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This Thursday. We're faced with a threat. I can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker.
I'm just a neighbor. I'm a neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing.
That's my responsibility. Dr. Banner? I didn't know you could get that big.
Spider-Man, brand new day in theaters Thursday. This is the Roy Green Show podcast. We talked about bullying a lot on this program. I'm talking to people who were bullied when they were kids as adults.
They still carry the pain with them. We've talked to parents and bullied children. We've talked to bully kids. And we talked to a bully.
How do we handle bully on bully on from Saskatchewan? And he, formerly, and he shared with his story. About having been a really nasty bully. And he changed his ways because of a specific incident that happened in his life.
He had bullied a child so severely that even he was concerned. And the child didn't show up for school the next day and didn't show up for a number of days. And then they found out that the child was dead. And his great concern was that he'd caused the death.
He hadn't. But it changed his life. He told us that story. But out of Florida came this story.
I just want to read you a little bit and then I'll talk to my guest. And we'll take some calls from you. In fact, we have two guests on this segment today. This is a story by Meghan O'Mett's.
And I was in touch with Ms. Matt from the South Florida Sun Sentinel. She writes in the aftermath of the Parkland Massacre, some students with disabilities are being taunted or callously pegged by others as being the next school shooter. Parents and experts say, quote, there's been a lot of bullying going on in our school.
So, scally Bush, the South Florida advocate for children with autism, I spoke with this book when she was not able to join us. But she did underscore what has been written here. School and mental health records show that Nicholas Cruz who killed 17 and wounded 17 more. And Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High on Valentine's Day was reported to have numerous conditions, including autism and severe behavioral and emotional problems.
Slapping crews with an autistic label has increased the angst of parents of children with the neurological disorder who already struggled to foster acceptance and compassion for their children. Experts say some people with autism, especially children, may find it hard to communicate or to control their emotions. They can experience sensory overload or become frustrated when unable to express themselves and may become aggressive or irritated. They're outbursts such as throwing a chair occurs in flashes and typically are minor and over quickly premeditated acts of violence are not a symptom of autism.
Yet Valerie Hersko, it's of Jupiter, Florida who has a grown son with autism, said she's heard from parents that some students have asked autistic children, are you going to kill us? So this bullying of autistic and otherwise disabled children in Florida schools, particularly after Parkland, is really, really disturbing. Really disturbing. Rob Ban for Nat joins me.
He's the co-founder and co-executive director of Bullying in Canada, Inc. And I remember when you started Bullying in Canada, Rob, and you've done a lot for the issue of bullying, you've helped out tremendously in this country. Thanks for joining us. Good afternoon, right?
What do you make of this? Are you surprised that kids in Florida are bullying disabled at autistic kids and asking them if they're going to be the next school shooters? That was concerning to me in a number of ways. Am I surprised?
But no. It's not the first time I've heard of that happening. It's something that happened in instance at least throughout the country as well. And I think that we need to remember, as you said, in your introduction, that individuals with autism aren't likely to recall in this type of fashion.
And that's something that we need to keep in mind. So, no, I don't think that we have to be worried that just because somebody has autism that they're going to do the same thing that's happened in Florida. No, I don't think that's the concern. The concern is what happens to these kids who have autism and the disabled kids when they're being taunted by their classmates?
The concern there is they're not getting the correct supports that they need to keep them safe, really. They're not getting the accurate support in their school system when they're being bullied. The fact that they're being content for one, and they're not accurately getting help to get that address. When it comes to the United States and bullying, it's extremely difficult to measure.
It's extremely difficult to deal with because each state has a different way of dealing with it. Each school has a different way. So, there's no easy method or policy to follow or anything like that. And it bothers me in the sense that most of these students are going to fall through the cracks.
I'm hoping that none of these students are going to harm themselves. I'm hoping that their parents are going to be aware that they're being our asset school and their parents are going to be able to step up and go to school administration. I read some of the things that we said by a major player in the school administration in the area. It doesn't seem more, doesn't seem any better than the usual.
We'll look into it and we'll talk to people and conduct a study and then we'll act accordingly. That's doing nothing. That's absolutely doing nothing. And will they do this study?
Probably not. And if they do, it's going to be ten years before we see anything. It's not doing anything right now. It's not helping the kids right now.
And they've done lots of studies. We don't generally see any changes from those. And we don't generally see any from the studies because we don't necessarily see the studies. So, like I said, my initial concern with that is, are the students that are being affected getting the immediate help they need as in help tomorrow or Tuesday or whenever they return to school Monday, are they getting the immediate help because they're being targeted?
So that's the concern. And whereas they're not within Canada, there's no way of knowing that. And that's the problem. I didn't think we'd have answers here.
But it's something that you and I both know everybody who has a child who's being bullied knows that's come Tuesday morning. The kids who go back to school and they're incessantly bullied are going to have a hard time getting going again. They don't want to go to school because they know what's going to happen to them. The long weekend gives them a little bit of a reprieve unless they're cyber bullied.
But the issue is prevalent in this country. And elsewhere, Rob, let me ask you about this. There have been some of the survivors of the school attack have been attacked on social media themselves. As people have written, well, you bullied Nicholas Cruz.
