Sheila Gunn-Reid and Kris Sims expose Ottawa’s $93M no-bid contracts to GC Strategies—Christian Firth and Darren Anthony’s firm—with 87 split to evade oversight, including $59M from CBSA and $10M each from Treasury Board and Innovation Canada. The Liberals, led by Mark Carney, have spent billions without a budget since 2015, including a $1B gun "buyback" program, while Alberta’s debt grows to $5B annually, despite Horner’s B-grade fiscal report. CBC’s $478K–$563K president, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, highlights waste amid declining viewership and $1.5B subsidies, reinforcing systemic spending failures that erode taxpayer trust and freedom. [Automatically generated summary]
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The Carney Liberals are spending like drunken sailors, but they forgot one small thing.
Oh, a federal budget.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.
Bart Carney's brand new government has committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on everything from meeting their NATO commitments, finally, to a national gun confiscation program.
And they're doing it all without tabling a budget, and we won't see one until late 2025.
That's not just reckless.
It's unprecedented, and it lacks complete and total transparency.
I think it violates the taxpayer trust.
On today's show, we're going to be also unpacking how the provincial finance ministers are faring.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has just issued their report cards.
Don't you want to know how Alberta did?
Then we'll talk about the Auditor General's takedown of GC Strategies, the shadowy firm at the heart of the ArriveCan scandal, and the appointment of CBC's new president.
Chris Sims joins the show tonight.
She's the Alberta director of the Taxpayers Federation in an interview we recorded yesterday morning.
take a listen.
So joining me now is good friend of the show, my personal good friend and good friend to taxpayers everywhere, Chris Sims, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Chris, I wanted to have you on today to talk about the macro issue and then sort of the micro issue of finances in this country.
And right off the top, we aren't getting a budget anytime soon from our new prime minister, who is allegedly a finance guy.
So and by the way, sorry to interrupt, all the same people.
So it's not like they have to figure out how to learn on the job before they get a budget going.
These are quite literally all the same people from Justin Trudeau's cabinet.
So get to work, guys.
Yeah, exactly.
I love how you said, sorry to interrupt, and it was talking to yourself.
That was my favorite part.
This is a mess.
Straight up, I know that if there are still normies watching, hello.
Interesting that you're watching.
If there are still normies watching, it can be understandable when you're like, okay, he's new to the job.
Like the physical human of Mark Carney is new to the role of prime minister.
Okay, sure.
That's fine.
Dude also has a PhD in economics from Oxford.
He was also a central banker, head of the Bank of Canada, head of the Bank of England.
So he's been around an advocate before.
Okay.
He knows the maths.
That said, you're right.
Wasn't he also the financial advisor to the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, who by default is also the prime minister of this country for five years.
So it's not like he's like just opening up the books for the first time.
He's the keeper of the books.
Yes, exactly.
And furthermore, he's just the figurehead.
It is not Mark Carney sitting up at night sharpening his pencil, writing out the budget.
Further, it's not even the cabinet minister with this clown carve, the same cabinet ministers who are now paid more than $300,000 per year plus perks.
It's the bureaucrats.
Great.
It's the same bureaucrats within the Department of Treasury and within the Department of Finance.
This is their entire job to keep a running tally of all of these columns.
So they're the ones that work out all of the revenue by source, okay?
All of the expense by function, which is basically what a budget is.
You don't need to shove a whole bunch of, you know, social words in there.
It's really straight up.
How much money are we taking in and from what sources?
How much money are we dishing out and to whom?
That's it.
That's essentially what a budget is.
And you also need to figure out if you've got a deficit, how much that's adding to the debt.
And you need to calculate your debt interest payments.
So it's kind of like the big country credit card.
That's it.
That's a budget.
And so, yeah, the pointy heads, the smart kids with the pocket protectors, and I know there are some in there in finance, okay?
They got all this data.
They have all of this.
So yes, the short answer is, could they put out a budget?
Yes, they could.
Would it be as flowery and fluffy as, say, a throne speech and all of the little hopes and pixie desk dreams shoved into it?
No, that takes a little while to write, but you don't need that stuff in there.
What we need is a fiscal document.
That's all we need.
And unfortunately, we're going to have to now wait until the fall to get it.
And that's crazy because they're making these wild spending announcements right now.
And look, I'm not one to say that we're not, that we shouldn't be meeting our NATO spending commitments.
Of all the spending the government does, that's one of them that I think is probably okay.
But they're making these spending announcements without a budget.
And these are billions and billions of dollars worth of spending announcements without telling Canadians where the money is coming from and where it is actually going at the end of the day.
Yeah, it reminds me.
I don't like bringing this time up, but I'm going to keep bringing it up because nobody's been held accountable for it.
It reminds me of back in the early 2020s time, just as we're in lockdown.
