bag of peanuts that I talked about.

00;25;31;23 - 00;26;07;25
Kris Sims
And so nowhere is perfect. But for example, here in Alberta we have something called the Taxpayer Protection Act. The Taxpayer Protection Act is a provincial law that says politicians, a government, cannot impose a stay on US provincial sales tax without winning a referendum. First Good luck with that. Yeah, that is why we don't have a PSC. So that's why when you're driving over from Cranbrook and you come over the border and you come visit me here in Lethbridge, everything is at least 7% cheaper than it is in B.C. because we don't have a.

00;26;09;05 - 00;26;34;26
Kris Sims
Now, I call that pretty good accountability. Also, our our MLAs are members of the legislature have to constantly post their expenses. It's pretty open as far as committee hearings go. Again, it's not perfect. I'm not saying any was perfect. Ottawa was getting pretty good under the Accountability Act. There was a big cooling off period between when politicians left office and could become lobbyists, for example.

00;26;35;15 - 00;26;56;23
Kris Sims
You had to always proactively post your expenses. There still technically need to. But I've noticed that a lot of Crown corporations are bothering anymore. So when you go to something like the National Capital Commission or the I forget what it's called, it's something like the Department of Bridges and across things like there is the Crown Corporations you pay for you've never heard of.

00;26;57;08 - 00;27;27;00
Kris Sims
But if you go to their expenses, they have something called proactive disclosure. And that's where they're supposed to tell you how much they're spending on hospitality, travel, education. So Ottawa was doing pretty good. It's slipping a lot lately in the last few years, B.C. is kind of in the middle. And so I must say, when I left home from B.C. originally and when I landed back home in B.C. from Ottawa, I was a little bit surprised because they were not posting their expenses super seriously.

00;27;27;21 - 00;28;02;01
Kris Sims
Their committee that manages in how is spending was pretty secretive in in Victoria. So that was a bit disappointing and Will really surprised me was actually at the local level in metro Vancouver here here's one that sticks out. So Metro Vancouver is the kind of group of city governments that spreads from about Langley to North Vancouver. So what people used to call the graveyard, it's now called Metro Vancouver and it's a collection of mayors and city councilors from those various areas and they all sit together on a council.

00;28;02;21 - 00;28;27;27
Kris Sims
Now, this is going back a few years. It's probably about six years ago, just before a two week long spring break for school. I'm talking the Friday afternoon. They voted themselves a leaving bonus. Aha. Like a 1600 dollars leaving bonus. And I have to be clear, these are mayors who are paid a salary, a big one by the taxpayers.

00;28;28;11 - 00;28;57;12
Kris Sims
All they're doing is sitting on their backsides every two weeks at a meeting for like 4 hours a time. They voted themselves this big sweetheart goodbye. Bonus of when you decide to no longer run for mayor anywhere, you're hanging up the caller. Thank you very much taxpayers. We're taking this bonus money and I actually was a whistle blower phoned me, somebody had seen it and somebody was working in the office and phoned me and said they just voted for this thing.

00;28;58;03 - 00;29;19;15
Kris Sims
And what surprised me was I phoned them. So I phoned the clerk, I contacted the office and I said, okay, I just need the voting record. So I needed to know which mayor voted for the bonuses. And he said, oh, we don't keep that. I said, What? What are you talking about? You know, keep it as it give me the voting record just forwarded to my email.

00;29;19;18 - 00;29;38;29
Kris Sims
It's like, no, no, no. We it was a verbal I said you had a spending motion and it was a verbal. I said, give me the voting record. He's like, No, no, you'll have to go back and look at the video and see if you can see people's hands in the air. Like freeze frame it count there. I could not believe that.

00;29;39;06 - 00;29;57;10
Kris Sims
So that was a big lack of accountability. That was act, to be fair. That was at the municipal level. And so and now is in B.C. Now, I think they're recording their votes now. I hope so because we made a pretty big fuss over it. So I guess to answer your question is it depends on where you are.

00;29;57;15 - 00;30;07;23
Kris Sims
There are some city councils that are really good and they're really proactive and they keep all their stuff online. And there's others, like I just described to you, that are furtive at best.