So I'm paraphrasing. You bear some level of responsibility. What do you say to that? To that, there's no rule.
That's cruel, isn't it? That's cruel. It is. That's tricky.
Now, the only thing I can relate it to is I know some people that have went through it in Canadian incidents and they're still dealing with those effects. And it's been multiple years since they're going to be dealing with this for years and years and years to come. And the only thing that we can deal with going forward is they're pushing for change, which I think is really important. And they need to continue to do so in the fact that there's youth that are advocating for change within their country is great.
And they need to keep that up. So the fact that he is being labeled as a victim in this case, I mean, maybe he is. Maybe he wasn't. But I mean, that's beside the point at this point.
I think the most important part of this is how can we ensure that, hey, this doesn't happen again. And unfortunately, it probably will, which I mean is. Well, it will because I mean, there were so many opportunities to intercept. And they didn't prove.
And they didn't. I'm sure this is going on. It has to be going on elsewhere as well, where the signs are obvious. So there's going to be a problem, maybe not a school shooting.
But there'll be an issue and it'll be serious and nobody is doing enough about it because they're frozen in place. They don't know what to do because they don't have any policies or if they have policies, they're basically covering your behind policies. They write a policy that protects the staff and protects the school and the school district. And then if there's a bullying situation, they refer to the policy and nothing gets done.
So that's not concerned. But the certainly concerns I have. Now, you also know that Nicholas Cruz has got support. He's got people putting money in his account in prison so he can get items out of the commissary.
He's getting love letters and he's getting fan support. I can't publicly say on radio when I think about that. Yeah, I know. You and I agree.
But that happens every time. There is somebody like him. There are those who who climb on board to express support for them, which is frankly sick. What's the most significant thing that you've accomplished, that you've been able to accomplish it, bullying in Canada as far as dealing with bullies in this country is concerned.
And you dealt with bullying yourself before you formed the organization. Go form the organization. I think the biggest thing we've been able to do so far is the amount of individuals that have heard from 90-year-olds and 95-and-and-96-year-olds that were bullied when they were kids. And we've gotten letters from them and expressed how it's allowed them to finally move on from when they were bullied.
And we're going back 70 years. And there's something else, a donation with this letter. And that's the reason we do what we do. Let alone the amount of kids we hear from on a daily basis and parents that we hear from on a daily basis.
So that's why we do what we do. And the fact that we hear from kids that have been able to, you know, one of them on the phone with them, they can say, really and know that they're finally able to get some help. That's why we do what we do. So we've been doing it now for almost 13 years.
It's unfortunate that we have to do what we do. But we've been able to do this long and kids have been reaching out for this long. So that's right. You've made a difference.
Rob, thank you for the time. Good talking to you again. Thank you very much, right? Have a great day.
All the best. Rob Ben Frenette, co-founder, co-executive director of bullying in Canada. You're listening to the Roy Green Show, her weekends from 2 to 5 on 900 CNML. I just disturb, very disturbed to hear and read that in South Florida, kids in schools are bullying disabled and autistic classmates and asking them because of what they know about Nicholas Cruz, the shooter at Parkland, asking them, are you going to be the next school shooter?
That is just, that is awful. And how does a little kid absorb that? How does a little kid deal with that? How does a little kid do anything but be afraid after hearing that?
Barbara Colerosa joins me on the Roy Green Show. She's an international parenting and bullying expert. I'm sure you're aware of Barbara. One of her books is the Bullied, the Bullied, and the bystander.
Barbara, thanks for taking the time. Hi Roy, thank you for having me. What are you making this? Well, as a special ed teacher and as a parent and just as a human being, it's going to me.
Anyone can be targeted. The kids who have special needs are kids who are somewhat different from other kids or at high risk for being targeted. They're more likely to be targeted than to bully anybody. They may be striking back and the sad thing is if we overlook the verbal and the social bullying that they have to experience, they may be able to be targeted.
They may be able to be the next school shooter or the shunning and the rumor and the gossip. When they take it anymore, they tend to strike back and they'll hit back and they're the ones who get in trouble because we as educators and parents and other people in the community have failed to recognize the seriousness of verbal and relational bullying, which can be devastating to young people and especially kids with special needs because they often have some difficulties with social skills and social relationships. We have to be very tuned in as adults but also work with our own children and talk to them about the fact that each one of us is unique. I talk about Martin Goober, I am now.
I'm unique and you're unique and we have a common humanity. The problem in bullying is I'm unique and you're an it. When I call you names, racial names or sexist names or sexual names and those are different, to dehumanize you. It's a short walk from hateful rhetoric to hate crimes.
There's another aspect of this that is also disturbing and that is that some of the survivors of the Parkland shooting have been attacked on social media and they've been told, look, you bullied Nicholas Cruz and so you bear some level of responsibility for what he did. And I'll knock your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, it was the same with the CB Prince case where she was horribly tormented and the kids after she committed suicide did were held to account but not for her suicide and people said to me, but why should they be accountable? Well, it's complicated.
School shootings are complicated. However, I can promise you that had a kid not like TV Prince not been targeted relentlessly those six months. We don't know if she would have committed suicide or not. But I can guarantee you, her life wouldn't have been as miserable had she not been targeted.
