Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the TLDR podcast, a show about the culture, gossip, and business of money, and this week, politics. My name is Devin Friedman, and as you can probably tell, we are breaking format this week.
The biggest story in Canada right now is, of course, the election on Monday. And we could have just talked about it like we normally do, but we decided to do something different. We wanted to hear from the candidates themselves. So we reached out to the five major parties, and we have interviews with three of them.
The interviews themselves were conducted by Mike Katchen, the CEO and founder of WellSimple, the sponsor of this podcast. And the idea was simple. Let the candidates tell us in their own words how they're going to meet one of the most pivotal economic moments in recent memory. None of these interviews are endorsements, but we hope you'll find them interesting and useful when you're thinking about how to vote, which, of course, we think you should do. Here is the first of Mike's conversations with NDP candidate Peter Julian.
Hi, Mr. Julian. Thank you so much for doing this with us today. We know you have a jam-packed schedule in this crunch time before the election. Oh, it's my pleasure. Please call me Peter. Excellent. So, you know, before getting into politics, you worked as a manual laborer and factory worker, and I'd love to hear a little bit about some of your biggest money lessons in life and your
And maybe where are you learning them from? Well, my family was an immigrant family. My father's mother, my grandmother, was an orphan that basically had grown up in a small English village and came to Canada to start a new life. So they all came with very, very little. And so my background that I inherited is that you have to be very disciplined and you have to make sure that you're spending only the appropriate amount because when you
When you're going through a paycheck, you need to make sure that you can cover everything that's important. For a number of years, I worked as a manual laborer, factory worker, worked at the oil refinery in North Burnaby, and then went back to school and taught English in Quebec while I was doing my studies.
I became a financial administrator following that, and I found coming to Ottawa that so often financial decisions are made by the federal government that just are wrongheaded. One of the things I see is just a complete lack of oversight for Canada's big banks when it comes to a wide variety of things that they impose on people.
Folks are often struggling to make ends meet. They're often struggling to put food on the table, to keep a roof over their head. I think it's time to have some real consumer protection so that people who are investing the amount that they've been able to save aren't tagged with excessive fees that make it very, very difficult for them to make any headway.
And for that reason, I shout out to alternative financial institutions, credit unions, Wealthsimple is another great example of organizations, financial institutions that are trying to reduce fees and give people that opportunity to get ahead. Well, we certainly appreciate that compliment and couldn't agree more that more competition in financial services ought to drive better outcomes, lower fees and more access for Canadians. And if we use that to jump off into a
You know, another financial trend that is top of mind, I think most people looked at this election and thought it was going to be all about affordability. And then, you know, a trade war happened. Maybe talk to us a little bit about the economy. You know, you served in super important roles in finance, in international trade and transport. And I think you'd have a very interesting perspective around the risks facing the Canadian economy and what we've got to do to ensure that Canada can remain resilient and successful.
That's a very important question. And I think the first step is that the federal government, whether we're talking about reciprocal tariffs that are levied against the Trump administration that is targeting us in such a vicious way, or export taxes on our resources that are vital for American industry, with both of those measures, there will be more resources going to the federal government. And what we've been clear on throughout this campaign has been
that we need to make sure that those resources are directed to families, to workers, to communities. Our first step has to be to make sure that our local economies are resilient and
and that families and workers are supported. And that includes things like actually putting in place employment insurance in a meaningful way so that people who lose their jobs if these Trump threats continue actually have the wherewithal to put food on the table. In the longer term, the NDP always said putting all of our eggs in the American basket was
was a risk that we shouldn't take. So I think the NDP has been proven right by events. And the two things that need to happen now, first off, we need to go back to value-added production. My grandfather worked his life at Fraser Mills, just up the Fraser River. And at that time, there were thousands of workers in value-added production around wood. About 20 years ago, that facility shut down and it's now a raw log parking lot.