Remember when the federal government tried to say, oh yeah, and by the way, we're not going to put out a budget like ever again, and we're just going to spend as much as we want with no representation in parliament?
Bye, thank you.
They tried pulling that.
Right.
Like the feds tried pulling that.
Basically, grant us unfettered spending power, please, Parliament, with no checks and balances.
Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed and we're like, no, how about we don't actually all jump off a cliff?
They still wound up blowing a ton of money and being terribly unaccountable during that time, but they actually tried pulling that fast one.
So this is why, no matter what color the jersey is, if it's a red government or a blue government, it doesn't matter, you need to stay on these folks like white on rice and say, nope, we need that fiscal document.
We need a budget.
You need to table it.
We need to be able to examine it.
Because otherwise, you wind up with an unaccountable government that is blowing money left and right.
And that's what we have.
Yeah, that's what we have, unfortunately.
That's exactly what we have.
I know.
What really, again, during the election campaign, this truly, it's hard to surprise me now.
I've been in the game too long, seen too many stupid things.
But this truly surprised me when Carney came out and said, I'm going to add more to the debt than Trudeau was planning to do.
Right.
That truly surprised me because I thought he was going to try to take the tack of, I'm the adult in the room.
I'm the one that understands math.
I actually think of fiscal policy.
I know we can't grow the economy from the heart outwards.
I'm not going to show you my socks.
I thought he was going to be this, the kind of sober dude.
of saying, we got to get our books back in order.
But no, apparently the central banker is going to be worse with money than the drama teacher.
That really surprised me.
And so I'm hoping that he kind of mentally sobers up, so to speak, now that he's in the role and looks around is like, I just can't stand this inefficiency.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
But so far, we're not seeing it because if he meant that, we'd have a budget.
Right.
Right.
And speaking of spending money just, again, with zero accountability, and actually what chiefs of police say will result in zero impact on violent crime, we are seeing the liberals double, triple, quadruple down on Justin Trudeau's gun grab.
I knew this was coming when they selected Natalie Provo from Paulis de Souviant as their star candidate.
And so I knew once you take someone from Canada's leading gun grab organization who quit Trudeau's gun grab panel because it wasn't grabbing Canadian guns fast enough, I knew Canada's firearms owning community, we were in for an immediate wild ride.
And from the taxpayer's perspective, whether or not you own firearms, you should care about how your money is being spent with a little to no impact on rising crime rates.
And it looks like Trudeau's gun grab, which is now Carney's gun grab, the cost is going to be approaching a billion dollars by the time it's done.
I think it'll be worse than that, with roughly about a third of a billion dollars allocated in the very near future.
Yep.
It's one of those things where it feels like, what did they say?
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Right.
It kind of feels like that, in particular with this gun grab, this confiscation, people call it the buyback.
I hear you.
I don't call it a buyback either because I did not buy my gun from the government.
Right.
It is not the government's property.
Thank you very much.
But the gun grab, it feels so similar to the long gun registry.
Right.
So the so-called long gun registry for the kids who are watching and good on you for watching and staying informed.
Please tell your friends, seriously spread the word.
It's going to be the young people that save us here.
You know, it's the gun grab in the 1990s or the long gun, it was called the long gun registration.
And back then, it was then also a liberal government.
It was under then that Liberal Prime Minister Jean Cretchen and they had justice and safety ministers who said, we're going to have a big, massive registry of long guns.
Alan Rock.
Thank you, Alan Rock, exactly.
And so, again, it was the same level of disconnect between people who actually legally own firearms and use them as the tools they are versus urbanites, in this case, Mr. Rock, who don't understand what law-abiding firearms owners do and who they are.
So what happened is they're like, oh, we want long guns registered.
In this case, for people who don't know guns, it literally means a long gun.
Like not a handgun.
Not a handgun.
Anything but a handgun.
Not handguns.
Not the ones you see in the movies with the cops and robbers and stuff.
No, like rifles and shotguns, typically.
The ones that ranchers would keep on hand, right, to deal with pests and also if they ever needed to put down a suffering animal.
Also, hunters, if you're going to go bag a deer, you need a rifle, usually with a scope.
These are the tools, okay, of this trade.
The story goes, they said, oh, this is just going to be one of those simple little things, and we're going to get all the farmers and ranchers and duck hunters to write their name and address and which guns they have on this sheet of paper and it's going to be a government registry.
It's only going to cost around $2 million with an M. Fast forward, nobody is safer.
And they wound up spending close to $2 billion.
For kids keeping track at home, that's a thousand times more.
Like 30 years ago.
30 years ago.
Imagine the inflation.
I can't even.
I don't want to even look.
And it was one of those silly moments where back then the Reform Party and then eventually the Canadian Alliance were all fighting against it.
And the Taxpayers Federation, that's when we got really started in 1990.
This is one of the things we cut our teeth on because we said, you know what?