And that's what kids have to be accountable for is that I make anybody miserable and some kids, they're at the end of their feud. And so, yes, we have to be kind. However, in my latest excerpt from one of my, it's called an Aria for AFCD, I talked about the fact that we cannot tell young people that if you're kind of somebody, they won't become a victim of the victim. And it's something to be meaningful to you and you're being asked to be kind to them.
I believe we as adults have an obligation to recognize this meaning cruel, but what it truly is a kid needing help needing therapeutic intervention and needing to be held accountable for their behavior. I think we do more harm. It's important that we teach young people to be kind to one another, but to put the onus on them that had you not done this or had you been kinder to this kid, he wouldn't have been a school shooter because it's simply not true. That is so unfair.
Well, it is. And to put a guilt trip on them, how about we as adults taking a real strong look at how are we behaving? You see bullying is learned. You have to be taught to be mean.
So how do you treat hired help? How do you treat somebody moving through the grocery store slower than you'd like them to? How do you treat a young person you see who obviously has autism? Do you sort around them or can you give them a smile, give a hug and let them know we're here, we're all here for one another?
And how do you treat a bigoted relative with a family gathering? Can you call them on it? Can you call them on their bigoted and racist and sexist comments? In front of your children, even when your mother says, look, he's old, old has never been exposed by 70, old times.
He's old has never been exposed for bigotry and hatred. So in other words, be an adult. Be an adult. Be an adult.
Take charge. And when mom says, but he's old, I have to say in front of my children, I don't ever want my children to believe that those kinds of comments are ever acceptable. And I've got to tell you, in my country right now, we don't have some great role models right now. And our kids are exposed to some pretty heavy-duty garbage in terms of how we call one another name, how we denigrate other human beings, how we make other whole groups of people into an end.
And in my genocide book, I talk about the fact that it is a short walk from hateful words to hate crimes to crimes against humanity. And we're starting on that path. And we have to say, wait a minute, we've got to take some steps back here. If we want our kids to be kind and caring and sensitive, we also have to teach them how to stand up and report when somebody is being mean and cruel to anyone.
And at the school level, I talked with a previous guest about this. The school boards will often say, or a leader of the school board will say, what we'll do in study. We'll talk to people, we'll file a report, and then the study's never done. And the people aren't talked to and you never see the report.
Barbara, thank you so much. It's always great speaking with you. We have to take action now. We have to care about each one of the people that we come in contact with.
We are I and now in our common humanity. We all matter. Thank you. Take care.
Barbara Coleroso, on the Roy Green show. Let me read you this. It was in the New York Times. My Isabelle Robinson, earlier in the week.
My first interaction with Nicholas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing one direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body. Tears sunk my eyes.
I turned around and saw him smirking. I'd never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick twist of joy as he watched me cry. The apple that he'd thrown at my back rolled slowly along the tiled floor.
A cafeteria adorished over and asked me if I was okay. I don't remember if Mr. Cruz was confronted over his actions, but in my 12-year-old naivete, I trusted that the adults around me would take care of the situation. Five years later, hiding in a dark closet.
Inside Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, I would discover just how wrong I was. I'm not writing this piece to malign Nicholas Cruz any more than he already has been. I have faith that history will condemn him for his crimes. I'm writing this because of the disturbing number of comments I've read that go something like this.
Maybe if Mr. Cruz's classmates and peers had been a little nicer to him, a shooting at Stoneman Douglas never would have occurred. The steeply dangerous sentiment expressed under the walk-up-not-out hashtag implies the acts of school violence can be prevented if students be friend-disturbed and potentially dangerous classmates. The idea that we are to blame, even implicitly for the murders of our friends and teachers, is a slap in the face of all Stoneman Douglas victims and survivors.
A year after I was assaulted by Mr. Cruz, I was assigned to tutor him through my school's peer counseling program. Being a peer counselor was the first real responsibility I'd ever had. My first glimpse of adulthood and I took it very seriously.
Despite my discomfort, I sat down with him alone. I was forced to endure his cursing me out and ogling my chest until the hour-long session ended. When I was done, I felt a surge of pride for having organized his binder and helping him with his homework. Looking back, I'm horrified.
I now understand that I was left unassisted with a student who had a known history of rage and brutality. Like many teenage and teenage girls I possessed and still to an extent possessed a strong desire to please. I strive to win the praise of the adults in my life and long to be seen as mature beyond my years. I would have done almost anything to win the approval of my teachers.
This is not to say that children should reject their more socially awkward or isolated peers not at all. As a former peer counselor and current teacher assistant, I strongly believe in and have seen the benefits of reaching out to those who need kindness most. But students should not be expected to cure the ills of our genuinely troubled classmates or even our friends, because we first and foremost go to school to learn. The implication that Mr.
Cruz's mental health problems could have been solved if only he'd been loved more by his fellow students is both a gross misunderstanding of how these diseases work and a dangerous suggestion that puts children on the front line. It is not the obligation of children to befriend classmates who have demonstrated aggressive, unpredictable or violent tendencies. It is the responsibility of the school administration and guidance departments to seek out those students and get them the help that they need, even if it's extremely specialized attention that cannot be provided to the same institution. No amount of kindness or compassion alone would have changed the person that Nicholas Cruz is and was or the horrendous actions he perpetrated.