00;30;08;24 - 00;30;40;20
Aaron Pete
Do you feel like often conservatives get kind of the claim that they're more fiscally conservative, that they're more financially responsible Do you find that that actually takes place, too? That actually follows through you kind of talked about Gordon Campbell, obviously more conservative, bringing in and helping support the carbon tax. So when we're thinking about this, often people simplify and go well, left leaning people, people on the left of the aisle, they are more likely to spend money on social programs, on community programs and stuff.

00;30;40;27 - 00;30;47;07
Aaron Pete
And then the conservatives are always let's balance the budget. Do you find that that actually comes true or is there a mixed bag.

00;30;48;17 - 00;31;14;10
Kris Sims
I find that that can be typical in their messaging, but it isn't necessarily true when it comes to results. So here I can think of a few examples. So early on in 20th they believe it was 2017 because I just landed back in B.C. and it was then NDP Premier John Horgan. He initially had said no to FIFA, for example.

00;31;14;15 - 00;31;35;25
Kris Sims
Here's a good example. They were balancing the budgets I wasn't thrilled with a lot of things they were doing, nudging me wrong. I didn't like the carbon taxes, I didn't like the reversal on those things. They were spending a lot of money. Fair enough. But they initially were balancing the budget and then, for example, they said no to FIFA, getting taxpayers money to hold some of their soccer games.

00;31;35;25 - 00;31;58;00
Kris Sims
There in the Vancouver area, but that was many years ago and they happen to be NDP, but we still praised them because they were saving taxpayers money in balancing the budget like that's a good thing. Now, again, their overall spending was going up, the debt was going up, they were hiding it in capital expenditures. Nobody's pure as the driven snow but credit where it's due.

00;31;58;00 - 00;32;24;26
Kris Sims
And NDP government did say initially no to something like spending money on FIFA. Now fast forward and they are spending money on FIFA. They are giving taxpayers money and it's basically the same government, it's the same party. It's just Eby now instead of organ. And so I'll put it this way, I find people who identify themselves as conservatives usually will also be fiscal conservatives.

00;32;25;15 - 00;32;58;01
Kris Sims
Or they will say that tax cuts and balanced budgets are important to them. More typically, where is someone who is more left wing if they describe themselves as, say, NDP or Green Party, usually tax cuts, balanced budgets aren't the first things out of their mouths. Usually it is spending on social programs and stuff like that. But there's one thing or there's two things I find that usually brings both sides of the aisle, so to speak, together, and that is government waste.

00;32;58;20 - 00;33;25;15
Kris Sims
So I don't know anybody who loves government waste. As we saw with the speaker plucks really doing an amazing job, blowing the whistle on horrendous waste that was happening at the legislature. Both people I know from left and right typically don't like government waste. And too, maybe I'm dating myself, but it used to be the case that both folks on the left and the right supported free expression and free speech.

00;33;26;19 - 00;34;02;18
Kris Sims
I unfortunately find that to be slipping a lot. Lately, I have found that it's mostly folks on the right who are against something like C-11, for example, which is basically a federal government censorship bill, which will restrict to what you can see here and share online on the Internet, which is really dangerous. But 15 years ago, I knew lots of folks on the left who would have been up in arms over something like this, because you can't have the state telling you what you can express online from a heritage perspective.

00;34;02;18 - 00;34;29;19
Kris Sims
Like if you do something terrible that's criminal, that's already in the criminal code, that's not we're talking about we're talking about free expression. But those folks are largely silent now. And I don't I honestly don't know why. Like, where are the Occupy Wall Street folks? Where are the ad busters reading people who want free expression and and smaller government, they really need to step up here and speak up for free expression.

00;34;30;02 - 00;34;54;03
Kris Sims
So I find spending wise mostly it's conservatives who say they want to have balanced budgets and lower taxes and smaller government. If that comes true with the government, that depends. And that's what we're at, what our job is. We're the watchdog. So conservative parties can promise things, but then they can turn around and get into government, blow your money like anybody else can.

00;34;54;17 - 00;35;16;21
Kris Sims
And it's our job to chase them around and hold them to account and embarrass them publicly and hold them to their promises. I'll give you another example very recently, the former leader of the federal Conservative Party, Erin O'Toole, had promised that he was going to scrap the carbon tax and always oppose a federal carbon tax. If he became leader of the party, he signed our pledge.

00;35;17;00 - 00;35;32;15
Kris Sims
It's one of the tools we use at the Taxpayers Federation to get politicians on the record. Then he became leader and then he completely did a180. He flip flopped and he said, Oh, well, I'm going to put in my own snazzy carbon tax, but I'm going to call it a levy and it's going to be a fee. And it's not going to.