This is not going to make people safer because the police say so.
And two, you're going to blow a ton of money.
And they did.
That's exactly what happened.
And now here we are again.
Yeah.
And also with the public safety minister who also has no clue about the law-abiding firearms-owning community, Gary Ananda Sangeri, who has the funnest name to say, by the way, has no clue what the licensing and screening requirements are for firearms owners.
Our friend Andrew Lawton, who is now the MP in London, well-deserved.
I'm so proud of him.
He really has been an advocate on this issue for years through his journalism, and now he's in the House of Commons fighting for the law-abiding firearms-owning community.
And he exposed the public safety minister as someone who has absolutely no clue about what is required of the firearms zoning community to own the firearms that they have.
I think he just thinks we could go to Walmart and just buy an AR-15.
I think that's how he thinks it works.
I think so too.
That, for folks who haven't seen it yet, I'll show the clip.
I'll show the clip here.
Awesome.
Have been seized so far under the buyback confiscation scheme.
Honourable Member's Gun Law Advocacy00:06:33
The Honorable Minister.
1,000.
The Honorable Member.
What was the price per gun that the government paid for these?
Minister.
I will be able to get back to my colleague.
The Honourable Member.
How many firearms does the government believe have been prohibited that will be collected under this confiscation scheme?
Minister.
Anticipation is about $179,000.
The Honourable Member.
Are all of those firearms semi-automatics?
The Honorable Minister.
I don't believe so.
The Honourable Member.
What other types of firearms have been banned that the government will be seizing?
Those that are scheduled to be bought back will be removed.
I can't tell you the specific ones, but they're in the schedule.
Honourable Member.
Does the minister have an RPAL?
Minister.
Can you repeat that question?
The Honourable Member.
I'll rephrase, Chair.
Does the minister know what an RPAL is?
Minister.
I do not.
Does the minister know what the CFSC is?
Minister.
I do not.
No.
Member.
I'll stipulate, Chair, that is the Canadian's firearm safety course that all gun owners in Canada have to do to get their firearms license.
Has the minister ever done the Canadian firearm safety course?
The Honourable Minister.
Speaker, it's my third week on the job.
No, I have not.
The Honourable Member.
Does the minister know what safety classes and safety demands are expected of law-abiding Canadian gun owners?
The honorable minister.
This is not about law-abiding gun owners, Mr. Speaker.
Honorable member.
How can the minister make that claim when he doesn't know the basic fundamentals of law-abiding gun ownership in this country, Chair?
Minister.
Mr. Speaker, Bill 21 is meant to get serious, dangerous weapons off our streets.
The Honorable Member, very briefly, I'm just confirming that he's splitting his time three ways.
Chair, will the minister commit to taking the Canadian firearm safety course so he'll know what he's talking about?
The Honorable Minister.
Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to purchase a firearm or use a firearm.
Brilliant.
Absolutely brilliant.
If Lawton keeps that going, then this is going to be a good session because we need to show that these ministers either know or don't know what they're doing.
They either know or they don't know what they're talking about.
This is part of accountable government.
And when you have a minister in charge of a massive confiscation of private property, especially from one of the most strict law-abiding communities in Canada, like gun owners are uptight.
We follow rules.
Very big time.
And for this minister just to be floundering around, not having a schmick about how this works is surprising.
For folks who don't have their firearms licenses, you have to have a full background check.
They phone your spouse.
They'll phone your exes.
You have to, yeah, like for real.
And this is just for like unrestricted.
So long though.
It's like owning a regular shotgun.
You have to go in for a special course.
Mine was being taught by a former military and RCMP dude, super nice dude in Nova Scotia.
You have to be really good at it.
There's no participation ribbons in this.
You have to plast that thing with flying colors.
There's rules about where you have to store your ammo.
There's rules about how you have to store your firearm.
Like you can't just throw it in your truck.
Like there are so many rules around these things.
And you go to jail if you get it wrong.
Yes.
It's one of those things where you don't just get a ticket.
You're going to prison.
Right.
So people are very careful with this stuff.
And if you want to get into handguns, which you can now, things are such a mess right now between this government and firearms owners, you have to be able to allow law enforcement to enter your home.
Like at any time.
Right.
If you're a handgun owner.
Like these are serious things.
And to have this minister just not knowing the foggiest thing about it is disappointing.
And it isn't just, I must say, it's not just the individual firearms owners.
That's bad enough.
And how much they're going to spend on this thing.
Again, without making people safer, according to the police.
The police say that we shouldn't be spending money on this because it won't help.
It's also the businesses.
Yes, they have stranded assets.
This is it.
This is it.
I'll never forget.
I was speaking to a lady right in the teeth of the lockdown.
I was up in Prince George and she was running this amazing business.
This mom, mom of, I think she had five or six kids.
She was amazing.
And they had to close.
