Sheila Gunn Reid highlights Alberta’s credit upgrades—Moody’s outlook shifting to "positive" and Fitch raising its rating—citing fiscal discipline like balanced budgets and $3.1B annual interest savings, contrasting it with federal debt doubling to $1.2T since 2015 under Trudeau. Economists warn a $40B deficit could trigger a downgrade, raising borrowing costs amid high household debt. Gunn Reid praises Pierre Poilievre’s fiscal stance while criticizing BC’s 12% PST on used items and carbon taxes for worsening affordability, urging public pressure to demand budget balance and spending cuts. [Automatically generated summary]
What does government spending have to do with all of this?
And you're watching The Gun Show.
I showed you this article from the Calgary Herald the other day.
Now, the data has been widely reported in other places, but this is just the source that I chose.
It reads, Tipping point, nearly half of Albertans are $200 or less away from insolvency, MNP survey says.
The accounting firm's latest consumer debt index, or CDI, was released Monday, highlighting that 47% of Alberta respondents were $200 or less away from failing to meet all their financial needs, 13 percentage points higher than last quarter.
Now, this is only going to get worse if Justin Trudeau does not rein in his spending.
The more the federal government borrows, the greater at risk the federal government is for a credit downgrade, which means the cost of borrowing in this country for the federal government, but also for you, will go up.
And on the flip side, in Alberta, while it indicates that things are bad here, I think we're better off than the rest of the country.
Our government is seeing credit upgrades here as they work hard to undo the damage done by four years of Rachel Notley's NDP government from 2015 to 2019.
It's nearly 10 years since the NDP formed government here, and we're just starting now to undo some of the damage.
Now, this needs an expert's breakdown.
So joining me now is my friend, Chris Sims, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, to make sense of all of this and to tie it all together.
take a listen.
So joining me now is my good friend and good friend of the show, Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
I want to have Chris on, well, all the time, but you know, I think you guys need some variety in the guests that I have on the show.
But this time to talk about the credit upgrade happening in Alberta, we've had a series of them now, thanks to our government being more responsible than it has been with our taxpayer dollars, while simultaneously a threatened credit downgrade at the federal level.
Chris, tell us what's going on here in Alberta.
Yeah, so this is good news, and we're usually the big storm cloud, so we always want to highlight good news when we can.
So the good news is, is here in Alberta, we just got, it's not a credit upgrade per se, but our outlook has improved from the Moody's.
So Moody's is basically this huge, ginormous international credit rating agency.
What they say matters to the financial bros and it depends, it determines how much we pay on interest.
So this is important.
And so they have changed our outlook as a province in Alberta from stable to positive.
Meaning, hey, everybody, you can lend these people money.
You can invest in this province because it's a good bet.
It's a good investment.
And that also allows us then to borrow money at a lower interest rate.
Who pays the interest on our provincial debt?
You and me, Sheila, all of your listeners, all of your viewers here in the province of Alberta.
Right now, last time I checked with their year-end update, we're paying around $3.1 billion per year just in the interest payment on our debt.
So that's almost three hospitals.
So that's important.
So we really wanted to give the government a pat on the back when it's due.
And this also falls hard on the heels of Fitch, which is another big international credit rating agency that did give us a credit upgrade, like an actual boost.
So this is important.
So according to Moody's, we are now at 2A, which is good, apparently, for our interest rate.
And at the same time, like you point out, we've seen downgrades in other provinces, and we're hearing about a threatened downgrade federally.
So I really wanted to highlight this as to why, though, okay?
Because a lot of people might assume it's, oh, just because the energy sector is doing a bit better than it was a few years ago.
No, that matters, and that's always good.
We want to see the energy sector doing well.
But this is important.
It's because we have a balanced budget law.
It's because we're paying down the debt.
It's because we're saving money.
They listed all of these reasons right on their website.
And this is key, because we are keeping our spending increases below the rate of inflation plus population growth.
That sounds super nerdy, and it is, but I wanted to explain it because at the Taxpayers Federation, we've been around since before the internet was a thing.
We have been begging the Alberta government out loud with our faces and in writing since the mid-90s, please keep your spending increases reined in below the rate of inflation and population growth.
