Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his weekly segment, Liedtke Has a Take!
Jon Liedtke rips on three major Canadian political scandals: Ontario PCs spying on the Liberal leader on vacation, the BC government spending $101,000 monthly on one hotel tenant, & Canada’s Senate Speaker racking up nearly $1 million in questionable international travel expenses paid by Canadian taxpayers.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Right now though, it is Friday. Woo! And it is time for Liedtke’s Got a Take with Jon Liedtke who joins me now. Good morning, Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: We’re in the middle of a cottage cheese crisis by the way.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, we are. I can’t get any down here in Windsor.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, there you go. Um, okay, we’re going to have a lot of fun this morning because we’ve got a lot of stories and you’ve got some great takes. So the Conservatives admitted to sending an operative to Jamaica to spy on newly elected Liberal leader back in 2023, Bonnie Crombie. Now the Liberal leader, he calls it creepy. Marit Stiles says that heads should roll. Now did the PC Party cross a major line? I think so. Doug Ford has shrugged it off saying stuff happens, and he says the media follows him everywhere. But as I pointed out on Valaitis on the News, I mean, Bonnie Crombie didn’t know anybody was around. I mean, were they checking out her bikini, you know, or does she drink margaritas as opposed to rum, you know, punch or something like that? Um, this is just creepy, man.
Jon Liedtke: Oh, they crossed a huge line here. I mean, they’re acting like this is James Bond 007, when in reality it’s PC Party 416. Sending political agents to secretly surveil an opponent on a private vacation doesn’t just cross the line, it erases it. And, you know, the interim Liberal leader John Fraser and the NDP leader Marit Stiles, they’re both right in what they had to say. And for Premier Ford to shrug this off, claiming that he doesn’t watch every dollar while the party tries to normalize this, it’s administrative cowardice pretending to be campaign and government strategy. It’s terrible.
Gene Valaitis: Well, it was a nice deflection yesterday saying that he doesn’t pay attention to every dollar spent by his party, but that wasn’t the point. I mean, you know, he’s good at distraction. The point is, they had people spying on a woman in a bathing suit at a resort in Jamaica without her knowledge. Now, if this has happened once, you know, history always tells us that it’s probably happened before and it may be happening right now. And for Doug to say the media follows me—and like I said, I have this terrible image in my head now, you know—Ford knows the media is there. And, you know, it’s not like he’s sitting around a pool—oh, I’m going to say it again—it’s not like he’s sitting around a pool in a Speedo unknowingly that people are spying on the guy. Oh, Doug Ford in a Speedo, I did it again.
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, no, I, you know, this is—the fact that he tries to compare this to covering vacations, it’s obscene. This is his vacations and his travel. This is a spy, that’s what it is, and we know that spies are surreptitious. It’s espionage, and that’s what this was designed to do, and that’s why they hid this under office expenses. But what they’re playing is political dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge again for good measure. I mean, so again, he says he doesn’t watch every dollar in the middle of a campaign. This wasn’t in a campaign, this was after a campaign. Second, comparing party spooks at an all-inclusive resort to accredited journalists holding an actual elected premier accountable, it’s nonsense. It’s insulting to the intelligence of every Ontarian who passed the half-credit of Grade 10 Civics, quite frankly. The buck stops with the leader, and with the PC Party now admitting to doing it and calling it standard opposition research, and the fact that nearly half of their funding comes straight from us, taxpayers, in per-vote subsidies, we literally picked up the tab on this espionage game one way or another for this spy mission. They’ve made every single one of us complicit in this amateur-hour espionage.
Gene Valaitis: And with apologies to James Bond, and I love James Bond movies, who is this man? Ford. Doug Ford. Okay, let’s go over to BC. Interesting story. I lived in Vancouver for a couple of years. I really like Vancouver. Its Premier, David Eby, is the ultimate climate change bedwetter. Now, the BC government is spending $101,000 every month to house one guy in a former 110-unit hotel in downtown Vancouver. Now, how does the system allow a six-figure monthly tab for a single room in a hotel?