They had to close because she had so many stranded assets that were locked up that she could not move.
She could not sell.
They still didn't know what they were doing, even with the so-called buyback, meaning she couldn't even get compensation at the time, even if she had wanted to with the government.
It just strangled her business.
I have no idea what she's doing now.
But she was doing so well.
It was a community hub.
They were doing lessons with people.
And so it isn't just the individual firearms owners.
It's businesses, small, locally owned businesses that have been there in cases for decades that have been wrecked by this.
And it's not right.
Well, and then there's Canadian firearms manufacturers who made small runs of an AR-15, and that was all that they manufactured.
The government just put them out of business with the stroke of a pen.
And think about it.
And the minister responsible for putting you out of business, the minister responsible for gun laws, has no idea what the gun laws are.
He doesn't.
He knows for sure that you're just not following them.
Which is, again, for folks who are listening who have friends and family who aren't in the gun world, imagine that this was your truck instead.
Right.
Imagine that it was your chainsaw, a tool that you rely upon.
Imagine that it was that instead.
Or if you're really, if you're a sports shooter, imagine all of a sudden the government coming forward and saying, okay, we're literally confiscating your snowmobile, your skis, your poles.
You're not allowed to have these anymore.
And I'm just doing that as a thought process because this is a private property issue as well.
Government Revenue Shortfall00:15:37
Exactly.
When do you give the state the right to seize property from law-abiding, peaceful people?
Do you really want to go down that route?
And again, this is going to cost a ton of money.
And it is the police forces, the frontline guys who are saying this is not where the problem is.
The problem is with the illegal handguns coming across the border.
And they say the fact that they can't keep bad guys in jail no matter how many times they catch them.
Yes.
Yeah, because from what I can see on the news, they're actually kind of good at catching them if they keep getting back out of jail.
And then committing crimes while they are on bail.
Yes, over and over and over again.
And we're not talking about new laws.
We have enough laws on the books.
Right.
All the police are saying is how about we enforce the ones that are already here and start backing off on some of these folks.
And again, here in Alberta, Premier Daniel Smith has instructed saying we don't want to be spending precious taxpayer dollars provincially for police to go door to door, ranch to ranch, saying, hi, I'm here to seize your property.
And I don't know any frontline police officer that doesn't mean to be doing that.
Like, this is just, it should be a non-issue, but unfortunately, it looks like they're going to be trying to plow ahead with this.
But good on Andrew Lawton for exposing that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew Lawton is going to continue to make some of these liberals look like absolute idiots.
And I'm just, I'm here for it.
Now, moving ahead, the provincial finance minister's report cards are out.
Alberta did okay-ish, not excellent, but okay-ish, passing grade.
Yeah.
So our finance minister here is Nate Horner, and he got a B, which, I mean, we're kind of tough here at the CTF, Taxpayers Federation.
We want you to balance the budget.
We want you to pay down the debt.
We want lower taxes.
We want smaller government, all of that.
And yeah, he came in second.
So he got a B. In Saskatchewan, the finance minister there got a B plus.
And that's because technically, as of right now, on June 10th or whatever it is, their budget is balanced.
And the reason why I'm putting a little asterisk on that is because apparently they were being very hopeful in their estimations coming up to their next quarterly update and maybe a little bit too hopeful with how much resource revenue they were going to be getting, but we'll see.
So as of right now, here in Alberta, we started off the year paying down some debt, but now we're going to reverse that and start adding more to the debt.
So our budget is not balanced in Alberta.
It pains me to say that.
And we are going to be borrowing more than $5 billion extra dollars, heaping more money onto that debt.
And the reason why that's a problem, of course, is because we're charged interest on that debt.
It's the same as if you had a line of credit or a credit card as an individual.
The government is in the same boat.
And so we are blowing close to $3 billion every year just on debt interest payments.
I did the math.
I think it works out.
What's that?
Three hospitals worth.
Three hospitals.
I think it's like $8 million a day.
Isn't that awful?
I know.
Like, it's bad, bad.
And so this is where we're like, okay, this is how I put it out.
And this is coming out in the, hopefully, the Calgary Sound in the next few days.
I'll give it to you this way.
Premier Daniel Smith is doing an amazing job fighting the powers that be in Ottawa and trying to stay ahead of whatever circus is happening in DC.
Right.
I don't even know anymore.
I'm just innocent bystander.
That's on fire.
I'm just going to stay over here now.
So Smith is doing a great job trying to tackle both of those things, trying to wrestle both those steers.
However, here in Alberta, we have to be Fortress Alberta at home.
So imagine, you know, I liken her in the article to Sarah Connor, who is like one of my favorite movie characters of all time.
Imagine if in T2, she hadn't had all that ammo stored.
Imagine if she didn't have the gas masks ready.
Imagine if she wasn't ready.
So she's tough, she's courageous, all of those great things.