If they had done that, Sheila, back then when like the Spice Girls were topping the charts, we would have about $300 billion saved.
That's just money.
That's not even invested money.
That's just cash sitting under your mattress.
So for this international credit rating agency to say, you know what?
Good job, that's important because then it's not just us telling them to do something.
They're getting recognition from outsiders and international groups and they're more likely to stick with this fiscal discipline.
So this is really nice news.
It is really good news and it has been a long time coming.
For example, a lot of this happened, this out-of-control spending.
I mean, it did happen in the dying days of the old PC government.
But the credit downgrades and the out-of-control deficit spending happened really in the first year of Rachel Notley's government.
So that's way back in 2015.
Here we are nine years out.
I think we saw six, I think it was six credit downgrades that happened during the first initial little bit of Rachel Notley's time in government.
We are nine years out of that and we are only now starting to undo the damage.
And as you say, it's not just debt.
It's not just deficit spending.
It is debt servicing charges that we are going broke on.
And I think we could all do with three extra hospitals a year.
You know, for people who care about social services and the public safety infrastructure net, that's a lot that can be done.
And it's going straight to international banksters right now.
Yeah, exactly.
Or it could go to reducing our income taxes or it could eliminate the provincial fuel tax like forever.
Like they could afford so much if we had that extra $3 billion in our jeans pocket.
I will stress, so back, so I did a report.
If people really want to nerd out, I have a whole charts.
It's on our website, taxpayer.com.
Go under the Alberta section, please, because it took me months to do this.
I went back through every single budget to like 1994, 1995.
Did you know they used to put them out in like teal colors in like purple?
It was really fun.
It was like old school AW.
And so you're going through it.
And if you go all the way back there, you can see where the spending increased.
And it was largely under Stelmac.
Okay.
Spending just went banana pants.
Yeah.
Way up there.
I was kind of surprised because I'm kind of a newbie to Alberta.
Spiritually, I've always loved Alberta, but I'm a newbie to Alberta.
And then, of course, NDP Premier Rachel Notley, she didn't balance the budget even one time.
Didn't even think of it.
Not even one time.
And so I know balancing the budget can be hard.
You have to learn to say no, okay, especially to special interest groups, because it's everybody's money.
And this is, again, highlighting why it's super important to keep your budget balanced and keep your spending in check, pay down the debt, and as an extra bonus, they're saving for a rainy day.
There sounds like they're going to be taking the heritage fund seriously this time around.
Because if we had done so, again, back in the day when we first started this thing, we'd be looking a lot more like Alaska.
Not quite Norway, because they've just got a crazy amount of money in that thing.
They don't have to share it through equalization.
They don't have to send it to places who aren't fiscally responsible.
Nope.
Nope.
They've got it really set up.
Well, if you want to cry, look up the, I forget what it's called, the Norwegian Solidarity Fund or something like that, security fund, something like that.
But we could be closer to Alaska if we had played our cards right and not, you know, emptied out the heritage fund.
And so now, knockwood, it sounds like these guys are pretty serious about this stuff and they've put it into law.
So I really wanted to give kudos where it is due because I do yell at them a lot.
So if they are doing the right thing, I do want to tell them they're doing so.
And so this is really good.
We got this credit rating upgrade.
And on the flip side, and we just sort of mentioned it in passing, Justin Trudeau's liberal government, they doubled the size of the national debt in less than a decade.
This is from Michelle Rumpel Garner's Substack.
And now multiple senior economists in major financial institutions have issued warnings that unless the Liberals, not eventually, but immediately lessen the size of the federal deficit, Canada is going to be faced with a credit downgrade.
And if that downgrade happens, it just wouldn't increase the cost of borrowing from the federal government.
It would likely further increase the cost of borrowing for every single Canadian as well.
And as she puts it, if this happens in the middle of Canada's current affordability crisis, while Canadians are already shouldering some of the highest household debt loads in the world, it could have explosively bad implications for the entire Canadian economy.
Absolutely.
So this is going to get heavy, and I'm sorry.
We'll probably try to end on a lighter note, but it's a serious, major problem, like super duper.
So right now, the deficit is just over $40 billion.
