Carney Dithers, will Poilievre Survive?

Government doesn’t shrink on its own. It expands. It consumes. And eventually, it starts eating the people it was supposed to serve.

In this episode of Leviathan Must Be Stopped, I’m joined once again by my good friend John Wakelin — lawyer, free-speech advocate, and professional vanquisher of bad arguments — to tear into Mark Carney’s first federal budget, the fiction masquerading as fiscal discipline, and the media ecosystem that keeps selling Canadians fairy tales.

We unpack why budgets have become political theatre instead of financial reality, how “capital spending” is being used as camouflage for the same bloated excess, and why Canadians are paying more than ever while getting less in return.

From Alberta separation and constitutional reality, to Canada’s dependency on the U.S. economy, to the fantasy of decoupling from American trade, to the internal civil war inside the Conservative Party — nothing is off limits.

We also get into Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, what Conservatives did wrong last time and what an actual aspirational Conservative vision should sound like.

If you’re tired of smoke, mirrors, and managed decline — this one’s for you.

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Trevor Parry has an encyclopedic knowledge of tax and an unmatched determination that you will pay less of it. 

A lawyer with exceptional academic credentials and a profound believer in personal responsibility, he is on a crusade against the overreaching mega-state. 

For Trevor, creating Canada’s most innovative tax-saving strategies is not a job. It is a calling. 

There remain but a few strategies for starving #Leviathan of tax, and but a few experts who can execute them.