She's a fighter, but she hadn't done the planning and made sure that her team was strong.
That's what we have to have here in Alberta.
Because if Alberta is not balancing its budget, if Alberta is not paying down the debt, if Alberta is making sure that our fiscal, isn't making sure our fiscal house is in order, what are the other provinces going to do?
Where are people going to come to for that kind of fiscal stability?
And from fiscal stability, I will add, comes things like more freedom because you have smaller government, which is what we need is smaller government.
And so that is why we are urging through this report card system of, yeah, you're doing a very good job in the sense that you did a big income tax cut that was outstanding.
Super happy with that.
And taxpayer protection.
Again, good job.
But our spending increased year over year by more than 8%.
Sheila, that was second only to Prince Edward Island.
Yuck.
Yeah, like, I'm cringing.
Like, I don't want to hear that.
And yes, I know it's technically within the rules because they have a rule of inflation plus population, but it was within like 0.01% here, girl.
Like, not good enough.
And so this is where we're encouraging them.
You got a B, but we want you to pull your socks up and get an A.
So that's where we're at right now in Alberta.
Yeah, right.
We need to be conservative in our spending.
Yes.
That's a nice way of putting it.
Right?
Speaking of not being conservative in their spending, CBC, which claims to be stricken with poverty, but receives about a billion and a half dollars in subsidy per year, plus, you know, those government contracts for all the government of Canada advertising.
Plus, they rake in private sector advertising.
Their new CEO, who is replacing the outgoing personal muse of mine, Catherine Tate.
Their new boss, same as the old boss, sounds like.
Yes, exactly.
And so I like doing a little bit of guerrilla training for like independent journalists who watch the show.
So a good way to go figure out how much these people are being paid is to look up something called Orders and Council.
Okay.
It's a government website.
It's basically where they announce appointments.
And in this case, it was announced that the replacement for Catherine Tate is going to be at the same level, same CEO level as Tate.
The reason why that matters is because the way the federal government does their pay is they have a grid system.
Right.
Okay.
And so what you do is you look up, look up CEO Crown Corporation Canada grid, and it'll show you.
So the new boss is CEO level seven.
That's the same that Catherine Tate was.
All that is to say, the new boss is also getting paid about half a million dollars.
Like, it's disgusting.
It is more than the prime minister, regardless of how you feel about the person, more than cabinet ministers.
I think it's closing in on the U.S. president's salary, like of the entire country.
Yeah, one little bureaucrat who's the head of our state broadcaster is getting paid around $500,000 a year, plus perks for sure.
So this is where it gets frustrating because we had all of these folks saying, you know what?
That's too much money.
We want to see CBC, you know, read the room, realize that 50% of Canadians are fighting to afford basics right now.
They're tapped out.
They're taxed out.
This is too large, too large, right?
Trim it back.
And they didn't.
They hired her at exactly the same level, replaced her.
And regardless of what you, okay, I think it's clear.
I think the CBC should sink or swim on its own.
I believe that that is your position too.
I see it behind you there.
But let's even take my political leanings out of the mix for a second.
This is the CEO of a failing company.
By every single metric, it's a TV station nobody watches.
Quite literally, they are a statistical rounding error of Canadian grandparents who don't know how to use their remote control.
They're watching the six o'clock news at this point, if indeed your region even has a six o'clock news broadcast anymore, because they basically all but eliminated those.
Their flagship show is unwatchable, biased, and unwatched.
They just don't provide the service to Canadians that they are supposed to provide and that Canadians want.
This is a failing company.
Should a failing company's CEO be making this money?
Particularly if the shareholders, us, don't like it.
No, great point.
I'm pulling up my phone right now just to give you the exact latest one on how much, how many people are actually watching it here.
All right.
So in their latest quarterly report from the CBC itself, okay, their latest quarterly report, they have an audience share of 1.8%.
What that means is, of Canadians who were available to be watching TV at that time, 98% of Canadians were choosing to watch something else.
And again, this is CBC News World Primetime.
There is every house in the country, too, by the way.
You don't have a choice.
This is shoved onto your TV whether you want it or not.
They are mandatory carriage, whether you're just got antennas or cable or satellite.
This is in every home in the country, and very few networks can say that.
Yeah, they're mandated, so to speak.
Yeah.
Yeah, the CBC is mandated and still nobody is watching them.
We're close to nobody.
And again, I will point out: so the new CEO of the CBC is Marie-Philippe Bouchard.
She started her new role right at the change of the new year after Tate left off.
And her pay, the official pay salary for this scale, is between $478,300 and $562,700.
Now, technically, also entitled to a bonus of up to 28% of that.
Oh, my goodness.
Which is amazing.
I think it's over, I think that alone is over $150,000.
Now, this is the laugh or cry.
It's kind of the funny part.
The CBC said, oh, we hear you.
We're listening.