And there's a difference between obviously deficit and debt.
Deficit is yearly holes in your budget.
That's your yearly shortfall for your annual budget.
So say you made $100, okay?
That was your revenue, but you spent $140.
Obviously, your deficit for that year would be $40.
Now add a whole bunch of zeros to that for the federal government.
So our deficit is $40 billion this year.
To your point, Sheila, and I can't stress this enough, the Trudeau government since 2015 has now this year doubled our national debt.
So picture, like imagine that's like the Matrix and you're looking backwards in time.
Okay, all the Neos and the Trinities are lined up.
Picture all of the prime ministers lined up back to Confederation.
Add all of their debts up.
Trudeau has doubled them.
Just one guy's government.
So this is really critically important because it's now over $1.2 trillion.
What that means in normal people talk, if you were trying to count to a trillion, it would take you 30,000 years.
If you started today, it would take you 30,000 years to count to a trillion.
Okay, the interest we pay just on the debt is now the same as what we all pay in GST.
I know it's gross, and I'm sorry, but we really do need to look at it.
And to exactly Michelle Rumpelgarner's point, the member of parliament's point, a lot of people are in personal debt, and I know why, because life is bloody well unaffordable.
Like zero judgment, I understand.
The problem here, though, is that a lot of people's mortgages are coming back up for renewal at a much higher interest rate, thanks again to the government.
And also they have lines of credit, they've got credit cards, car payments, all of the stuff they owe on.
So when you see the government spending like this, it affects your ability to borrow as well because it screws up our lending rate in Canada.
And so this is why it's super important for people to keep the pressure on politicians to balance the budget, take spending seriously.
A little bit of light.
Two things.
One, Pierre Polyev, opposition leader, Conservative Party leader, is saying the right things.
He's saying he wants to balance the budget.
He can't commit to an exact timeline yet because he doesn't know how big the dumpster fire actually is.
It's fair.
Yep.
Want him to do it as fast as possible, but fair.
Let's be reasonable.
And two, what I find interesting here is that we just did a poll, not just of taxpayers' federation supporters, a federal poll, like every Joe and Sally Six PAC in Canada could have done this survey.
And it's over 50% of people now, Sheila, want spending cuts.
Yeah.
That's important because that almost never breaches the 30%.
It's usually everybody wants more stuff.
Right, it usually goes straight along party lines.
And this is bigger.
Exactly.
Thank you.
And now if it's over 50% of people saying, whoa, how about you tap the brakes on your like spending?
That's important because it almost never gets to that point.
People often assume the government has endless money and they don't.
50% Want Spending Cuts00:06:19
It's all our money.
And so I think the message is getting through.
And Polyev says that he wants to hear people from the doorstep.
He doesn't care about, he says he doesn't care about lobbyists.
He doesn't want to hear from special interest groups that want to have a lunch meeting with him again.
So this is important.
When you email him, when you email his MPs, he says it matters and we take people at their word.
So email them, email your MP and say, I want spending cuts.
I want tax cuts.
Balance the damn budget.
This is important to me.
And they will take that message along.
And I think we'll see the light at the end of the tunnel because even, remember back in 2021 when the Trudeau government, again, was spending money as fast as they could print it?
Yep.
Okay.
Crazy budget.
Just if we reduced spending to that level, we'd balance the budget.
We wouldn't pay off the debt because it's crazy right now, but at least we'd have a balanced budget.
We wouldn't have international credit rating agencies breathing down our neck.
Like the repo man would stop knocking.
So this is totally doable, folks.
And it must be done.
I was reading this Calgary Herald article the other day, two days ago.
The Consumer Debt Index, that's a CDI released Monday, noted that 47%, nearly 50%, like one in two Albertans who responded to the survey were $200 or less away from insolvency from failing to meet their financial needs.
And that's 13 points higher than it was just last quarter.
And this is Alberta.
We're doing better than everywhere else.
So just think about how bad it is in other parts of this country.
That I didn't realize it had gotten that high in Alberta because I hadn't checked it from Monday.
I usually do try to check that one.
I check for poverty checks.
I check that one.