00;35;33;01 - 00;35;55;16
Kris Sims
Right. That didn't fly. People got super mad. They saw that he had broken his promise. They saw that he had signed on the dotted line and then reversed himself and we held them to account and so did his party members. And he's no longer leader. And then years ago, we gave former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin a tax fighter award because he slayed the deficit.

00;35;56;03 - 00;36;19;24
Kris Sims
That was great. He balanced the budget and he was wearing a liberal red jersey at the time. And so to answer your question, typically it's people who support and vote for conservatives who say they like things like balanced budgets and low taxes, whether or not when they form government, they keep those promises is up for debate. And that's mainly one of our main roles is is holding politicians accountable.

00;36;20;13 - 00;36;48;03
Aaron Pete
I want to get to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and talk about that. But on this note, I think it's really useful just to kind of understand our relationship with these organizations, because they can feel it's often described the conservatives are the selfish people, are the people who don't care about the middle class or are these individuals. And I'm just curious how we hear all the time we want to take care of the middle class and we're losing the middle class and what are we going to do about the middle class and obviously those in poverty?

00;36;48;16 - 00;37;07;19
Aaron Pete
What do you feel like are some standout steps that governments could actually take to support people in the middle class, people struggling paycheck to paycheck? Is there is there something clear in your mind where you're like, if you did this, it wouldn't fix it, but we'd be moving in the direction of actually helping people, regular people, regular trades workers get by?

00;37;07;29 - 00;37;12;16
Kris Sims
Darn tootin. One balanced the budgets, both federal and provincial.

00;37;12;23 - 00;37;13;19
Aaron Pete
What does that do?

00;37;14;04 - 00;37;33;07
Kris Sims
That no one stops you from running your printing press over time like I just described. So you're not printing $300 billion out of thin air and causing inflation, which is causing everything in our stores to cost more money. That's something Trudeau has done. Okay? And it's one of the reasons why our interest rates have gone up, too. Hey, so stop doing that.

00;37;33;17 - 00;38;02;14
Kris Sims
Quit printing money, quit running deficits, balance those budgets. It also saves all of us money because we pay interest on the debts. So that's not magic money. We have to pay that back somehow, someway, someday. And we pay interest on that. In fact, depending on what stats you're looking at, the interest we pay on the federal debt right now is a larger line item than the money allocated in some cases to Department of National Defense.

00;38;03;14 - 00;38;07;02
Kris Sims
Dude, I know it's a huge tax bill.

00;38;07;03 - 00;38;07;23
Aaron Pete
That's crazy.

00;38;07;24 - 00;38;26;03
Kris Sims
It is crazy. I had to check it six times. The metal fell. Now, this might be different from procurement and stuff, but it was a line item, right? In the budget. It said Department, National Defense. So and like it then you look up, it's called debt servicing costs is what they call it in Newspeak in the budget. What that is, is that your interest charge, right?

00;38;26;04 - 00;38;45;28
Kris Sims
It's like the you know, the government credit card. So balance the budgets. Want to scrap the carbon taxes. Scrap them right now. So I'll give you an example of what that would do to the middle class and the working class people. You just explained and like my brothers are all tradespeople, like I get it. And we hear from people all the time on this.

00;38;46;11 - 00;39;11;01
Kris Sims
So getting rid of the carbon tax, that saves you, like I said, 15 bucks per pickup truck. 30 bucks per heavy duty pickup truck. So somebody's pulling a dollar or you know, a trailer or something that's 30 bucks a time. It's around $300 you're saving just every year and your heating bill. Okay. And then there's the stuff that it's really hard to quantify because the carbon tax makes everything cost more.

00;39;11;05 - 00;39;36;10
Kris Sims
So let's go through a thought process. The farmer say up north in B.C., a farmer uses a grain dryer K to dry their product. That's propane and natural gas boom. Carbon tax, if it goes onto a truck boom, diesel carbon tax goes on to a train. In Prince George, there's diesel again. Carbon tax. Now you're on to another truck and now you're driving to the grocery store.

00;39;36;25 - 00;39;59;01
Kris Sims
All of those steps has been carbon taxed before you even put something in your cart. And then in many cases, the store itself is running on natural gas for heating and cooling. Again, there's the tax. And so that would have an immediate effect on the working class in the middle class. That would save them a lot of money every single year.