We're getting rid of bonuses.
Yeah, but they're just going to jack up the salaries, of course.
Exactly.
Right.
Again, this.
At least it's truth in advertising because before they were calling them performance bonuses and everyone was like, including me, but you're not performing.
So they're like, okay, we'll just call it a salary.
Exactly.
And they're just going to go back to salary.
And again, this, sorry to be like Debbie Downer here, but this is on top of the fact that Prime Minister Mark Carney, okay, is going to give them even more money.
I can't get over, as a journalist my entire life, I can't get over the scene during the election.
Yeah.
So like, just picture it here, folks.
Candidate A, the red team candidate, and candidate B, the blue team candidate.
Candidate A says, hey, CBC, I'm going to give you more money.
Here you go.
And then the CBC goes and covers this as news.
Yeah, I saw it at the debate firsthand.
Like, this conflict of interest is so big, it is casting a shadow on Godzilla.
Right.
Like, everybody can see this thing.
Yes.
And like, candidate B, the blue guy, says, I'm going to cut your funding.
Right.
How is that?
This is it.
How is that reporter supposed to call that straight?
You can't.
It is an inherent conflict of interest, which is an illustration as to why journalists should not be paid by the government.
Right.
Again, so just an update for folks on the CBC.
A, they're going to be getting more money.
B, the new CEO, same as the old CEO.
And C, they're getting rid of bonuses, but they're just going to increase their pay.
Yes, we're going to find out by how much.
Good gracious.
Now, last thing.
No, last thing I just want to touch on.
As we're recording this Tuesday morning, this news just broke.
And it's funny because I read the same report as the rest of the journalists, but I'm the only one who found this one thing.
And I'm sure they saw it.
They just didn't want to report it.
GC Strategies, the company behind the flawed RiveCan app that sent 10,000 people into quarantine erroneously, which is a $60 million contract to create an app that was recreated over a weekend by a bunch of just nerds, benevolent nerds, not the sinister kind.
Tech bro kids for about $50,000.
The Auditor General report is out on this today.
And I'm asking you about this or just we're going to talk about it real quick because, well, you're the CTF.
So $93 million in no bid contracts between 2015 and 2024.
GC Strategies, a two-man company run by Christian Firth and Darren Anthony secured 106 federal contracts across 31 departments.
Total value, $93 million.
Most were awarded without competition.
So sole source contracts.
And GC Strategies, they don't build tech.
They're basically a pass-through.
They outsource the work, mark up the invoices, and then they send the bill to the taxpayer.
The Auditor General's findings were 82% of the sole source contracts had no price validation.
So they didn't know if they were within the realm of what the market could bear.
21% lacked proof of required security clearances.
87 of these contracts were split into small amounts to avoid oversight rules so that to make sure that they didn't have to go to mandatory tender.
And then department, it wasn't just the CBSA.
So the CBSA was into these guys for $59 or $49 million.
Treasury Board, $10 million.
Innovation Canada, $10 million.
National Defense, and remember I just said that they didn't have the proper security clearances, almost $4 million.
Optimistic Accountability Act00:05:06
And here's the one that I thought was kind of interesting.
It's not the biggest, but CBC was into these guys for $12,000.
Now, never once in years now of reporting on the Arrive Can GC's strategies scandal did CBC ever divulge that they had a contract with these guys.
Not even once.
I've never heard them declare that.
No.
No, and nobody else declared it either.
So all the journalists in the mainstream media who were funded by the government had the same report that I had today, and they just sort of skimmed over CBC being into this up to their elbows.
Holy smokes.
And again, I started off our conversation talking about history rhyming.
This is what the Accountability Act was supposed to be for.
Right.
So for younger people, there was a huge thing that eventually did bring down the Kretchen Martin government.
And that was called ad scam, right, or the sponsorship scandal.
Long story short, it was in the wake of the near-miss referendum where Quebec wanted to get out of here.
And then basically the federal government backed up the dump truck full of money and said, we're going to give you tons and tons of taxpayers' dollars.
The problem is in areas around Quebec, they weren't accountable for it, meaning there weren't receipts, there weren't paper trails.
Auditor General looked at this over and over again and said, whoa, like this is not okay.
Which then prompted new Prime Minister Stephen Harper to pass the Accountability Act.
So that included things like what you just mentioned there, limits on how much you can sole source before putting it out to tender.
But if it now is shown that they're purposefully breaking it down into small increments to avoid like, this is not okay.
This is absolutely not okay.
It doesn't matter what, you know, brand of government is in there.
This is what accountability is for because all of this is your money, you guys.
All of this is taxpayers' money.
Like picture the people who are struggling in your neighborhood or when you're watching them at the grocery store put stuff back.
Like, I'm sorry, this makes me really mad.
Because this.
The Auditor General found that there was no e-procurement system.
