When unions stop representing workers (ft. Brian Lilley)

On this Labour Day episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, guest host Kris Sims pulls back the curtain on the noisy rhetoric that dominates this holiday. While union bosses lead parades and issue warnings that government services will be “cut to the bone,” Canadians deserve to hear the truth about who really represents workers. Kris explains the key difference between trade unions—the carpenters, boilermakers, and plumbers who work with their hands—and government unions like PSAC, which represent bureaucrats inside Ottawa. Trade unions fight for the people who build and fix things. Government unions fight for bigger bureaucracies, higher taxes, and more members on the payroll. Canadians are already paying a steep price. According to calculations highlighted by the Fraser Institute, the average worker loses more than 40 percent of their paycheque to taxes. That means less money for families to buy food, pay rent, or save for the future—while Ottawa keeps growing larger. Since 2015, the federal bureaucracy has ballooned by nearly 100,000 positions, yet services like passports and immigration processing have only gotten worse. Joining Kris is Brian Lilley, political columnist at the Toronto Sun and host of the Full Comment podcast. Brian has spent decades covering politics in Ottawa and Queen’s Park. He explains why skilled trades are shifting away from the NDP and toward the Conservatives, what’s really going on with Mark Carney’s so-called budget “cuts,” and how government departments use scare tactics—threatening to close libraries, parks, or even the RCMP Musical Ride—to block meaningful restraint. The two also discuss how the CBC continues to dodge accountability—refusing to disclose how much taxpayer money is spent on advertising, and hiding how many Canadians actually subscribe to its Gem streaming app. Brian shares his insights on why CBC stonewalls access-to-information requests and how its management culture differs from standard newsrooms.

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