That is a weak excuse for the failures of our school system, our government and our gun laws. My little sister is now the age I was when I was left alone with Mr. Cruz, anxious and defenseless. The thought of her being put in the same situation that I was feels me with rage.
I hope that she will never know the fear that I have become so accustomed to in the past month. The slightest unexpected sound makes my throat constrict and my neck hairs curl. I beg her to trust her gut whenever she feels unsafe, and I demand that the adults in her life protect her. Isabelle Robinson is a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
You're listening to the Roy Green Show, her weekend from 2-5 on 900 C.A.M.L. Oh, I want you to hear this, go ahead, wait, wait. That's where it wants to take a bulldozer to a province that has worked so hard to get to this place. I'm surprised that the finance minister and the premier are up here saying, we're giving away free cars.
We're going to pay your mortgage. You get a free car. You get a free car. You get a free car.
That's next on their agenda. Okay, so there they are the stars of the show. Two of them anyway. Went in for it.
Andrew Horvath is part of the equation. But how could your math skills, ladies and gentlemen, just do a little addition here. Would you please? $822 million plus $575 million plus $800 million plus $2.1 billion plus $2.2 billion plus $2.1 billion plus $650 million plus $100 million plus $1.8 billion plus $1.8 billion plus $2.3 billion.
Yeah, it doesn't matter that you didn't add it up. There was a lot of billions and a lot of multiples of millions and that is what the Ontario premier and her finance minister promised. In the budget a couple of days ago, the provincial budget. $312 billion I think it is of the province's in debt.
This is the largest sub-national debt in the world. And for some reason, some reason this stuff appears to work. Looking at some polling information, 24% like what was in the budget in Ontario. It's like foreign research.
24% liked it. 44% disapproved of it. One out of four people said, oh yeah, oh yeah. That's good.
I like it. You do realize that they don't have the money. You do realize they're massively in debt. You do realize you will pay for this.
All of it. You will pay for the debt, the $312 billion, which is expected to be $400 billion pretty soon. You'll pay for it. Your kids will pay for it.
Your grandkids will pay for it. Your great-grandkids will pay for it. But there's a grinning premier and a happy finance minister that more than doubled the debt of the province's Ontario since the Liberals have been in power. Now it's not just that.
If you're in Alberta, you have an election coming up next year, somewhere between the 1st of March and May 31st. And you know, you know, Madam Knopley is going to pull the same stunt. They will promise you this. In fact, they may, in fact, do pretty much a copy of the Ontario budget promise.
Some different numbers, but you know, if this seems to work for wind, then not they will try and probably the same stuff. Oh, did we mention that there's another election in 2019 in October, the 21st of October? The federal election? Mr.
Trudeau's polling numbers. We talked with Darrell Bricker from Ipsos. What's the last week or week before last? About Mr.
Trudeau's numbers dropping. You know, even though they have... ...increase their projected deficits in multiples, and even though the federal debt, the national debt is massive in growing larger, and even though interest rates are climbing, and they'll promise you a whole bunch of stuff in the multiples of billions as well. And you will pay for it.
Your kids will pay for it. Your grandchildren will pay for it. Their kids will pay for it. Probably two or three or four or five or six more generations after that.
In a country that shouldn't be a diamond debt. And who do they constantly turn into the hydrant? The small business community of Canada. The people who do most of the hiring.
They're always on the receiving end of either government expressed nastiness or government programs that reach into the pockets of the entrepreneurs who, if they make a profit, they reinvest the profit in their business. But the politicians who want to be elected, particularly those on the left, will tell you, well, those terrible business people, you know, they have yachts and Ferraris. They have islands right next to Uncle K. Oh, yeah.
Dan Kelly is probably wincing now. It kind of feels like a toothpick, doesn't it, Dan? Well, if I could disagree with you, Roy, I would. These are some worrisome times.
Those of us that care about government spending, ensuring that the government is kept small and reasonable, ensuring that our grandkids are not going to be left with massive amounts of debt, have had a pretty good run. Governments of really of all political stripes, all political parties, Tory, little NDP, really started to get with the program and understand that deficit financing is not a good idea, that the pain down debt once in a while is a good idea. But it seems that that has been, those hard learned lessons have been largely forgotten in the last couple of months, the last couple of years. Dan Kelly is the president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
They represent the small and medium sized business community in this country. And they are the number one employers, they employ over 50% of people who have jobs in Canada. So to keep these businesses in business means that we will keep so many millions of jobs available. Dan, what if your members suddenly decided to be as fiscally responsible as governments are?
You know, it is deeply troubling. When we see what happens, and you can borrow examples from personal finance, from business finance, even other things in one's personal life to draw some pretty clear ideologies of why, what we are doing in Canada, what many provincial governments and what our federal government is doing is such a bad idea. I just forget the small business owner right now, but I will give you a personal example. I just over the last couple of years lost almost 50 pounds.