There were no fraud risk tools used and no enforcement of the existing rules.
So this isn't even about adding extra rules, which normally I'm against, but I feel like we probably should here because it protects the taxpayer.
But even the ones that are on the books, nobody was following.
This is it.
It gets back to what we were saying about the police saying just keep the bad guys in jail.
We don't need, probably don't need new laws.
We just need the laws that are currently there to be followed.
And again, this gets back to government being in for a while and then getting this sense of entitlement and this Teflon sort of coding that Trudeau had on him.
My one little glimmer of hope here, because a colleague of mine just said something, not a colleague, but a caller called the office.
How did he put it?
I'm not optimistic, but I'm trying to be hopeful.
Right.
Which was a nice way of putting it.
Yeah, I don't want to be a doomer, but this isn't good.
Yeah, it's not good.
And so my little bit of hope to offer people here is that I do, I think that Trudeau as a personality prime minister was a phenomenon.
And I don't mean that in either a positive nor a negative light.
Right.
I mean, as an individual, he was exceptional because of who he was.
Right.
He was kind of a celebrity.
He was a famous name.
People thought he was, the media kind of treated him like the cool kid in class.
So he was not your garden variety politician.
I'll put it that way.
Similar in a sense that, you know, U.S. President Donald Trump is a specific type of person, right?
He's not coming up through the bureaucratic ranks.
My hope here in saying all of this is stuff didn't stick to Trudeau.
He was Teflon.
He could say the most outrageously stupid things like, you should prioritize paying your carbon tax, my carbon tax over feeding your kids and paying rent.
And people shrug their shoulders.
Like, he would like flick his hair and show his sock, and everyone would be like, ooh, swoon.
I know.
It was like, am I on crazy pills here?
I know.
Like, it was crazy.
And so I think that chapter is over.
I hope.
I'm not expecting Dr. Mark Carney to be flashing his socks at people.
I'm hoping that there is that, that getting back to what we were saying, that calculator abacus, you know, minding the beans and counting them mentality in there that is like, nope, you're going to wear a suit to work and you're going to show up on time.
And I hope that this means it's a change within this own government of accountability.
Getting Back to Basics00:04:20
And we need to get back to, you know, you got to show your receipts.
Yeah, Mark Carney has the charisma of one of those vacuum cleaner robots.
I know, but maybe he's efficient.
Don't take this away from me, Sheila.
I'm still clinging to hope that he's efficient.
Really?
And like, let's get, let's come back to there.
I want, what is it?
Make politicians boring again.
Yes.
Boring and accountable.
Take me back to Stephen Harper.
Boring and accountable.
Yeah, my problem with Mark Carney is the last time he had an expense account at the Bank of England, he blew right through it and then he and his wife complained that it wasn't large enough for them.
So I'm already filled with dread and trepidation.
On that dark note, Chris, how do people get involved with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?
Because you provide a bit of a community for people who are looking for ways to stand up and have their voices heard.
Amen.
And it's the best part of the job.
And it's the best part of Taxpayers' Federation, actually.
So folks can go to our website, taxpayer.com, click on the petitions tab, and this is where it's important because it's kind of like you're signing up for a certain battalion, okay, of which part of the armed forces, the taxpayer armed forces, you want to join here.
And basically pick something that speaks to you.
If you want to cancel the gun grab, sign that petition.
If you want to defund the media, something near and dear to both of our hearts, sign that petition.
I think my, you know, little petition to get rid of sales tax on thrift shop items is still there.
It's important.
It's important.
It is important.
Stop taxing poor people.
Quit being absolute demons.
Awful.
So things like that, right?
Sign those petitions.
And then the next time that issue comes up, so when they're, for example, not balancing the budget or they're seizing firearms or they're giving the media more money, you'll get like an action update alert email saying, okay, it's time to everybody email your minister at once.
Everybody phone your local MP.
Everybody get out and come to, you know, we're having a teddy's event where we're handing out golden pig statues.
Everybody come out.
So it's kind of a community where then you actually speak truth to power and we chat with you.
We answer all of our emails personally.
Okay.
And I know you do.
I can vouch for that.
I know you do.
It's just a really good way.
It's a sense of, I get a sense of fellowship out of it.
And I think it matters to feel that you're not alone.
So, so, and we get results.
So remember back when the government was going to increase the capital gains tax without going through parliament?
Well, we took action.
We were taking them to court, like fighting them in court.
They backed off that, like a burning building.
So we do.
The carbon tax.
Carbon tax.
Carbon tax.
Right.
Yes, I know they're plotting a new one.
Yes, I know carbon tax.
But I don't know about you, Sheila.
My gas is still 20 cents cheaper than it was.
That's serious savings.
So, and that was a long fight.
So we win the fights, but we also have a good time and we connect with people while we're doing it.
So thank you for letting me do my TED Talk there.
Happy Warriors.
Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for being my friend and a good friend to taxpayers.
And we'll have you back on again very soon.
thank you sheila as always i turn over the last segment of the show to you because without you there's no rebel news So I want to know what you think about the work that we do here.
If you want to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me.
But also, if you are watching and or sharing free clips of the show with your friends to introduce them to Rebel News Plus, encourage them to leave comments on our work because it helps us get higher on the algorithm because our work is engaged with and the algorithms like work that's engaged with and commented on.
Tommy's Strict Conditions00:05:59
And so it serves it up to more people so that more people can discover the work that we do here at Rebel News and perhaps ultimately one day become a subscriber and supporter of the work that we do here.
So that is why sometimes I go looking for the comments over on YouTube or on Rumble.
I want to know what those people think too because they're commenting and even the hate comments help us be viewed and consumed more by people.
Now, many of you know that last week I went to the UK for less than 24 hours.
It took me 18 hours to get there and then I was on the ground for a little bit over that and then another 18 hours to get back because I was covering a court hearing of citizen journalist and activist Tommy Robinson.
Cole's notes version of the court hearing.
He has been charged with harassment, criminal harassment.
And you won't even believe this.
He was on vacation with his kids in Cyprus, out of the country, out of the prying eye of the UK paparazzi.
And he was with his children.
I want to reiterate, with his children, two Daily Mail journalists Followed him to Cyprus and took pictures of him with his children.
Instead of physically attacking him like them, like what a lot of dads might do if weirdos were taking pictures of their children, Tommy turned the camera on them.
He took their pictures and then he published their names.
And so that, according to the UK police, amounts to criminal harassment.
Now, it was the first hearing where Tommy entered a plea of not guilty.
I went there to hear about Tommy's conditions if he would be released, because it's always a miracle when Tommy goes to court and isn't taken directly into custody.
Now, they did release him.
They released him with some pretty strict conditions.
He can't talk about the case.
He can't name the journalists involved.
He can't name the judge involved, the prosecutors, anything.
He is basically completely gagged.
But before he was gagged, I met him at a coffee shop and we had a little chat about why he was in court.
And I gave him the ability to talk about something he knew he wouldn't be able to talk about in quite literally under an hour after our conversation.
And so let's hear what you have to say about that interview.
Toby Reid, 59, no, sorry.
Toby Reed, 529 says, as a survivor of something similar to the grooming gangs, Tommy is my hero.
I followed his story from the start, and I can honestly say I've seen nothing to warrant him going to jail, to be honest.
The reporter prosecuting Tommy is actually causing me harm and worry that this court case will set our country back years.
My family are scared and afraid as well.
What's the reporter's name, please?
I feel a lawsuit coming on.
The names are out there.
You can find them.
They work for the Daily Mail, but I can't name them.
If you watch my subsequent reporting at TommyReports.com, you'll see the conditions listed and the names are thus protected right now.
John Lemon, 1863, says they've made Tommy stronger than ever.
Yeah, I think so.
I think more people know about him than ever before.
It's the Streisand effect.
Do you know the Streisand effect?
Barbara Streisand once objected to a photo of her palatial home being published, which only caused people to want to look at the photo of her palatial home even more.
And that's what they're doing to Tommy.
The more they censor him, the more people want to know what's so bad that they have to censor him.
And then they realize that what he is saying is true, but inconvenient and difficult to the establishment.
The Real Rant Room says it's never ending.
What a joke.
They're throwing anything that sticks.
Yeah, absolutely true.
They're trying anything.
I mean, if you watch that interview with Tommy, he says that he was recharged, like charged, like hours after getting out of jail where he was in where he was being held for civil contempt of court for publishing a documentary about grooming gangs.
And he had been in there for months and months.
And they just can't have Tommy walk in the streets, can they?
Being public enemy number one of the establishment.
So he's out.
They picked him right back up.
These charges stem from August of 2024.
They had him for seven months.
They could have charged him at any point.
But the idea was to charge him, and hopefully he would thus go back to jail and not be released on conditions.
But shocking, shocking to even myself, they did release him.
And Jeff 3, Tom 710, says, Well done, dude.
John Shank 251 says, You're one hell of a man that you are doing.
So proud to support you, if only by writing.
Better Than Nothing00:01:09
Yeah.
William Keith 8740 says, Love Rebel News, supporting rational thinkers and patriots.
I think you must support the truth, right?
And sometimes you can't change the injustice in front of you alone.
But if you talk about it, if you show people it, maybe, maybe you'll make a difference.
Maybe you'll change hearts and minds.
But maybe you won't, but at least it's better than nothing.
And just standing by sort of saying, like, it's just little old me.
What can I do?
You could talk about it.
Tell everybody you know about it.
And sometimes that's better than nothing.
And sometimes that's as effective as anything.
Okay.
Well, everybody, that's the show for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.