We need to get back to building things and the value added jobs to go with it. Point two, what we've been pointing out for years is we need to diversify our trading markets. I live in a riding where there's 150 different languages of origin. People come from the four corners of the world to come to New Westminster, Burnaby, Malardville. And yet we never use that diaspora, folks who have links to the Philippines, to China, to India, to Japan, to Korea,
to Europe, to Africa, to actually enhance the ability of Canadian products to be sold abroad. I have, as international trade critic, visited embassies where the trade commissioners have no budget at all to promote Canadian goods, to promote Canadian exports. And so that means detaining other countries that have built very strong and robust export economies. Australia, the European community, the United States, all have invested to actually support
exports from their country. Canada is not. But the final point I wanted to raise was this. When COVID hit, the Liberal government put together a $750 billion equity support package for Canada's big banks to maintain their profits. A lot of that money came from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is supposed to be putting in place supportable housing. And so you can see what's wrong with this picture. We are supporting Canada's big banks in a crisis. Rather than
ensuring that people are taken care of. And that's why it's so important to have NDP MPs in the House of Commons fighting for regular folks so that it's not the banks that get all that reinforcement and support, but rather regular families, regular workers and communities. Piggybacking off of what you were just saying about housing,
Obviously, Canada is in a housing crisis, and this has been a cornerstone of each party's platform, though the tactics of dealing with it are very different. Walk us through a little bit about how the NDP is proposing dealing with the housing crisis and how you would manage that.
Great question. So the crisis that we have today is because successive governments since the National Housing Program was ended have not taken action to build affordable housing. Affordable housing is normally capped at 30% of your income. If you're working a minimum wage job,
You can't afford a $3,000 a month one-bedroom apartment. You need to have affordable housing. That often means cooperative housing or social housing that's well-maintained and capped at that 30%. So what we would do is start actually building affordable housing. We would ensure as well that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and CMHC
is used for zero interest loans, both for cooperative housing and social housing, but also for first-time homebuyers. At the same time, we have a lot of federal government properties. We believe in converting them at
to affordable housing as well. And so it's an approach that blends market solutions with the kind of solutions that have worked for public investment in so many other countries, including Canada in the past. And it's that blend that we think will make a real difference in addressing the housing crisis and providing everybody with an affordable roof over their head.
I want to go back to something we were talking about a moment ago about the economy and the importance of value-added labor and value-added manufacturing. You know, I'm an entrepreneur myself and believe so strongly in entrepreneurship. And I like to joke that in Canada, we really have an economy that does two things. We pull things out of the ground and we finance pulling things out of the ground. And that the story that I want to be able to tell my kids is a much more diverse economic story 20 years from now.
And I think entrepreneurship is the way to do that. And there was a sobering stat in 2023 that the BDC found that there are 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs in Canada today than there were 20 years ago.
I'm curious if the NDP and you have thoughts on how do we inspire, encourage more people to build things in Canada? How do we get that going? I think that's an excellent question. And I think you've identified one of the clauses, which is we pull things out of the ground and then we export it. That chapter of Canadian history, I think, is coming to a close now because of the Trump threat. So what do we need to do? Well, we need to encourage entrepreneurship. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And we do that, I think, by facilitating access to post-secondary education for the skills that are so important for that. We need a far more responsive government. It doesn't move quickly. It doesn't respond to events. And it takes years to get things in place. So I'll give you an example. Immigration.
recognizing foreign credentials. There is no pathway for recognition of those credentials. And that has a serious impact when we talk about small businesses and medium businesses, but also has a huge impact on the healthcare system. Hundreds of doctors, thousands of nurses that are unable to practice because there's no pathway to recognizing their credentials. We need to facilitate post-secondary education. We need to recognize credentials so that they can and
contribute their skills to Canada. And then the third element is providing supports on things like affordable housing. You can't get really good employees if they can't live in the area where your business is set up. And actually putting in place things like dental care and pharmacare help entrepreneurship because it takes that burden and that challenge away from the entrepreneurs so they can focus on building their businesses.
You've mentioned affordability in a couple places now. I know the NDP also has an approach to everyday items and GST. Maybe talk a little bit more about other things that are in the NDP platform around making life more affordable for Canadians.
with joy because I mean, I see families that are struggling, young people that are struggling, and some of these things can be helped in a really significant way. One example of that is taking the GST off Family Essentials. The average family will benefit about $1,000 a year because of that. We've also proposed raising the personal tax exemption, the average personal benefit, another $500. But also,
In Canada, we don't have effective competition mandate to ensure that there's competition to drive down prices, but also to ensure that gouging doesn't take place. When people go to the supermarket, they're gouged by Canada's grocery chains. When they fill up their gas tank, they're gouged by the only gas companies. Cell phone fees that are some of the highest in the world, unjustifiable.