And that was a good thing to do. It took a lot of work for me to do that, both exercise and dieting. And I know that if I go out to a restaurant, I am here in Vancouver visiting family for the Easter. If I go to a nice buffet and decide to eat a little bit more than I normally would, that things are not going to be a problem.
I can get through that and get back on track the next day and all will be well. But if I do that again and again, if I do that every day or every month, I know that I am going to start snacking the weight back on and lost, and all the hard and battles are going to be gone. And this is what governments are doing. I think Canadians understood during the last federal election campaign.
When Trudeau said that he was going to run three short-term small deficits in order to give the economy a bit of a boost, Canadian said, you know what, okay, we've managed through this pretty well. That seems like a reasonable plan. There's no long-term plans associated with deficit financing. So let's do it.
And that would have been fine. I don't even think my members were terribly freaked out about that, and they are more hawkish about deficit spending than many. But that's not what's happening. And that's not what's happening at the provincial level.
I mean, gosh, the provincial government Ontario finally started to get the deficit somewhat under control. That was a debateable. The government accountability office said that the budget wasn't balanced in Ontario. And then on the even election campaign, the government says, hey, let's try to score points with another political party supporters by forgetting about deficits altogether ditching that plan and ramping up spending on absolutely everything that moves.
And the question that I think politicians have to ask Canadians need to ask, and I think you asked moments ago, is this spending priority? And there are many. Is it important enough that I'm willing to pass the bill for that to my grandkids? And if we're not willing to say yes, that this $2 billion for that or the $5 billion for this other idea is worth giving the bill to your grandchildren, then maybe you've got to figure out another way to get there.
And I don't think we're asking that question often. We're not. And Danny, if it weren't election time, you wouldn't be seeing these things. This is carefully planned.
They knew they were in the hole as far as polling was concerned. They knew the only way out was smoke and mirrors. And so here came the smoke, and there are the mirrors. And here are the numbers.
And here are the plans. And if you buy them, you know, I won't even go back to that I'll say about Florida. But if it's not just Ontario, it will happen in Alberta. It will happen in our federal election twice next year.
It will happen when Mr. Horgan and Mr. Weaver decide they're no longer best friends. It will happen in British Columbia as well.
And people are going to have to learn to realize we don't have the money. And if you borrow, there's interest to be paid, and interest rates are climbing. And so what you owe today, if you don't make a substantial payment later in the day, is going to be significantly more tomorrow because of the amount of the debt that's involved. Plus, add to that the fact that individual Canadians are living with record high personal debt.
This stuff has to stop. And it's not responsible for Premier Wenner at Premier Notley at the Commer, Justin Trudeau to Commer, Premier Horgan to Commer, to pull the same stunt. Any more than it is for the individual person to say, yeah, you know, I don't care how much it costs, I can't make the payments. You're absolutely right.
And in fact, my worry is even deeper than that though, and that is, you know, yes, this is an incredibly cynical pre-election move of the Ontario government to do this. And you're quite right that that could be replicated and has been replicated, sadly, in provinces across the country. But what worries me even more than that is the fact that I think that this is a good thing. I think that this is starting to become a practice that, forget an election, governments are starting to say, well, why is it so important?
Why are we worried about deficits in the first place? And that could then last beyond election time. I look, for example, just in the last week or so, the Newfoundland and Labrador budget came out. And that's a problem.
It's got some deep, deep, rooted problems. And both political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have a lot to be blamed. The Tories certainly were no better in terms of managing their finances than the Liberals were. So this is not a partisan thing.
But in Newfoundland and Labrador now, already, the cost of service to debt is greater than the cost of providing education in Newfoundland and Labrador. And it's approaching the size of providing healthcare funding to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Just a service to debt. Not to pay any of it back.
And that is a sneak preview of what is coming to province after province after province. Let me get you to hold on. Let me get you to hold on. Political parties that want to spend more, but that spending is not going to be possible because we're going to be spending all of our dough just to manage the debt for what we've had from the past.
You're listening to the Roy Greed Show, her weekend from 2 to 5 on 900 C.A.M.L. The government budget, the Ontario budget, is going to add some $6.7 billion to the deficit. And reading from CFIB, Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the deficit will be driven by more than $20 billion in spending over the next three years. The government doesn't plan to get the books balanced until 24 or 25.
The proposed deficit will add more than $30 billion to Ontario's provincial debt and increase annual interest payments on the debt to $17 billion per year by 24 or 25. That's the point you're just making, Dan Kelly? Yeah, so that's why this should not be a partisan thing. And I think we go about another tutorial on this as well.
I mean, if you care about public spending, you want to make sure that you're doing it in a careful way so that you're not paying giant interest payments, sending with the billionaires, and then not having money to pay for social programs. If you're conservative or if you care about tax reductions, you want to create some capacity to do that, you got to make sure you're not spending billions and always interest payments to balance the book. And again, you see the Republicans in the US spending vastly more than the government is taking in. So this process pulled the political spectrum as well, but it is important stuff.
We've got to make sure that we are living within our means. We know that this doesn't work. If I want to go on an extra trip and I put it on my credit card, I can maybe do that once in a blue moon. But if I start doing that all the time, that's when the bills come home and the creditors start knocking at my door.
