Latest / Kvetch & Release / 610 CKTB | Spies, Swords, & $100K Monthly Hotel Bills: The High Cost of Government Waste & Dysfunction

Transcript

610 CKTB | Spies, Swords, & $100K Monthly Hotel Bills: The High Cost of Government Waste & Dysfunction · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Right now though it is Friday, whoo and it is
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: time for Litkey. He's got a take with John Litkey,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: who joins me. Now, good morning.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: John, Good morning Jean.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: We're in the middle of a cottage cheese crisis, by
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the way, Yes we are.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I can't get any down.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Here in Windsor Yeah, there you go. Okay, We're going
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to have a lot of fun this morning because we've
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: got a lot of stories and you've got some great takes.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So the Conservatives admitted to sending an operative to Jamaica
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to spy on newly elected Liberal leader back in twenty
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: twenty three, Bonnie Crombie, now the Liberal leader. He calls
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: it creepy. Merritt Styles says that the heads should roll.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Now did the PC party cross a major line? I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: think so. Doug Ford has shrugged it off, saying stuff happens,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and he says the media follows him everywhere. But as
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I pointed out on Volitis on the news, I mean
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Bonnie Crombie didn't know anybody was around. I mean, where
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: they checking out her bikini? You know? Or does she drink?
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Margarita is opposed to run you know, punch or something
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: like that. This is just creepy. Man.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Oh they crossed a huge line here. I mean they're
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: acting like this is James Bond double seven, when in
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: reality it's PC Party four one six. Sending political agents
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: to secretly surveil an opponent on a private vacation doesn't
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: just cross the line, it e raises it. And you know,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the interim Liberal leader John Frasier and the NDP leader
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Merrit Styles, they're both right in what they had to say.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: And for Premier Ford to shrug this off, claiming that
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: he doesn't watch every dollar while the party tries to
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: normalize this. It's administrative power to pretending to be campaign
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and government strategy, it's terrible.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a nice deflection yesterday saying that he
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't pay attention to every dollar spent by his party,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: but that that wasn't the point. I mean, you know,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: he's good at the distraction. The point is they had
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: people spying on a woman in a bathing suit at
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a resort in jim make it without her knowledge. Now,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: if this has happened once, you know, history always tells
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: this that has probably happened before, and it may be
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: happening right now. And for Doug to say, the media
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: follows me, and like I said, and I have this
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: terrible image in my head. Now you know, Ford knows
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the media is there, and you know, it's not like
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: he's sitting around a pool. I'm gonna say it again,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it's not like he's sitting around a pool in a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: speedo unknowingly that people are spying on the guy. Oh
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Stugford in a speedo. He did it again.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I you know this is the fact that
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: he tries to compare this to covering vacations. It's obscene
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: his vacations and his travel. This is a spy, that's
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: what it is. And we know that spies are surreptitious.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: It's espionaged and that's what this was designed to do
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and that's why they hit this under office expenses. But
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: what they're playing is political dodgeball, dodge, duck, dip, dive
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: and dodge again for good measure. I mean, so again,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: he says he doesn't watch every dollar the middle of
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: a campaign. This wasn't in a campaign, this was after
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: a campaign. Second, comparing party spooks at an all inclusive
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: resort to a credited journalists holding an actual elected premier
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: accountable it's nonsense, it's insulting with the intelligence at every
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Ontario who passed the half credit of Grade ten civics.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Quite frankly, the buck stops with the leader and with
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: the TC party now admitting to doing it and calling
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: it standard opposition research. And the fact that nearly half
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: of their funding comes straight from US taxpayers in per
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: bot subsidies. We literally picked up the tab on this
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: espionage game, one way or another for this spy mission.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: They've made every single one of us complicit in this
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: amateur hour espionage.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And with apologies to James Bond, and I love James
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Bond movies. Who is this man Ford? Doug Ford? Okay,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: let's go out to BC. Interesting story. I lived in
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Vancouver for a couple of years. I really like Vancouver.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It's a premier. David Ebe is the ultimate climate change bedwetther.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Now the BC government is spending one hundred and one
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars every month to house one guy in a
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: former one hundred and ten unit hotel in downtown Vancouver. Now,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: how does the system allow a six figure monthly tab
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: for a single room in a hotel?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I can understand how it happens the city
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: bought the hotel to convert into housing for whatever reason
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: they did, whether it was during COVID or for or
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: for housing homeless or the unhoused. Right now, I think
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: that the reason it exists today is for low income
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: housing specifically, and that's admirable. But look that liability in
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: legislation and regulations comes with it, and that means around
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: the clock support staff, tenant rights, and administrative inertia where
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: nobody has the spine to make a decision without a
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: ten person email chain with twenty signatures of approvals. But
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: understanding this doesn't make it acceptable keeping this fully staffed