#leviathanmustbestopped 

#taxlawyer 

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#taxlaw 

Website:  https://trevorparry.com/

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Transcript

0:06

And good day once again fellow viewers, Canadians, Americans, Conservatives around the world. Welcome to Leviathan Must Be Stopped. And first we start with some shameless product promotion. Yes, folks, we have bling. We have cigar cutters, t-shirts and hats. If you're interested, contact me. I am honoured and pleased once again to have my good friend, the vanquisher of defendants around the, around the world and particularly Durham. John Wakelin, co-founder of The Dinosaurs, the free speech club that we started a thousand years ago at Queen's Law, which was an infamous denizen of feminazis. And Johnny, once again, good to see you. How's things going? We're celebrating the budget of Mr. Carney and recently, yet another floor crossing. So we can talk about that amongst other things. I have a question for you, is Leviathan a reference to Hobbes, you know, the philosopher? It's in the Bible. It's a sea monster in the Bible that consumes everything. If for those of you who have not read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, and you really should, or at least get the abridged version, it is the concept that an individual gives up their liberty in exchange for the security that a state can provide. And unfortunately, as we know, that bargain has been one sided for liberty has been surrendered and nothing, there's no form of security or very little of it has been that has been delivered. In fact, all you've got is the overarching, ever-consuming, porcine state that continues to eat and eat and eat and produce nothing. And my friends, Canada is a perfect example of that as we once again continue our decline towards nihilistic socialism. I digress. Johnny, there's your description of Leviathan. Got it. How have you been? Good, fantastic. How's the world of litigation? Working on my master's on digital censorship, internet censorship and social media censorship and the Digital Services Act in Europe. So I'm going to be an expert in the policy of censoring conservatives globally and why. we can just ask the worst prime minister in British history, Sir Keir Starmer, on how that works, for I guarantee you that if you and I step foot off a plane at Heathrow, into shackles, we will go. That's a whole other topic about how the UK has descended into an Orwellian hellhole. We were over there, the family and I, in the summer and visited Cornwall, which was beautiful. London is terrifying. And we were in Ulster, which was, had Newfoundland's weather, but a beautiful place. So it's not all lost. And I think when Nigel finally wins, he will have the job of Hercules of shoveling out the Aegean stables, but we'll see nonetheless. Yes, we must hope that Nigel survives whatever fake, concocted scandal that the, oh and they'll try. And they will absolutely try. In the knick of time when the next election happens. Exactly. Well, our dear Prime Minister, the esteemed and super qualified Mark Carney has delivered his first budget. I'm always laughing when the liberal, I refer to them and excuse my ambic pentameter, liberal fart catchers on social media always go on about how qualified he is. Apparently that, that washes away the complete lack of qualification that their former leader had. So he's delivered his first budget. In my humble opinion, it's an absolute disaster from a fiscal perspective. A lot of smoke and mirrors dividing operational and capital budgets. Certainly it's good that there's some capital spending, but there's no substantive tax reform. Canadians continue to be punitively taxed. Capital continues to flee, both real and human and intellectual. Canada has not, they have not in any means or by any measure arrested the decline, pronounced decline that this country has been in for the last 10 years. But enough of my thoughts. What did you think of the budget? I mean, you know, I saw that obviously. So Carney ran after the Trudeau era. He ran on the, on the sort of the, I guess the promise that he was going to be a more conservative type of liberal. Right. You heard the media. They they lionized him and they made him sound like the second coming of Paul Martin, who, of course, while he balanced the budget, never actually cut any federal spending. He just cut the transfer payments to the provinces. Download it at all in the provinces. Paul Martin wasn't a conservative. He didn't actually achieve a balanced budget except by depriving money from the provincial budgets. But I think it's again, I don't really believe that the budget is real in the sense that budgets are a political document now because we live in a world where the media is completely corrupt. I mean, nobody in the media is ever going to point out that the legacy media is ever going to point out that every budget the Liberals have ever passed. You know, since the Martin era has been fiction that they've not ever achieved any of the targets they've ever promised. There won't be a single journalist on the CBC or anywhere else who will point that out to voters. They'll just tell everybody, oh you can trust this one. Oh exactly, I mean the media in this country is it's an abomination. Any even moderately critical thinker in Canada would see that. I mean, watching and that they can actually employ Rosie Barton is a terrifying statement in itself. The CBC is, you know, devoid of any sense of even keel approach to journalism. CTV is a mouthpiece for Bell Media, that they really don't want any content. Global is almost broken. And please, Conrad Black, have Mr. Murdoch buy