Dan, in the minute or so we have a laugh, there's also the angle of the perspective here that needs to be remembered that as governments raise their debt, they're also going to raise taxes. And because we're going to have to pay for it. And taxes will increase on your members, the small business community of this country, which drives the economy by the jobs they create. So this is not, this is also something that has to be remembered.
They're going to put people out of business. You're absolutely right. We know that today's deficits are tomorrow's taxes and those taxes increasingly governments are turning to SME small medium sized firms to pick up the tab. And by doing that, they make their own job harder because, and of course, there isn't the economic activity that generates the tax revenue in the first place.
So this is all a system and sadly government, after learning that lesson across the political spectrum seems to be forgotten. Always great speaking with you, Dan. Thank you so much for taking the time on the Easter weekend. Bye bye, Dan Kelly.
You're listening to the Roy Green Show, Earth Weekend from 2 to 5 on 900 C. H.M.L. Dan McTag is with us on the show on this Saturday before April Fool's Day. Why is that appropriate?
I have to tell you, Dan's been a good friend of mine for a long time and we've been good friends. He was a liberal member of parliament and I knew that I could always get, I could always get, well, sort of the truth on the, I got Dan's truth, which was better than the liberal truth, the party truth. But I knew that I could count on you to tell me what was going on and he didn't give away company secrets. But you're always straightforward and I'll have to put a straightforward question for you.
Why are we paying so much for gasoline? Why are we in such trouble financially? What the hell is going on, Mr. McTag?
Answer that please. Four things and no shorter and no particular order. The first of course being the oil is about $17 a barrel, more expensive than it was this time last year. So that adds about $0.7 to a year gasoline.
We also know that refiners have been doing very well in Canada adding an extra, we call it $4.5 cents above what they normally get in terms of the spread between crude that they buy and the gasoline that they produce. And of course there is the other factor which is as long as we continue to have blockages in our pipelines selling oil to the rest of the world, the Canadian dollar takes a hit. In other words, while the Americans are getting 65 bucks a barrel for their oil, we're likely to get 40 and that differential leads to a not inconsequential decline in the value of the Canadian dollar. We should be near power with the Americans.
Nothing's going to change. Right, nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to change.
There's no impetus on this side of the border to make things change, make things different. Plus we have economic, not quite economic warfare, but threats of economic warfare that are flying back and forth between British Columbia and Alberta. Now Saskatchewan's got engaged with the premier of Saskatchewan saying that if British Columbia continues to delay the construction of the Northern Gateway extension that Saskatchewan will take economic, economic recourse that is going to access. Part of Saskatchewan's strength is not only the oil that it produces, but also the fuel that it upgrades.
It refines. It's a low density, which of course is a city shared between both Alberta and Saskatchewan. It's a chock full of potential oil that the world definitely wants, especially the United States. But as long as we continue to resist, well, Canadians can start staring down the barrel with what a $1 trillion debt looks like.
Now if you told me, really, 15, 18, 20 years ago, when we had our own, I was in Parliament at the time, but we'd wind up with a $1 trillion debt, I would have said, well, who dropped the ball? And frankly, you're going to continue to accumulate debts, hurt the provincial economies, hurt jobs, continue to hammer Canadians, not just in terms of those driving and not driving. But the economy is a whole raising debt because you can't raise revenue when you're not selling enough oil or number one product in the world. So I'm not at all surprised that Premier Mo has thrown down the gauntlet, but it surprises me that Ontario should be just as angry as should Quebec and many other provinces.
Simple reason? What's good for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline is actually good for the rest of the country. You don't have to believe me, the conference board of Canada said that two years ago. You know, people have got to recognize and wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.
Unless they want to wind up in the country that has far less than what we have today, then continue protesting, ridiculously oil that would otherwise come from foreign countries without respect to the environment much less human. Alright, my friend, we've run out of time. It's been a little bit of a not much time today, but I thank you, and we're going to have you and I are going to have a political discussion on air. Let's do that, Roy.
In the very near future. Happy Easter to you and all your listeners. Thanks, thanks, Dan. Same to you.
You're listening to the Roy Green Show, Earth Weekend from 2 to 5 on 900 C.A.T.M.L. And receiving emails all afternoon, so are you going to buy it? Leave me alone, stop it. Stop it.
At the end of the first hour of the show, not every year of this, I read a piece that you'll find on my blog on my webpage, RoyGreenShow.com, and the headline is what the lead is, what the algorithms really know about me, and it's about, you know, I was talking about a news story. And I've popped all these car ads because a little while earlier, I've been astalgically surfing through cars that I don't over the years, and I'm a car freak. It's been my overriding passion all my life, and I've been well over 30 of them. And so it showed me the 2019 Corvette ZR1, 775 horsepower, 210 mile an hour top speed, which means as I wrote, it'll run alongside Sebastian Vellis Ferrari on a straightaway and give up nothing.
And the starting price is 118,000 bucks. So this is what they do to you. They knew what I'd done. They knew that I'd been looking at cars, so up pops their stuff.
And tucked away is a 2007 Shelby 500 DT500 with 40 grand, and so they've got the really expensive one, and they've got the one that says, you say to yourself, I trade mine in. Once you start crunching the numbers, you're toast. Am I buying the ZR1? No.