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: one hundred and ten unit hotel open for a single
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: tenant who it's been revealed, is even there almost half
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: the time. It's a total collapse of common sense. Move
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: them to proper housing, immediately shut the doors, shutter the operation,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: sell the building that they wanted to do back in June.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: This is not support of housing. This is bureaucratic mockery
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: of public funds.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Yew As you pointed out to me that one hundred
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and one thousand dollars tab every month for one guy
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: in a former one hundred and ten unit hotel that's
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: thirty one thousand dollars more expensive than putting the guy
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: up in the Fairmont in downtown Vancouver. And it's you know,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Canadians are living paycheck to paycheck and counting pennies. Where's
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the accountability? What are they thinking about? In Canada's land
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of fruit and nuts.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: There's zero accountability here. This is absolute amnesty for logic,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: reason and basic accounting. We just had the Fraser Institute
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: come out and confirm the average families tax bill shows
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: more spending on basic necessities like food, shelter, and clothing combined.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's nuts. You're paying more for tab than
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: your basic necessities. But the BC government literally burned about
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: a full year income for a double income household in
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: thirty days on one room in an almost empty building
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: where there's still a gaping hole in this guy's ceiling.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Every single Canadian should be outraged. This is why people
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: hate and despise politics. Wasted money, priorities, unfunded and people
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: aren't even helped you.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Let's go to Ottawa now, and up until Wednesday of
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: this week, I have to admit I didn't even know
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the name of the Speaker of the Senate turns out
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: she's a woman who was given the position unelected. Of course,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you know, people in the Senator are appointed. She was appointed,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and then she was made the speaker. And the only
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: song I hear going around in my head for days
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and days since I learned about this story is my
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: girl likes to party all the time, Party all the time.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: She racked up nearly one million dollars on international travel.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Now is this legitimate diplomacy or is this unelected speaker
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: just treating the public purse like an unlimited Aeroplan card.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: My initial reaction was actually to give benefit of the doubt,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: because I think it's easy to pull line items out
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: of a massive budget and blow things out of proportion.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: But when I actually started looking at the itinerary, though,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: this is not constitutionally mandated diplomacy. This is an unelected
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: speaker using the public purse, as he said, like an
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Aeroplan card to jet set around. But it's actually happening
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: on our high interest rate credit cards with our taxes.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: We're talking hundred thousand dollars trips, multi hundred dollars a plate, dinners,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: bringing spouses along for the ride, and other people who
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: don't need to be there like her. In many cases,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the spending is lavish, most of the trips unnecessary, and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: we're the ones stuck with the bill.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't. Again, I didn't know this up until
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: a few days ago. But apparently the Senate has its
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: own magazine, and a friend of mine did a little
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: bit of research and she came back and she told
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: me that in one issue where they interviewed the speaker.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You want to guess what her number one hobby is?
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: You want to just guess?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: No, I don't, because I think I know what it.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Is traveling of course. Now she now get this one, John.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: She flew to Japan for a forty five minute courtesy
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: visit and then flew flew to London to pick up
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: a wait for it, ceremonial sword. Now, I thought the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: governor general, who wastes a lot of money, I thought
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that was her rule, But apparently not. What is going on?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Look, Jean, don't get me wrong. I understand dinner gets
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: expensive at a London hotel. You at appetizers, a Maine
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: dessert and drinks. And I love ceremonial swords presented by
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the king as much as the next red blooded Canadian
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: but most of these trips could have been zoom meetings.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest. I mean, if we actually need face
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: to face diplomatic representation, that is the Governor General's literal job.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: And yes, Rito Hall has endless budgetary issues to answer for,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: so why are we making it a double double for
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: taxpayers then? I mean at a time when working families
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: across this country or you know, counting pennies, as he said,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: in a penniless economy, paying more in taxes than they
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: should be. To watch an unelected senator sprack up nearly
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: a million globe trotting on our diame isn't just tone deaf,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: It's it's genuinely insulting. If we really need the sword,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: which as I understand, we do, it replaces the sword
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: in the Senate itself. I mean the Governor General could
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: have picked it up on the next trip, or the
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: leader the black Rod, the holder of the black Rod,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I forget the actual name the guy who uses the sword.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: He was on this trip with the Speaker of the Senate.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: He could have gone alone. She didn't need to go,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: or quite frankly, I don't know. Have we not heard
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: of purrelator at a.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Discounting Winner chicken dinner. His name is led Key, John
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: led Key, Great take this morning, buddy, have a great
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: weekend you too, Thanks you all right, there he goes
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: John Letke's got to take Monday, Tuesday and Friday.