it and build Fox News North. I think Johnny and I could both have a show. It's ridiculous. And unfortunately, a good chunk of Canadians buy it. Now, what I found uplifting are recent polls showing that other than the baby boomers, the we-already-got-ours generation, there is a majority of Canadians who favour the Conservatives coming into power, because I think, and this we'll get into, but that they, they've seen the end of an aspirational society, the concept that you could own your own home before you're 75, has finally dawned on them. And they've seen, you know, quite frankly, the baby boomers soak up as much national wealth as they can and not want to distribute it. So there is some hope around the corner. But if I look at this budget and as a tax guy, you know, the tax system is you know is built in the 1960s. And it's been tinkered with for political purposes, but you and I are sitting in a scenario where we and a lot of our friends are paying in excess of 50% and then add in HST and various other fees. People are giving 75% of what they make to the government and they're receiving absolutely nothing. You could easily cut the civil service by 50% and probably see an increase in or an improvement in the services rendered. But Mr. Carney, and I'll hand it over to you, Johnny, in this budget comes out and ostensibly cuts the civil service, but he does it through attrition and retirement. There's no meaningful cuts. And these, you know, the unions are still fighting tooth and nail to prevent them from returning to the office. So. I think. Go ahead. I I just think that the core takeaway from the budget discussion is that the Liberals understand that they have to appear to more, have to appear to be more fiscally austere. Everybody knows Canada is awash in unsustainable levels of debt. We are paying for things that our parents spent 30, 40, 50 years ago and the interest on those things. And you know, I don't know what, how many cents on the dollar is actually going to current spending, but a lot of it is going to service the debt. So we're not even getting services for the taxes we're paying. We're paying for the services our parents consumed. Secondly, the budget is a subterfuge because effectively what it does is it portrays the same old bloated excess spending as capital expenditure. The Liberals have figured out that people don't like just wasting money on liberal grists. You know, they don't like the fact the Liberals under the Trudeau government, you know, were basically just dishing out money to everybody under the sun who wanted to say call themselves a consultant and, you know. Friends and, friends and family. I mean you have, you have, they're the most corrupt party in the history of Canada in terms of, they remind me of they remind me of Mexico which has been a one party state for most of its existence. We have the same thing. And if Canadians believe otherwise, they're naive. You have a situation in Edmonton where the other Randy apparently made $50 million on PPE contracts. They recently, and thank God, departed Steven Guilbeault. He of the central casting for a French Revolution movie, cause he looks like a Jacobin of the First Order. And I've seen the little, little loputian in person. He's a wee little radical. He apparently may have diverted $250 million out of the Green Slush Fund into a related company and Canadians just look the other way. So no, corruption is profligate in this country. Well, no Canadians look the other way because of course the head of the RCMP is of course appointed by the prime minister of the very same party that, oh exactly, does these things. Exactly. So I don't see much in the budget. It's, the fact that they have this list of projects that were already well on their way to being approved or were approved fine. You know, if we're going to start building infrastructure, be that in a private public partnership, if it gets built fine. I don't for a minute think that the memorandum of understanding with Daniel Smith's government will actually manifest into anything. I think that's completely a ruse to pull the carpet out from underneath the Alberta separatist movement because as I mean, I may be on the fringe here, but my belief is that constitutionally, this country is flawed. And that as long as the Laurentian elites run this country, we have no hope of national reclamation or turnaround. And the only way you're going to get it is a yes vote in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And I think that Mr. Mr. Carney's well-played chess move has certainly forestalled the separation movement or at least a yes vote for the time being but I could be wrong. What do you think? The problem with separation and the risk issue is that we have the Clarity Act. We have various constitutional jurisprudence surrounding attempts by Quebec to leave. And I can't recall the exact, the name of the case, and I'm trying to struggle to remember the exact sections of the details of the Clarity Act. But effectively, you need, you can't, a province can't just secede from Canada unless they meet the 7 and 10 formula for constitutional amendment. You would have to amend the Constitution Act of 82 to do that. I don't think Alberta is going to get 7 provinces representing over 50% of the Canadian regardless of how they vote. In addition, a 51% vote to secede is not enough according to the Supreme Court. And I think the Clarity Act, it's not enough to secede. So they don't, they need way more than 50%. That's something that I think a lot of pundits miss. It hasn't been established, but it might be over 60. I would disagree with you. I think if they get a clear mandate from a vote, I think Ottawa will realize