Episode Details

Today is Tax Freedom Day, arriving later than ever, as Canadians spend more of their income on taxes than on food, shelter and clothing combined. Canadian officials are privately telling Reuters that the only real card Canada holds in trade talks is tariff-free access to the American market through CUSMA, the same relationship Carney spent a year telling Canadians he was pivoting away from.

The Financial Times reports Carney is now willing to accept tougher conditions to trade in North America after more than a year of giving Washington the cold shoulder. The pivot is not a strategy. It is a concession.

Meanwhile the Deputy Defence Minister failed to disclose a conflict of interest until after a meeting took place, the Alto Crown corporation paid $2.76 million in bonuses to 100% of its staff for a train that has not broken ground, and the Carney government is introducing a social media ban for Canadians under 16 while 4.4 million affordable homes remain unbuilt and homelessness is up 22% since 2017. The priorities are not adding up.

Today on The Really Big Show:

►Today is Tax Freedom Day, arriving later than ever, as Canadians now spend more of their income on taxes than on food, shelter and clothing combined

►Reuters reports Canadian officials privately acknowledge the main appeal Canada offers prospective trading partners is not Canadian resources or markets but tariff-free access to the U.S. through CUSMA, directly undermining Carney's pitch of building an independent middle powers trading bloc

►The Financial Times reports Carney is now "willing to accept tougher conditions to trade in North America" after more than a year of giving the U.S. the cold shoulder, as Canada remains frozen out of CUSMA talks and Washington signals displeasure at Carney's deepening ties with Beijing

►A defence start-up whose chief lobbyist is the brother of Deputy Defence Minister Christiane Fox secured a private audience with Carney to pitch drone technology, with Fox only disclosing the conflict after the meeting took place, weeks after she was already cited by the Ethics Commissioner for using her office to hire her husband's cousin into an $80,000 federal management position

►The Carney government is set to table an Online Harms Act banning social media for Canadians under 16, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook, as child safety advocates warn Canadian children remain among the least protected in the Western world

►Federal Housing Advocate Marie-Josée Houle warns it will take over 1,000 years to eliminate homelessness at current construction rates, with a deficit of 4.4 million affordable homes, chronic homelessness up 22% since 2017, and the average Canadian household spending 52% of income on housing

►Pierre Poilievre says Alberta separatists are "rational people with legitimate grievances" and warns critics that dismissing them "will only worsen the divide," while personally opposing independence and calling for different government policies in Ottawa rather than a different country

►The Gordie Howe International Bridge between Ontario and Michigan is set to open this week, paid for entirely by Canadian taxpayers, after Trump threatened in February to block it "until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them"

►Finance Minister Champagne announced $150 million loans per airline to offset Iran war fuel costs, but WestJet called it "market-distorting" and Air Canada said its balance sheet is strong enough to handle the crisis without government help, as WestJet noted Ottawa forgave roughly $380 million in COVID loans to Air Transat last year