And so what we believe needs to happen is a much more robust competition bureau that also has the mandate to promote competition, including when it comes to financial regulation.
One of those that I know you've been on the record of, and generally I find surprising because there seems to be unanimous support from all parties for the topic of open banking, which is giving Canadians more choice about where their money is, where their data sits, and how to get the best access to the very best services. And yet it's one of those things that hasn't really seen much progress.
And I'm curious if you have a view on that, on why open banking, even with unanimous support from the parties, isn't a reality for Canadians today. Well, first off, one of the reasons why open banking is important is the tyranny of credit scores. And anybody that's worked with credit rating agencies knows full well how many errors have a profound impact on younger people. So when we talk about open banking, it takes away from that tyranny that people are simply...
not able to beat, even when they have really good credit, even when they're being financially very wise in how they handle their money. Now, tragically, open banking is caught in that vortex in Ottawa, where there's a concept that even if all parties agree on, the government chooses not to make it happen. And
The reason why NDPMPs have been so effective, I think in the House of Commons, and so I think it's been so effective is that we've seen our role as making that vortex stop and actually making things a reality. So, pharma care, dental care, the anti-replacement worker legislation was just passed, just transition legislation for good unionized jobs in the clean energy industry. National school lunches promised for decades, childcare legislation.
We've been the nucleus, I guess, of making things happen. And this is certainly something where I mentioned for a number of reasons, including the tyranny of credit scores that have to happen so that people can actually put their financial steps forward rather than being forced often into untenable situations with very high interest rates because their credit scores are holding them back. You know, I think one thing that is on a lot of Canadians' minds right now is that
What is Canada's place in the world? It feels like the economy is in a precarious position. It feels like Canada's identity in some ways is in a questionable place. Tell us a little bit about a vision for Canada's future, our role in the world, and something to make Canadians optimistic about what's to come. I see...
actually a lot of optimism in how Canada and Canadians have responded to Donald Trump. We've responded politely and firmly, which is our national characteristic. There's a unity that I see. And as a result of that, I also see Canadians talking about what their vision of the future is, that we do need to tackle climate change. We just can't keep shuffling under the carpet. That we have to provide for all of our country citizens
That's where enhanced health care funding comes from. That's where affordable housing comes from, to make sure people are taken care of and supported at this critical time. And we need to make sure that people can get ahead. And so when we talk about access to education or cutting back on excessive bank cheats and financial fees, these are all ways that people can get ahead in the proud old Canadian tradition. When my grandparents came here, they came with nothing and they built a life in this land.
And we need to give that same opportunity to every generation. And particularly for younger people that are struggling right now, we need to do everything in our power to make sure that they have a bright future ahead of them. I am increasingly confident that people in this country share that vision. And that's why I'm very optimistic about the future of our country. Really appreciate that and think it's a perfect place to end. I want to thank you so much.
Thank you. It was a great conversation. I appreciate it. Good luck with the rest of the campaign. Thanks so much. This show was sponsored by Wealthsimple. It is made by me, Devin Friedman, with Matilde Erfolino, Leah Fetter, Jared Sullivan, Juanita Leon, Tom Johnson, Eva Cruz, research and fact-checking by Brennan Doherty, theme music by Andy Huckvale, engineering this week by Emma Munger, Stuart Gilmore, and Matt Van Engelen.
Special thanks for this extra special politics episode. Go to Jess Oliver, Christine Robson, Lauren Hollywood, Diana McLaughlin, and Cheryl So. Extra special thanks to our interviewer, Mike Ketchin.
The TLDR podcast is offered by Wealthsimple Media Incorporated and is for informational purposes only. The content in the TLDR podcast is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell assets or securities, and does not represent the views of Wealthsimple Financial Corporation or any of its other subsidiaries or affiliates. Wealthsimple Media Incorporated does not endorse any third-party views referencing this content. More information at wealthsimple.com slash TLDR.