As I pointed out, even with my trade, and it would mean 60 months to 2,000 bucks a month. Oh my God, I sound like somebody running a government. Speaking of governments, our federal justice minister, Jody Rebold Wilson, introduced a significant piece of legislation. Jody Wilson Rebold, get it right right.
A significant piece of legislation, Bill C75, which significantly, in some areas, changes candidate's criminal justice system, so the only person to go to for an interpretation of what this really all means, is Scott Newark. And Scott is, of course, a regular contributor to this program from Alberta, Crown Attorney and Senior Policy Advisor to a federal minister for public safety, now a security and justice policy analyst and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. So Scott, I grabbed a couple of things, but I really want to hear from you. Is this a good legislation?
Is it self-serving legislation? Is it bad legislation? Well, I think it's a good idea that it's going to criminalize car zombie purchasers. Oh, sorry.
No. My fault. Ever the optimist, Roy, there are some good things in the bill, in my opinion, but there are some things that I think are alarming. In theory, I think the general purpose of the bill is to try to improve the justice system efficiency, which has been under a deserved criticism for the last couple of years.
But it's a very, very complex bill. It's about 300 pages long. I've just finished my first go through a bit earlier today. And it's like a lot of things in the justice system legislation.
You've got to read the fine print. You're going to have to see how it plays out to see exactly what the changes are and how they will ultimately be implemented and what the consequences will be. But let me, the first thing that got my attention, actually two things that got my attention. One was that the bill was introduced Thursday afternoon, before a holiday weekend, as Parliament was breaking for a two-week holiday.
That's generally a sign that the government doesn't want a whole lot of attention being paid to the bill. The other one that I noticed right away was in all of the different sections, and because of the kind of changes that are made in them, there's just, you know, section after section after section of the criminal code that's changed. One of the things that takes up a major part of the changes is actually, believe it or not, changing the wording that is currently used in the criminal code and has been used for, you know, 100 years. That is sort of the generic language of anyone who does, you know, that, we're changing the word from anyone to any person.
As in people kind. As in people kind, yes. So that got my attention a little bit, but let me start with what I think are some of the positive changes. Can I ask you first, let me ask you first, because the attention a few weeks ago, you and I spoke about it, the whole country was speaking about it, was the criticism of the Justice Minister and the Prime Minister seemed to unload on the jury selection system, and that's because of the trial in Saskatchewan.
Yeah, that's in there. What they've done is they've taken away the peremptory challenges. That's the old historical tradition whereby both the Crown and defenseless could challenge a defined number of potential jurors. They'll give any reason whatsoever.
It wasn't for any kind of cause. They could just do it because they felt like it. And that was, if you remember our discussions, that was one of the complaints that was also terrible, but that's what the Crown had done in the Colton-Bushi case. It turned out that that was not actually accurate, but you're quite correct.
Both the Prime Minister and Justice Minister essentially jumped on board that criticism of the Justice System. And so that is in the legislation. It's getting rid of the peremptory challenges. I'm not as bothered by that because I think, you know, if you've got a reason for challenging somebody as a jurid, tell me what it is.
We'll make a judgement based on assessment. How might it have changed the selection of that, the eventual outcome of the jury selection in Saskatchewan? How might these changes have changed how that jury would have composed? It's done what I've read of what actually happened and wouldn't have changed at all.
But let me just, there's another development that's in the bill that I think is alarming because it creates this new power for a judge to quote, set aside a juror. In other words, somebody who hasn't been called specifically to be questioned in terms of whether they're going to be a juror. I think the phrase that they use is in the advancement of the administration of justice. And that, I think, I have an alarming feeling about that.
I think that is the notion that judges will be setting aside people so that they can be there after added to the jury. In other words, if they don't have enough people, they can then add these people. And that will be done based on, you know, if somebody's indigenous. So that they will use that tool to try to increase if somebody's indigenous offender to increase that likelihood that there's going to be indigenous people on the jury.
And that, I think, is a very dangerous path for us to go down. It's discrimination. And look, you know, the metric of success for us should be equality, not discrimination. And I think, you know, people are not before the justice system because, for example, they're indigenous or they're black, no matter what these sort of politically correct people may say.
They're there because what they're alleged to have done and their background, their ethnic or their cultural background may be relevant to what they ultimately did. But it's not why they're before the justice system and our justice system should be one system for all people. And the judge should not be looking at so-called vulnerable communities then? Yes.
You can take that into account in different factors and things like sentencing and, you know, how you're going to deal with people at different stages in the system. We've always had that. But I must admit, I'm a little bit alarmed that we seem to be going down that road of what we, you know, so many people, including, as you correctly point out, the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister did right after the Boussey verdict. That sounds a little bit like they are trying to follow up on there.
We can do better statements. Yeah. Also, I think what it plays to politically is they're frankly pandering to the indigenous communities and show that they've actually, quote, done something. But that's why I say you're going to have to wait and see how this actually plays out to see whether or not this is a meaningless change or it's actually taking us down a path that's not productive.