00;39;59;27 - 00;40;20;29
Kris Sims
If I'm speaking specifically for British Columbia and I'm speaking especially for low income people, if I could wave a magic wand, I would get rid of your tea. And I'll tell you why. I'm from B.C. originally and I'm living here in Alberta. Every time I go to the cashier now I'm wincing a bit and it's not so bad.

00;40;21;22 - 00;40;54;11
Kris Sims
It's an experience every single time. And that's because I was living in B.C. for so long. And in B.C. the I find the best to be the worst because it's high it's $0.07, the 7%. And on something like a used car, it's 12%. It's gross. So say, you know, Mitchell, you know, is buying his new Lamborghini downtown. He doesn't care about a city why would he care about it?

00;40;54;11 - 00;41;26;10
Kris Sims
Basti literally can afford a Lamborghini. But Mike in Chilliwack, who saved up six grand for that, used Toyota Corolla he cares about the city because now he's spending about $730 more on the city for his used car that he is pinched and saved up for that as an attack on the poor. A lot of people don't know this, but the B.C. government charges p t on thrift shop items.

00;41;27;25 - 00;41;48;18
Kris Sims
Yeah. So you're shopping at a thrift shop or even a big one. Like Value Village or something, and you're buying your clothes as an adult. You going to work some work boots that are used. You got some books, maybe you got some like a small appliances or something. You needed a blender, you're charged PSP on all that stuff.

00;41;49;05 - 00;42;14;13
Kris Sims
Even though you're shopping second hand, even though it was already charged a sales tax. Right. That's disgusting. And I'll even give you a visual of why this affects the poor more. Okay. And I use the poor because I want to be clear in my language. I'm not using it derogatorily. I find when we use terms like lower income that it euphemisms things and governments get away with robbing them blind.

00;42;14;28 - 00;42;39;14
Kris Sims
So if you are a poorer person or you know a lower income person, this is what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. And trust me, finance ministers and academics living in university campuses have lost touch with what this means. Most of the time, if you live paycheck to paycheck, all of your money is out there in the world paying for stuff.

00;42;40;07 - 00;43;07;20
Kris Sims
It's paying for your heating bill, it's paying for your clothes, it's paying for your books, it's paying for that car that you saved up for. Like, I just said, it's paying for Internet bills. It's paying for cat food. All of it is spoken for. If you increase the price of all of this stuff, with a sales tax, that's money directly out of your pocket, you have to make up that cost somewhere else.

00;43;07;20 - 00;43;34;22
Kris Sims
Now you have to cut it out of your grocery bill. You have to find a cheaper place to live. Good luck in B.C. It's gone. And so that is why a city is really really bad for lower income people because it is a direct increase in their cost of living. It's not like they've got a few savings accounts and they just got to move some money around like other people apparently are able to do well because they don't live paycheck to paycheck.

00;43;34;28 - 00;43;54;10
Kris Sims
And, you know, it's if, you know, shading off the margins or whatever terms that economists like to use when they're defending something like a, you know, for lower income and poorer people, that's literally a 7% increase in their cost for everything so it has to give somewhere they're going to go into debt to pay for it or it's going to cut into the grocery bill.

00;43;54;20 - 00;44;05;17
Kris Sims
So if I could wave a magic wand, I would federally, I would say balance the budget and scrap the carbon taxes provincially for B.C. If I could make a special one, I would say scrap the GST.

00;44;06;08 - 00;44;19;26
Aaron Pete
That's a really interesting one thing we're hearing more and more about is this idea of tax the rich. It's more predominant, I would say, in the US, but we're starting to hear in more and more here. What are your thoughts? Is this is this the magic bullet? Is this going to fix things?

00;44;20;04 - 00;44;51;08
Kris Sims
I wish it were because, you know, wouldn't affect me and I'm guessing it wouldn't affect you. It doesn't affect a lot of normal people. But here's why that doesn't work is because uber ultra crazy pants, wealthy people, like if you're imagining like, you know, I forget the dude's name that runs Loblaws. He was just giving a giving testimony there or, you know, the Elon Musk's of the world or somebody who runs, you know, Ford Motor Company they'll just leave or they'll just figure out a way to not pay it.

00;44;51;25 - 00;45;14;09
Kris Sims
So super crazy rich people that we, like watch on TV. They've got an army of accountants and lawyers. Okay? They'll figure out a way to not pay the thing while they're living here in Canada, or they'll just leave. And there goes that magic golden goose of wealth that we thought was going to be our way out of this mess.