that they better negotiate in good faith because the Red Deer irregulars in their pickup trucks will take on whatever puny forces Ottawa can muster. Remember, a third of the, third of the military, at least the army, sits in Western Canada. And I don't think they're going to genuflect to, to the woke ideology of Ottawa. I mean we can get into a whole discussion about what they've done to the military despite his claims that he's going to up defence spending. The ability of our troops to engage in combat is, is a fantasy. We're under equipped. They have political officers. The armed forces are at a woeful state of readiness, but that's a whole other conversation. But again, we'll see what happens, but I think she's going to get, or there will be a vote next year or something like that. I'm of the belief, even if I'm not a separatist, that a yes vote provides the ammunition that you need to go to Ottawa and say, you know what, we're not taking this anymore. And again, again the whole concept of, we've been dealing with the Quebec issue for years. It's a chimera. Quebec separatism is a 19 year, it's akin to a 19 year old daughter who wants to move out from mommy and daddy and have them to get you to pay for anything or everything. Next time there's a referendum, I think it should be national because I'd love to see what the other nine provinces say. So we'll see. And as you know, as long as we can hold the island of Montreal, so my beloved Montreal Canadians can not be part of an independent Quebec, I'm a happy guy and I can go to Schwartz and get a sandwich. Of course if Alberta decided, if Alberta is the 19 year old girl in that scenario, the fact is she may leave to get married to a man that the rest of Canada doesn't approve of called the U.S. Oh exactly. Ya, exactly. I guess we should talk about the orange menace then. He's, rumors are today that trade talks could be moving forward. And he's demanded an end to supply management and dairy and an end to some of the liberal, ridiculous censorship rules that they're that they're formulating. I, of course, would like much more as a a capitalist and as an aspirational and fanatic believer in entrepreneurialism and self-reliance. I'd love to see American airlines, banks and telecoms have free access to this market because I'm sick and tired of paying hundreds of dollars for a cell phone that gets crap reception. And then a flight between Toronto and Montreal for $900 on an airline that's secret motto is, we're not happy till you're not happy. What do you think? You know, CUSMA has to be renegotiated, as we used to call it NAFTA, and And, I call it the USMCA, but that's just me. The USMCA for the Americans. And I, I think that, you know, I saw online and on YouTube recently, like in the last few days, there's been tons of videos implying, you know, Carney schools Trump, Carney dominates Trump, effectively suggesting that Carney has a new blueprint for Canada to now peel away from dependency on the United States and improve its relationship and integration with Europe and China and everybody else. Of course, it ignores the basic fact of production and transportation costs. Exactly. It costs a lot more to ship overseas than to ship to Michigan by rail, which means you prices, the prices of all your products are going to skyrocket and become less competitive. That doesn't change because Carney says so. Now, that may be a lot of messaging by Carney in anticipation of the upcoming negotiations for NAFTA, for the USMCA, CUSMA. But I think it's all smoke and, it's as much smoke and mirrors that Carney is going to peel us away from American dependency on the American market as it is to suggest that the budget is going to lead to big capital projects and pipelines. It's nonsense. These are, these are fake talking points to try and shore up Liberal support with moderate progressive conservatives in Toronto who say I'm a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal Exactly. That's who they're talking to. It's all nonsense. They're not going to build any pipelines. The past is the best prediction of future. And you know I, did you notice that in Parliament, Poilievre, and this is why I like Poilievre so much, he's very tactical. They bring a motion to simply articulate and have Parliament vote to support the very thing that's in, that's in Carney's pipeline deal, the memorandum of understanding, with Danielle Smith, and they all voted it down. And it was almost the same language that Smith and Carney agreed to. Ya they're not building anything. Oh exactly, and people, Canadians despite the self-induced coma of the elbows up community, this country is 85% integrated with the United States. I hate to rain on your parade, folks. We have the same culture. America, I would imagine an Albertan has as much in common or not in common with a Quebecer as they do with someone from Massachusetts. It's, it is really a fairly integrated culture and economy. I'm in favour of further and robust integration with a sensible tax act to get our economy booming, particularly unleashing our resource sector. But this whole, you know, will live and die for maple syrup elbows up is just an absolute charade of the first order and shame on those who have perpetrated it. Canada is Canada's history is lock and step with the Americans, doesn't mean we have to genuflect to them. But what we have to do is realize what we were good at, hewers of wood, drawers of water, and the shock troops in World War I and World War II, not a whinging bunch of social welfar addicts, which is what this country's become. for Canadians. Sure it has. sentiment and nationalism has always been an easy sell for Canadians. Sure it has. It's an