You're listening to the Roy Green Show, her weekends from 25 on 900 C.H.M.L. Back with Scott New York, former Crown Attorney in Alberta, and joined Professor at Simon Fraser University and National Security Specialist, also senior policy advisor for Federal Minister for Public Safety. So there's C75, then Scott, let me go get back to you and have you explain to us one of the other aspects of this legislation that are going to be, that have the potential to make a significant change. Why is it not so good?
Just work it out for us. First of all, let me just touch the point that you made when you were closing in the last segment about the Justice System in Public Conference. I don't watch. It's good for you.
I remember that. And it's true. It's actually part of our culture, the 13th century. They were called the King's Courts for exactly the reasons that you described.
But I just want to make the point. Our criminal justice system is not the private preserve of lawyers and judges and criminals. It belongs to us. It's a public system and the public can make improvements to it by being aware of what's going on and why it's in my opinion, it's why you know you haven't had these conversations for 25 years.
The work that you do actually in helping getting the information out to people is so important in making these kinds of changes, including even on really complicated legislation like this. But let me go to the good news. A big issue, of course, has been the inefficiency of our justice system. And thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada, that recent Jordan decision to say, no delay is such a problem.
Well, take a look in the mirror. Just the other reason for much of the delay. But this bill will actually do some things to streamline the process. It's going to increase the summary conviction penalty.
That's the lower kind of offense. It's more serious or the same offense, but the more serious kind of it is called an indictable offense. The more kind of summary conviction used to have a maximum sentence of around six months or sometimes higher. It will now be two years less one day.
What that means is that there will be more trials that will be, the prosthetions will be done summarily, which means it will be done in provincial court, which means we won't have the duplication that we currently have in preliminary inquiries and subsequent trials in Superior Court. Part of that is well, too. The bill is going to get rid of preliminary inquiries unless the offense is one that has a life sentence. I'm not feeling this is going to draw a charter challenge, but again, it should have the same impact, which is to reduce the number of duplicate hearings through preliminary inquiries.
Third major part of that, all in the same theme as well, too. It's going to create what are called hybrid offenses. Some offenses in the past would have been just straight indictable, which meant that you would have a preliminary plus a Superior Court trial. They're now with all of these amendments.
They're going to create these hybrid offenses where the crown can proceed summarily, which means it stays in provincial court. With the new penalty, it can be up to two years less a day, which means it's going to be less duplication. Theoretically, things should move faster. Now, having said that, that also means that I think those are very positive, or very positive changes.
I've been recommending stuff like that for years. That means that there's going to be a shift of activity and increase in cases in the provincial courts, which means there needs to be adequate funding provided, because you can't just change the system and not figure out what the results are going to be. You've got to fund it to make sure that it works the way that you actually intend it. One of the ones that's there that I have a bad feeling about is there's something that's going to change the process for people, because so many offenses are now coming in, of people who are on bail or probation, and they violate the terms of their release, they're called administration of justice offenses.
A new process that is going to be created that I have a very bad feeling about, called additional referral hearing, and as to me as I read it, that it's going to be like another bureaucracy. Technically, you know, expedite the processing, but it's just going to cause more delay, as is the case that's already in a judicial case resolution, where, in effect, what we do is we have to supposedly expedite things, but it just takes longer to have done. We're going to have to see how that actually plays out, but that's one that I have a bad feeling about. How would you grade this, then?
If you were giving this a mark, a grade, what would you get? Practical terms, probably like about 75, 80%. It gets rid of the, it restores the victim, finds search charges, and unfortunately a really bad mistake, I think, is that it allows again for that increase in the pretrial custody credit, the rewards or p-defenders. But I put the little asterisk on that because of the stuff we talked about on the first part of the segment.
If it turns out that we are, in effect, moving down this road of quotation marked positive discrimination and not allowing our justice system to be one applicable to all Canadians, you know, irrespective of their culture or religion or ethnicity, if that does turn out to be the case, then I think that's a very big negative problem. I think that would torpedo any good, Scotty would torpedo any good that might be in the legislation. Yeah, longer term, yes it would. Because if you could not, if you wouldn't know that justice was blind, that when you go into the courtroom or when you're charged, if you don't know that you're going to receive exactly the same treatment as everyone else, and there are people who will say, well that's the way it is now.
If you're a member of the majority group, you're going to get a better deal than somebody who isn't a member of the majority group. That's why it is, please. Well, you know, conversely, we have a requirement of a glad you report for a designated race, Aboriginal people, where there has to be a special report done and consideration taken base. I mean, we had a discretion to do that, and we did that all the time, but now in law.
That's what I think we've made is not recognizing and defending that the metric of success is equality. Now, I hear you. This was being done anyway in courts across Canada. It was part of the system.
And our system as well, too, Roy, that I think we're losing on is that our officials, police officers and prosecutors were vested with discretion and they need to use that discretion. Okay. That's why you get experienced people. Well, we have become, you know, the study that was done by the Senate on the justice system delays.
They said that there was a culture of delay and also a culture of risk aversion. Our system was based on people who had that authority, whether they're police officers or prosecutors, they go, you know what, this guy doesn't need to be charged. They need to use that. Have that discretion and use that discretion.
Okay, buddy. I appreciate your time as always. Thank you. Thanks.
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