00;45;14;27 - 00;45;34;02
Kris Sims
So it doesn't work so I understand the appeal of, Hey, let's go grab that Monopoly man running down the street with the big bag of money and just shake him, and then we'll take that money and distributed like Robinhood. You know, it sounds fun, but no one, that money runs out. No to it just doesn't work because he always has a getaway down.

00;45;34;11 - 00;46;06;10
Kris Sims
In fact, France tried this, France tried this, and I don't know if it was Macron. One of their leaders said, and I'm paraphrasing because it was in French one of their leaders said, we have turned France into a Cuba just without the sunshine and beaches so they managed to, in his view, reduce their wealth because these rich people just ran away to some other jurisdiction and they had nothing to show for it.

00;46;06;19 - 00;46;35;17
Kris Sims
And in all seriousness, not all, but lots of really, really wealthy people are job creators. In many of these cases, their money is parked in like major businesses that employ people and innovate and invent stuff and make good things happen. So not all wealthy people are these like maniacal people twirling their mustaches. Right. And figuring out a way to for to get another cigar.

00;46;35;23 - 00;46;57;04
Kris Sims
Sometimes they're really big entrepreneurs and businesspeople, and that means they're employing people like you and me and our brothers and sisters and our cousins and stuff. And there's also a spin off industries, too. There's a lady that's running the sandwich truck that's parked next to that guy's job site. There is the place that's selling the boots down the street from all the people he employs.

00;46;57;10 - 00;47;14;29
Kris Sims
There's all of these really important jobs that are created around these wealthy people. And if they just leave those jobs could be gone, too. So, again, it's it's easy to understand the appeal of, hey, there is somebody with a bag of money, let's go take the money. But it doesn't work.

00;47;16;01 - 00;47;32;28
Aaron Pete
Yeah, I do think that one of the challenges we face is that it's easy to hate the rich and not really genuinely care about people who are struggling paycheck to paycheck. It's much more glamorous to be like, let's just go after that guy because he's richer than me rather than looking at some of these policies for what they're worth.

00;47;33;03 - 00;47;53;28
Kris Sims
Yeah, exactly. You know, if people really like if these politicians want to put their money where their mouths are, don't take pay hikes, stop hiking your own pay. These employees in Ottawa I've taken three pay hikes during this COVID mess. I know tons of people who took pay cuts, who lost their jobs entirely, who lost their businesses like it was rough.

00;47;54;12 - 00;48;15;25
Kris Sims
And a lot of them are even recovered from it because of those lockdowns and what happened. And these politicians are giving themselves pay hikes and they're already naked, I think right now after the pay hike, I think it's $193,000 per year plus benefits that would make you faint like they pay for their heating bill. They pay for all their fuel and for transportation.

00;48;15;25 - 00;48;44;19
Kris Sims
They pay for their food, they pay for their housing when they're in Ottawa, like all the day to day stuff. You and I were just talking about that's covered. And they get these crazy salaries and a pretty fat pension. So yeah, if they really care, it'd be better for them to not take those pay hikes, figure out ways to balance their budgets, scrap these taxes like carbon taxes, instead of grilling Galen Weston because he's one dude and going after him is not going to solve our problems.

00;48;45;20 - 00;49;05;22
Aaron Pete
Can you talk about the role of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation? I think it's so valuable to have an organization that's able to help individuals who aren't able to get their mind around all of these complex issues that are able to support a voice that's willing to do that work, to help them stay informed. Can you talk about working with this organization and the work you do?

00;49;05;27 - 00;49;28;07
Kris Sims
Well, I really appreciate that because it's something that well, one, it's it gives me hope because it gives people a voice. Again, I find in many cases. So we get lots of emails. We have more than 235,000 supporters across Canada. And so we get lots of emails from folks from everywhere, from from B.C., from here in Alberta, out back east.

00;49;29;04 - 00;49;52;00
Kris Sims
A lot of some of them are retired, some of them are farmers. Some of them are brand new to our organization. And so we are a nonpartisan, not for profit citizens advocacy organization. We're one of the oldest. And like I said, we've been around since before the internet. We started in 1990. And what I love about us is that there's something for everyone.