I check the food bank numbers and I check Dollarama's financial reports because they will indicate when their food sales go up, which to me is, I know it's hard to say, but to me is an indicator of need, real need.
And so that's worse than I thought.
Sorry, that bothers me.
Yeah, that's it.
So what MNP does is they phone around and they ask people, you know, how close are you to not meeting your bill payments?
And I got to stress, this isn't paying off their car or paying off their credit card.
It's making the minimum payments.
Right.
It's making the minimum payments.
This is just keeping like your nose above water, not even your head or your chin.
That's right.
So that means you're covering rent.
You've got the lights on.
You can afford gas or your transit pass, whatever transportation, and you're making the minimum payments on your bills.
People are within 200 bucks in Alberta.
So almost half of us within two.
That's brutal.
And again, this stresses the need to stop blowing money.
And the government blows money all the time.
The provincial government isn't perfect yet.
My next big report for their budget is going to be finding them savings to cut out waste.
So I'm going to be digging like a weasel through all these different little departments and finding out how much they're spending on stuff because government gets big and gangly and people lose track of where money is going all the time.
Same thing happens here in Alberta, just not to the same grotesque degree that it happens in Ottawa.
So again, this is why we really need to keep the pressure on because it's affecting us.
It's affecting our families.
It's affecting our neighbors, even here in Alberta.
Yeah, it's just when I saw those numbers, I mean, it's bad here.
It's bad.
But we, I think we generally do better than everybody else in this country because, you know, we don't have a provincial sales tax.
We have a province that is fighting back against the feds.
You know, we're a resource-based economy and generally those jobs are higher paying and we seem to be in a bit of a boom time.
If Donald Trump wins the election and he proceeds with Drill Baby Drill, we'll likely see the final completion of Keystone XL, which will give a bump to our economy much the same way that the opening of the Trans Mountain Pipeline did for the national GDP.
So I'm hopeful.
But if things are that bad here, imagine what they're like in some of the more depressed regions of this country.
It just makes me sad for my fellow Canadians.
I think that's why, speaking personally, a little bit selfishly, but it's actually where I have the most experience is BC.
I think that's why we're seeing the numbers that we're seeing in the polls in their upcoming election.
I think folks are overtaxed.
They're tapped out.
Unfortunately, some of them have lost hope.
So we're a bit different in that we respond personally, like me, Franco, everybody.
We respond personally to our emails.
We try, all of them, not all of them, because we get a lot, but we try.
And almost always, Sheila, the ones who sound the most desperate and who are getting in really tough are almost always from British Columbia.
And that's, of course, because it's unaffordable.
Like normal working people can't afford to live there.
And that's so brutally unfair and wrong.
And so I think that is why you are seeing the polls that we're seeing out there right now.
People want to change.
Any change, new change, lower taxes.
Stop robbing me.
And for people who've never lived out in BC and they've just visited and they think, oh, it's beautiful.
It is beautiful.
Geographically, it is like spectacular.
God's creation.
It's amazing.
But it is really viciously mean to low-income people.
And it's not just things like rent.
I mean, housing's ridiculous.
But things that government could change right now in British Columbia, two things.
They could cancel their second carbon tax.
Okay.
Their first carbon tax is disgusting too, but we could argue that Trudeau would just impose a new one, whatever.
Cancel the second carbon tax then.
That is wholly provincial.
That would save you around 17 or 18 cents a liter immediately.
And stop taxing used items.
In British Columbia, hold on to your seats, Albertans.
Debt Clock Selfies00:06:44
They charge you a PST on thrift shop items.
So the poorest people, it's disgusting, get a PST tapped onto it.
And this is really key now.
For a used car, if you're buying a used car from a private seller, say you've saved up your money and you're trying to afford that used Honda Civic to get to work, right?
Or a Corolla or something affordable.
And you've saved up all your money and you pay cash to a person, not a dealer, you are charged 12%.
It's disgusting.
I know.
So they are all of a sudden sitting down at ICBC, changing the plates, putting it in their name.
By the way, you owe us another $700.
It's so awful and wrong.
And what's even worse now is when you're registering with the government, because the state controls your insurance there, they no longer will just take what you say you paid for the thing because they assume you're lying.