old, hackneyed trick to try and, you know, get Canadians to vote for you. It's very easy to mobilize voters, and it worked in the last election. It'll work in the future in other elections. You know, to be fair to the Liberals and, you know, Trump does kind of invite it, you know, he, he is talking about us being a 51st state, which is stupid and insulting. I don't know why he says it. I don't think it's going to happen. It gets the rise that he thinks it's going to get and puts his opponent or his trading, let's just say his negotiating adversary back on their heels. It works very well. I think it also distracted people from all the different Cabinet positions he was pushing through in the Senate. Because all the media talked about was his comments about us being a 51st state and Greenland. And meanwhile, know, Hegseth is getting confirmed, so. Ya there you go. That leads us to our natural discussion of Pierre, the leadership, the next election, the fate of the Conservative Party. I agree with you. I'm sick and tired of hearing the, I'm a fiscal conservative and social liberal. People don't understand what that means. Does that mean you're in favour, if you're a social liberal, are you in favour of open door immigration and rampant crime, confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens? I don't think most people are. No, we're not talking about, you know, enforcing people to, you know, read the Bible every day, if they want to, that's fine. I think most Conservatives should be conservative, sensitively conservative across the board. What do you think about our dear leader? Does he survive in January and what's his, what's the next, what's the tactic he needs to follow up on to win the next election, which I think is going to be sooner than later. Well, as you know, Trevor, I ran for the Canadian Alliance in the year 2000, and I was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party. I was on the local, you know, riding association executive of the Conservatives, and I switched immediately before the 2000 election, like literally weeks, because it was clear that the Progressive Conservatives federally were obviously split. And ever since then, you have seen there's been this sort of tit for tat oscillation between the sort of Laurentian Ontario conservative wing of the party and the Alberta wing that did the hostile takeover. I personally believe that just the tribalism and hubris and vanity of people in Toronto and probably in Alberta will not, will not stop them from continuing this kind of conflict over who really controls the party. I think that red Tories, people who describe themselves as red Tories and progressive conservatives are effectively liberals, but you maybe, maybe they're rich or maybe their dad voted Tory. And now that they're, you know, it's 2025, I think they lean towards liberal social policy. So all of the very bad things that you describe and they, and they react rather negatively to what I would call actual real conservatism. They're not really conservatives. They're liberals who have a brand loyalty to the party, you know Coke and Pepsi. They're not ideologically affiliated with conservatism or connected to conservatism. So I think it has an impact on what happens with leadership because Poilievre represents actual conservatives, real conservatives who will do, and I don't think he's particularly conservative. I mean, the media portrays him as such, the second coming of Donald Trump. I don't think that at all. He's very young. He's a different generation than you and I. There's nothing particularly extreme or rednecked about his opinions. He's very, very able in a debate. You know, he's like a trial lawyer. He's quick on his feet. And I want to caution people when they think about dumping dumping Poilievre, you know because it's not easy to find a telegenic, quick-witted, able debater like Poilievre. You know, I mean, he's a lot better in a debate and a lot quicker with a quip and a comment and a good comeback than Carney. Carney's absolutely, and fundamentally better in French. I spend my life debating people and Carney would be easy to deal with in a debate. He is absolutely, you know, just dull, unimpressive. John, I've said it before and I've read his book. Anyone who uses the word normative as in normal parlance can't be trusted. That's not a normal person. He's a, he's Mr. Burns. I call him the mortician because that's the, the level of charisma, the guy exhibits. I agree with you, about with Pierre, I think what Pierre has to do is he has to, there has to be a bit of a mea culpa and say, and he has to stand up and say, I learned from my experience. And when he gets on with Vassy Kapelos and tries to say all the wonderful things that happened as a result of his election loss. No, that has to stop. He has to stand up and admit he didn't win the last election. He should have won it and it was his fault squarely. And then turn around and say, these are the things Canada has to do to turn around, be aspirational. We have to have a tax system that incentivizes the creation of capital and hard work and profit. We have to slam the door shut on immigration. We have to bring in people who are going to be accretive to this country. We have to love our country again. We have to dismiss all this woke crap. And we have to stand up for the armed forces and celebrate our history and all that kind of stuff and stop crime. Common sense things that people want. But he also needs to, and I've always been, he's not the first to do this. We have to have in the next campaign, a some street fighters. They should probably hire you and I, because I'm from the school of G. Gordon Liddy and I know exactly how