00;49;52;11 - 00;50;18;01
Kris Sims
So if you want to scrap carbon taxes, we've got a petition and an email list for that. You can join our standing army if you really love free speech and you're really worried about what's happening with C11, we've got a pool of people that are fighting that too. We do the fun stuff so you might have seen we do a spoof awards show every year where we handle golden pig statues to the politicians.

00;50;18;01 - 00;50;39;26
Kris Sims
You waste your money best. It's fun. Yeah, because you got to laugh, right? And so we have these, we have these costumes and we have a mascot called Porky the Waste Hater, because this big pink pig and he stands there with us. And so we'll do that fun stuff. We also have a guy named Bieber who might look like an old Italian folktale puppet where his nose grows and he doesn't tell the truth.

00;50;40;16 - 00;51;01;01
Kris Sims
We have chased politicians down the street wearing a costume, so we'll do the fun, because if you're not laughing, you might be crying right? So you got to keep the happy and the happy warrior. So we make sure to do the fun stuff and we also do the tough stuff. My colleague Franco, Tara Zeno, is the federal director.

00;51;01;01 - 00;51;27;03
Kris Sims
He's living there in Ottawa. He put out a 70 page pre-budget report, like with graphs and charts and math, all explaining how you can balance the budget just by returning to like 2018 spending levels. Like we're not going back to 1940 year like he. And so he did all that work. We also fight stuff in court. So the no more pipelines law, for example, we took that all the way to the Supreme Court.

00;51;27;09 - 00;51;51;29
Kris Sims
Our lawyer just argued it so we'll do both things. And so for folks who are listening, especially if you're feeling like things are out of your control and you can't afford stuff and the politicians aren't listening to you, we've got a petition for pretty much anything you could want. Like when I was mentioning a study in our in B.C. I've got a petition there take the best off of used items.

00;51;53;01 - 00;52;12;01
Kris Sims
So that directly helps low income people and only low income people. And so like you can sign up in all those different ways. And then what we do is that if something comes up in the news or there's a new law or something's changing, we email that list and say, now is the time. Everybody email your MP all at once.

00;52;12;10 - 00;52;37;00
Kris Sims
Phone your MP all at once. Come to this pub night and listen to us speak and we can really rally the troops. What I like to encourage people to do is to do these things I just explained and then get out there, like physically get out there, meet your neighbors, figure out if you guys all agree on let's oppose this tax hike or push for this school to be built or whatever it is and doorknock.

00;52;37;19 - 00;52;58;19
Kris Sims
It's amazing. You get to know your neighbors and you feel empowered. You no longer feel that you are just some some ATM, some piggy bank for taxes. You suddenly feel like you have a voice and you have agency. And so that's what I love about the Taxpayers Federation, is you don't need to want a flat tax necessarily and be, you know, a hardcore small government right wing.

00;52;58;24 - 00;53;09;09
Kris Sims
You can also be more left of center and want to get rid of the unused items or have free speech. So there is there's ways for lots of people to participate in the organization.

00;53;09;23 - 00;53;12;02
Aaron Pete
Can you tell people how they can find you online?

00;53;12;10 - 00;53;32;16
Kris Sims
Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Just go to taxpayer dot com. That's our Web sites. Of singular taxpayer dot com. And again, the best way to get the conversation rolling is just go through. We have a million petitions like it's like a box of chocolates. Some have nuts others are like Jelly's like, take your pick and sign up on those.

00;53;32;16 - 00;53;50;22
Kris Sims
And that way you'll start getting our updates. And they're not like, you know, we're not flooding your inbox on, you know, give us more money or anything like that. It's action. It's like, now is the time to email your MP or did you see this video? It's always taking an action and I like it because it provides fellowship.

00;53;51;07 - 00;54;10;15
Kris Sims
So I've had ongoing email conversations now with people across the country for years of them sending me their heating bill each winter and checking in on them in the summer and how they're doing. And that's what I would recommend them do. Just go to our website taxpayer dot com, figure out what really appeals to you sign the corresponding petitions and you can start the conversation and if you want to.

00;54;10;15 - 00;54;27;13
Kris Sims
I mean, we've got news releases there. You can go back through like 15 years of, of stuff that we've said. You can watch our silly videos. Like I said with Porky The Waste Hater, you can watch our serious videos when we give, we'll give presentations to committee like on Parliament Hill in suits and stuff. You can watch all that.