They have a special black book that they have decided that this vehicle is worth.
And you will be charged the PST based on what the government thinks that you paid for the thing.
Like it's so whenever you hear that government open its mouth and say, oh, we care about the working class and the poor, no, you don't.
You absolutely do not.
And we have the receipts to show it.
So they could do those two things and they would improve life.
Now, on that dark note, are you working on any notes?
Okay.
We need to know how bad it is so we can do something about it.
But any fun stuff happening around the CTF?
Yes.
Can I give my announcement?
Yes, sure.
Soiree.
Yeah.
Okay.
So just between us girls and your viewers, I'm bringing the debt clock up to Edmonton.
So we're going to be doing a pub night in Red Deer first.
So that'll be Thursday night.
We're going to the Toad and Turtle.
So again, this Thursday night, we're going to the Toad and Turtle.
I will have the debt clock parked there at the pub.
Please feel free to come out and hang out and say hi.
Get a picture with the debt clock.
And then I'm heading up to Sheila's Neck of the Woods near Edmonton.
I'm going to be, forgive me looking at my phone.
I've got it.
It's the brew house at Lewis Estates.
Nice.
I love you.
This is great.
Yes.
Webberg's drive.
Thank you.
So West Side Brewhouse, the Canadian Brew House.
I'm phoning them soon.
So hopefully they're finding a surprise.
It'll be fine.
They've got a nice big parking lot and stuff.
Now, the reason why we're doing the debt clock, for people who don't know what the debt clock is, let me tell you, it is this ginormous U-Haul moving truck, like a big honking thing.
And it has a huge Jumbotron screen on either side of it.
I think you guys use these things sometimes too.
We do.
Yeah, it's super fun.
But this one is ours, and it's all decked out with CTF, you know, logos and stuff.
And we display the federal debt on it in real time.
Yeah.
It's hypnotic.
to watch.
It's like watching a train go by where your eyes don't know where to look and then you end up in a trance.
That's what it's like.
Yeah.
So this is one of the, you know, educational tools that we like to use for people and to show them what they're owing and what the debt is doing in real time.
And it's fun.
We're going to have nachos.
You can come take a selfie with the debt clock.
Come say hi.
I would love to meet you.
I love putting faces to names of taxpayers, supporters, and tax fighters.
So please feel free to come on out and hang out with us.
So again, we're going to be Red Deer Thursday night at the Toad and Turtle on the south side of town and at the Canadian Brew House just west of the mall in Edmonton on Friday night.
Times?
I'm old, so I'm like six to eight-ish, six to nine.
Me too.
Me too.
I like to be at home in my stretchy pants by nine.
Thank you.
This is it.
I'm not partying till two o'clock with the debt.
That's for the kids to do.
So yeah, so between six to nine-ish, if that's cool with you guys.
Sounds great.
How do people find the work that you do at the CTF and importantly, support the important work that you do there?
Wonderful.
And again, I know things can get dark and I have been reading quite a few of those emails this week.
And so I really, you know, I think everybody needs a bit of a boost.
And we do that for two reasons, because exactly this.
One, you'll either cry or laugh.
So you have to pick laugh because being a happy warrior gets things done.
And two, if you're a little bit more salty, politicians and bureaucrats hate it when you laugh at them.
They hate it when you make fun of them.
They think that they're some landed duke and that you peasants shouldn't be laughing at them.
So let's laugh as loud as we possibly can because it bothers them.
So it works.
So folks can go to taxpayer.com.
That's our website.
The best way to join our fight is to find a petition that really suits you.
I even have one against the PST on used items in British Columbia.
So sign up for whatever petitions you like, like stop the gun grab, cancel the carbon tax, defund the CBC.
There's something there for everybody.
And then you'll be on our mailing list and you're part of the army.
And the next time it's time to do critical mass of emailing a politician or inviting you to a pub night, you will then get that update.
So head on over to taxpayer.com.
You can also read our super wonky reports on balanced budgets and why they matter.
So you get a little bit of sweet and a little bit of salt right on our website.
You just described yourself.
Well, thanks.
Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
And I guess I'll see you Friday.
see you friday all right friends we get your letters and your viewer feedback Seems like every hour of every single day, 365 days of the year, you guys don't take a day off, so why should I?