to out sleazeball the Liberals. And then, then he has to stop this leader centric campaign, show some of the other fantastic candidates they have and go out and get some some new ones. Like I think they got to get Rick Hillier to run in Newfoundland. I think they have to get Bernie Lord to run in New Brunswick. Probably a few of the old Harper candidates or cabinet ministers should come back and present a team of unified gravitas so that they can say we are we are certainly a government in waiting and we are not corrupt, malevolent, lying or genuflecting to anything other than Canada and its Constitution. Because I think in the Liberal Party you will find a great number of people who serve two masters. Well, it's interesting, you know, star candidates don't come out of the woodwork and actually run unless the party has a good chance of forming government. Nobody's going to take a massive pay cut, as would be the case for you and I if we were elected to Parliament, to then go and sit in the backbenches. Being a backbencher or in opposition is awful. You know, as you and I both know, as we know several politicians. And you know, it's basically a waste of the next five years. You know, you don't get to form policy. You know, you get on Hansard a few times. Massive pay cut too, so. Yeah, so I think, you know, and I wanna just talk about something you said, which was that, you know, some people saying, Poilievre lost the last election. Well, let's be clear. Poilievre got a percentage of the vote that would have formed a majority for the Conservatives in practically any election in my lifetime, okay? Over 40% gets you a majority in Canada. It does, yeah. Except in this particular election, okay, you had an old, tired NDP leader who's frankly. Well he wasn't old he was just to use, to use Yiddish... Poilievre didn't lose. The NDP lost the election, the NDP cratered. It was the worst they ever did. And their voters switched to Liberal. So that has never happened in my lifetime to that degree. It wouldn't have happened for a guy like Jack Layton and the NDP for some crazy reason, or Thomas Mulcair, picked Jagmeet Singh. Do you really think people all over the country are gonna vote for Jagmeet Singh? No, of course not. I'm not going to suggest that Canadians are racist or that that's an impediment to running. But whatever the reason, they didn't like him and they didn't vote for him. A different NDP leader, somebody telegenic, somebody charismatic, would instantly garner more support. Poilievre's the next PM if he gets the same number. Second thing, the liberal guy, Carney, the liberal candidate, had no record. He ran on a fake record. He ran on a prediction of a future record that every channel in Canada said was going to take place. Well he has a record, it was suppressed. There's a reason he wasn't given a second term as governor of the Bank of England or raised to the peerage. But I agree with you and the NDP cratering was the big thing. I thought Pierre ran a very good campaign in the sense that he's a fantastic speaker and that he had lots of people turn out. But I think we both agree there was no media strategy. The internet is not and alternative media is not an acceptable strategy. Unfortunately, you have to engage with the mainstream media. Maybe you don't have to go on Rosie Barton. I wouldn't. But the, but you do, there are some reasonable people even at the CBC that you can have a conversation with and he needs to portray that, not the negative because that's what they're going to say. He has to portray aspirational, aspirational policies and beliefs. He has to make people want to believe in their country again and believe that Canada is not the sum total of its social programs. That's where we're at these days. So I think he, I think he survives. the leadership challenge in Calgary in January. I wish him well. Certainly I wish Harper would come back, but I'm dreaming. But I think that if he's learned just a few things, going into the next campaign, I think he, like David, can take Goliath, in this case the mortician and the rotten moribund liberal party of Canada, down like the rotting corpse that it is. Your thoughts, and then we'll sign off for the year. As I was, as I was sort of alluding to before, I think the way the Conservative Party is structured will enable him to survive leadership. And I think even if he doesn't get a ringing endorsement, he will accept leadership because that contest between East and West still exists, in my opinion. And I think, I think the media is petrified of an actual Conservative ever being elected. We've never had one. Brian Mulroney was not a real small-c conservative. He brought in employment equity at the federal level. He brought in DEI. And I support Mulroney. I met Mulroney. I didn't know him, ditto, but he's fantastic politician. But he wasn't really that conservative. Neither was Charest. He wasn't a leader. But we haven't had one. We almost had one in Maxime. But we haven't had, you know, a real francophone yet, which I'm looking forward to. But you said something important. The idea that we can run a social media based campaign is idiotic in a country where they've already banned news on social media and where we don't own a single TV station. Conservatives are tactically inept and they delude, they delude themselves into thinking they don't need a channel. No Fox News, no Donald Trump. And if we don't take Global or buy Global, we don't have a channel. So we get lukewarm support from a few people, but nothing really striking. Who's going to break a serious story that humiliates a Liberal candidate on Canadian television. Who? Nobody. And on that happy note. Leviathan must be stopped.