00;54;28;02 - 00;54;47;07
Aaron Pete
I love the fellowship aspect because it seems like when people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, it's their failure. And when you see inflation, when you see these challenges coming up with interest rates and being able to get a new mortgage, it feels like, oh, I'm not doing enough, I'm not making enough money, I'm not stretching my money enough for more than I need to do.

00;54;47;13 - 00;55;00;02
Aaron Pete
And to your point, creating this community where it's actually you didn't do anything wrong. Things in our economy have changed such that what you were doing before doesn't work, but not because you as an individual did anything wrong.

00;55;00;05 - 00;55;20;04
Kris Sims
Oh, that's such a good way of putting that. I'm going to use that next time I'm chatting with people because especially coming from B.C., one of the main reasons we moved here is so we could buy a house in our forties. So like, I get it and I just got to anybody listening right now and feels alone and you're struggling, you're not alone.

00;55;20;23 - 00;55;38;04
Kris Sims
And this isn't necessarily that you can need to come join my group. Like, go join another group if that feels better for you, but reach out to your neighbors, reach out to your family and friends, find a local service organization. It could be the Lions you know, it could be the surreptitious club, it could be Rotary, it could be any of those things.

00;55;38;11 - 00;56;01;28
Kris Sims
Just get active and get involved. But from a tax perspective and you struggling financially perspective, it's likely not your fault, man. Like the government is taking more than 40% of your paycheck. Inflation has robbed you of a lot of your wealth. There's been a lot of missteps on big files like housing and energy that are not your fault.

00;56;02;15 - 00;56;27;28
Kris Sims
Okay. But there's a way to fix them. So if we all team up, if we all speak up at the same time, we have a fighting chance of getting rid of things like sort of getting rid of the carbon tax, which, by the way, you have two of in British Columbia. That's one of the reasons why your fuel hovers around two bucks a liter you've got the highest fuel prices in all of North America because you got the highest fuel taxes in all of North America.

00;56;28;12 - 00;56;49;07
Kris Sims
So if we all team up and fight back together, there's a better chance that will achieve what we want and lower your cost. And in the meantime, he won't be alone with it anymore, okay? Because it's not your fault and you shouldn't feel like you're alone. There are record numbers of working people using foodbanks now. It's really hard to say that out loud.

00;56;50;03 - 00;57;06;18
Kris Sims
I know that there's record numbers of people who are within 200 bucks every month now of insolvency. That's really hard. But we can help. And if we don't achieve it immediately release, we will be in this together and we can have a little bit of fun along the way and you won't feel so powerless.

00;57;07;08 - 00;57;21;25
Aaron Pete
That would be the perfect place to end it. But I do have to ask about the Canadian Taxpayers Podcast I just listened to your most recent episode and I really enjoyed it. It was diving into the 2023 budget and all of the challenges with it. Would you mind just telling listeners a little bit about connecting with that podcast?

00;57;21;25 - 00;57;42;28
Kris Sims
Yeah. So if you head on over to our website taxpayer dot com, it should be there if actually the best way to find it is on YouTube. So if you go to YouTube and search Canadian Taxpayers Podcast it should be up there and then on your phone like just pop it up on like if you do Apple Podcasts or whatever term you use, just search for us Canadian taxpayers Federation podcast.

00;57;43;04 - 00;58;05;28
Kris Sims
It's got a little kind of Hazzard symbol of a politician throwing money into fire. So that's our logo and you can listen to it. I'm on there frequently. So with Frank Gutierrez, I know we've got an amazing new investigative journalist who is full time working with us. His name's Ryan. He's fantastic. He's at a Winnipeg. He's the one that's digging up a lot of these government waste stories.

00;58;06;04 - 00;58;24;08
Kris Sims
And so if you just find our podcast, you can listen to it. We talk about all sorts of this stuff so you can dove into the budget like you just explained. And that's where Franco explains the really ugly level of spending that's happening. And he explains how they could save the money, how they could actually balance the budget without causing austerity or hardship.

00;58;24;24 - 00;58;30;16
Kris Sims
And we also do some fun stuff, too. We do a bit of government waste and poke fun at the government because again, you got to have a bit of fun.

00;58;31;11 - 00;58;49;13
Aaron Pete
Chris, this has been such a pleasure. I really feel like, you know, your stuff. It's such an enlightening conversation to have somebody who's able to balance this serious topic with the humor. I've really enjoyed your interviews. I think you're a very thoughtful person and you make this accessible for people who are frustrated, who are seeing their money not go as far.