Because without you, there's no Rebel News.
We care about what you think about the work that we do here.
We'll never take a penny from Justin Trudeau, so I really don't care if he doesn't like me or if he doesn't consider the stories that I do, grant applications to the media bailout fund.
It's the reason I give you my email address right now.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
If you've got something to say about the show that I just filmed with my friend Chris Sims of the CTF, send it to me there.
Gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me because I do get many, many emails every single day.
Alex Jones Asses00:03:50
So it's easier for me to find so that I can include your viewer feedback in the show.
But don't let that be the bar for entry.
Leave a comment, question over on any of the clips that you might find of the show on YouTube or Rumble as well.
And today, my comments come from the YouTube clip we published of my on the street interview with my friend Yankee Pollock, who was down at the Republican National Convention.
He was outside of the convention.
And as I was interviewing him about what he had seen at the first gathering of Republicans since the attempted assassination of their candidate, Donald Trump, from my lips to God's ears, the next president of the United States, well, he came across some Democrat protesters.
Take a look at this.
Okay, Yankee.
Do you want to go over?
Let's go over.
Let's go.
Let's go over.
Let's go.
Let's go over to them.
Again, there's only two right now.
And yesterday there were in different spots.
There were different ones.
But let's see.
Let's see if they want to.
If they want to speak.
Thank you.
Don't make me car sick.
Okay, so.
Yes.
I'm going to Alex Jones your asses.
I'm going to Alex Jones your asses.
What does that mean?
You know where Alex Jones is.
Yes.
I am going to Alex Jones y'all asses.
But what does that mean?
Can you explain?
Okay, I think your audience is smart enough to do that.
Okay.
I'm going to Alex Jones y'all asses, I'm going to Alex Jones y'all asses, I'm going to Alex Jones y'all asses.
And what is your.
I'm going to Alex Jones your asses.
I'm going to Alex Jones.
Okay.
That's all I got.
Progressivism is a mental illness.
Is she saying that the assassination attempt was a false flag?
She said she didn't care.
She didn't give a shit about it.
I don't remember she said it was a false flag.
Her shirt says false flag.
No, no, that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She did.
Yeah, it does say in her shirt.
I forgot.
June 13th is a false flag.
Yeah, she is saying that.
What do you think about the Trump assassination?
This person, no gender, does not want to tell us.
Oh, wow.
You know, like, these people go and do a protest, and a protest is a public expression of your views, and then you ask them to publicly express their views, and you're like, sorry, I can't talk to you right now.
Yeah, you know, it's their right to be here.
Yeah.
I don't want them to leave, but you know, if you're out here, like, we have thousands of viewers.
Like, tell us what you think, right?
You know what?
I hope those crazy people never stop because that is a perfect synopsis of who and what they are.
That's right.
She says she's going to Alex Jones these people.
I'm not sure what that means.
Is she referring to a multi-gazillion jillion dollar lawsuit for saying that a shooting was staged?
Because I hear a lot of Democrats doing that.
But anyway, let's go and see what you people have to say about what she said.
Flux Pistol 3608 says they've clearly lost the plot, yet at some point in their brain, something says, Oh, I don't want to be held accountable on the internet for my words and actions.
Actually saddens me.
Clearly, they're finding reality too difficult to handle.
Believe Without Thinking00:01:23
Perry Fefchuk, 637 says, right to free speech, right to free thought, not taking the time to think before speaking, priceless.
You know, these people never actually think they're going to be pressed on why they think the way they think or how they come to their worldview.
I can clearly articulate why I believe that government should fit in a teacup and why I believe in personal responsibility and I don't believe in the welfare state.
Like, I can tell you all of those things.
I can tell you why I believe in gun rights, why I don't believe in a carbon tax.
But if you talk to people on the left, they are just saying slogans, chanting mindlessly.
They don't even know why they're saying those things.
It's fascinating.
Brian Bidiak, 3125, start building or rebuilding insane asylums.
Tell them it's free government housing projects.
And Joanne Harnack, 195, says, must be something in the water.
I believe Alex Jones has a theory about that in making the frogs gay.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.