00;58;49;13 - 00;59;06;24
Aaron Pete
And I think what you talked about before about how it's not their fault, I think that that just needs to be said more because when we're talking about inflation, I'm not seeing that on the news. I'm not hearing that in the newspaper because it's not it's not perhaps popular to talk about the real impacts on people and how it isn't their fault they're not doing anything wrong.

00;59;06;24 - 00;59;16;09
Aaron Pete
So I just I really appreciate your time today. It's been so enlightening and really like all inspiring to hear you talk about these issues in such a plain, simple terms.

00;59;17;03 - 00;59;22;23
Kris Sims
I can do it any time. And good on you for this. Podcast. Your questions are really insightful. Thank you.

00;59;23;17 - 00;59;24;21
Aaron Pete
How much do you pay in tax, Tim

00;59;24;21 - 00;59;50;15
Tim McAlpine
Tim? Oh, well, it sounds like 40% a lot. And it's on every level. And, and then even to have the taxes prepared for the per hour company is astronomical and keeps going up because of the complexity. And yeah, it's, it's one of those things you just sort of want to stick your head in the ground.

00;59;50;15 - 01;00;14;14
Aaron Pete
But I loved her passion and advocacy. I was not familiar with that organization and what they're doing. Yeah, I really am proud to be able to highlight people like that because what a cool organization. I follow them on Twitter and as we mentioned, got to listen to her interview where she was diving into line items and not now making it sound abstract of like, oh, you're, you're paying too much tax.

01;00;14;14 - 01;00;32;14
Aaron Pete
It was very clear what the what the purchases, what the spending and where it was going wrong. And I do think that people feel this, but they don't have a person able to articulate what the problems are and how it can be changed. And again, I think we talked a lot about caring about people on fixed incomes, but where's the action?

01;00;32;14 - 01;00;52;17
Aaron Pete
Where are we talking about solutions to that and looking at a petition to get rid of the on used clothing from like value village and thrift stores like which just I didn't even think of that as an issue. But when you think about that at scale across a whole province, that's going to have a lot of effects and tax on tax just drives me bonkers.

01;00;53;13 - 01;01;13;18
Tim McAlpine
And that's a prime example. I hadn't thought of that as well. My kids tend to go to the village to find great finds there, but I didn't necessarily put two and two together. It you know, this stuff has already been taxed once and used car is the same idea every time it moves now for sure. Yeah, all right.

01;01;13;18 - 01;01;42;25
Aaron Pete
Well, go check it out. Next podcast dropping next week. It was such a pleasure. Chris Sims, go check out the Canadian taxpayers Federation. Follow them on all the social media platforms. A really important voice in Canada. And I'm sure that there's like minded organizations in the USA. I know that they came out with a with a story saying that they had misspent or wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, which is just incomprehensible to my my small brain.

01;01;44;08 - 01;01;49;21
Aaron Pete
Bigger than me. Podcast.ca Go check it out there and subscribe on Substack

01;01;49;21 - 01;02;13;01
Tim McAlpine
and Aaron, although that's an amazing end to the podcast. I do have one confession to make an editorial correction. It's the well. So if you watch there or listen to the last episode where I was completely trashing Aaron for his lack of early nineties music and talking about our own tragically hip and the amazing concert that was broadcast I exaggerated.

01;02;13;01 - 01;02;27;19
Tim McAlpine
I went and looked at how many people actually watched the last performance of the Tragically Hip that it was. No, 20 million was 11.7 million, but I will say that's almost one third of the entire country. So just wanted to set the record straight and

01;02;27;19 - 01;02;34;22
Aaron Pete
that sounds like some federal government mismanagement of money there just just a small 10 million off there.

01;02;35;05 - 01;02;39;04
Tim McAlpine
But but the difference is I can clean

01;02;39;04 - 01;02;47;12
Aaron Pete
oh so Justin Trudeau walks out. He's like, I'm going to come clean now. Then we just do it just right. We're just fine.

01;02;47;12 - 01;02;51;22
Tim McAlpine
Oh, my goodness. Well, I was throwing some shade of you. I'm getting in.

01;02;51;22 - 01;02;56;23
Aaron Pete
There you go it all balances out, we have balanced the podcast!

01;02;58;05 - 01;03;01;24
Tim McAlpine
There ya go.