Jon Liedtke: You know, I could understand how it happens. The city bought the hotel to convert into housing, for whatever reason they did, whether it was during COVID or for housing homeless or the unhoused right now. I think that the reason it exists today is for low-income housing specifically, and that’s admirable. But look, liability and legislation and regulations come with it, and that means round-the-clock support staff, tenant rights, and administrative inertia where nobody has the spine to make a decision without a 10-person email chain with 20 signatures of approvals. But understanding this doesn’t make it acceptable. Keeping this fully staffed 110-unit hotel open for a single tenant, who it’s been revealed isn’t even there almost half the time, it’s a total collapse of common sense. Move him to proper housing immediately, shut the doors, shutter the operations, sell the building like they wanted to do back in June. This is not supportive housing, this is bureaucratic mockery of public funds.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. As you pointed out to me, that $101,000 tab every month for one guy in a former 110-unit hotel, that’s $31,000 more expensive than putting the guy up in the Fairmont in downtown Vancouver. And it’s, you know, Canadians are living paycheck to paycheck and counting pennies. Where’s the accountability? What are they thinking about in Canada’s land of fruit and nuts?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, there’s zero accountability here. This is absolute amnesty for logic, reason, and basic accounting. We just had the Fraser Institute come out and confirm the average family’s tax bill shows more spending on basic necessities like food, shelter, and clothing combined. I mean, that’s nuts. You’re paying more for tax than your basic necessities. But the BC government literally burned about a full year income for a double-income household in 30 days on one room in an almost empty building where there’s still a gaping hole in this guy’s ceiling. Every single Canadian should be outraged. This is why people hate and despise politics: wasted money, priorities unfunded, and people aren’t even helped.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. Let’s go to Ottawa now. And up until Wednesday of this week, I have to admit, I didn’t even know the name of the Speaker of the Senate. Turns out she’s a woman who was given the position, unelected, of course. You know, people in the Senate are appointed. She was appointed, and then she was made the Speaker. And the only song I hear going around in my head for days and days since I learned about this story is, “My girl likes to party all the time, party all the time.” She racked up nearly $1 million on international travel. Now, is this legitimate diplomacy, or is this unelected Speaker just treating the public purse like an unlimited Aeroplan card, I guess?
Jon Liedtke: My initial reaction was actually to give benefit of the doubt, because I think it’s easy to pull line items out of a massive budget and blow things out of proportion. But when I actually started looking at the itinerary, though, this is not constitutionally mandated diplomacy. This is an unelected Speaker using the public purse, as you said, like an Aeroplan card to jet-set around, but it’s actually happening on our high-interest rate credit card with our taxes. We’re talking $100,000 trips, multi-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners, bringing spouses along for the ride and other people who don’t need to be there, like her in many cases. The spending is lavish, most of the trips unnecessary, and we’re the ones stuck with the bill.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. I didn’t—again, I didn’t know this until a few days ago, but apparently the Senate has its own magazine. And a friend of mine did a little bit of research and she came back and she told me that in one issue where they interviewed the Speaker, you want to guess what her number one hobby is? You want to just guess?
Jon Liedtke: No, I don’t, because I think I know what it is.
Gene Valaitis: Traveling.
Jon Liedtke: Of course.
Gene Valaitis: Now, she—now get this one, Jon—she flew to Japan for a 45-minute courtesy visit, and then flew to London to pick up a—wait for it—ceremonial sword. Now, I thought the Governor General who wastes a lot of money, I thought that was her role, but apparently not. What is going on?
Jon Liedtke: Look, Gene, don’t get me wrong. I understand dinner gets expensive at a London hotel. You add appetizers, a main, dessert, and drinks. And I love ceremonial swords presented by the King as much as the next red-blooded Canadian, but most of these trips could have been Zoom meetings, let’s be honest. I mean, if we actually need face-to-face diplomatic representation, that is the Governor General’s literal job. And yes, Rideau Hall has endless budgetary issues to answer for, so why are we making it a double-double for taxpayers then? I mean, at a time when working families across this country are, you know, counting pennies, as you said, in a penniless economy, paying more in taxes than they should be, to watch an unelected senator rack up nearly a million globe-trotting on our dime isn’t just tone-deaf, it’s genuinely insulting. If we really need the sword, which as I understand we do—it replaces the sword in the Senate itself—I mean, the Governor General could have picked it up on the next trip, or the leader of the Black Rod, holder of the Black Rod—I forget the actual name, the guy who uses the sword—he was on this trip with the Speaker of the Senate. He could have gone alone; she didn’t need to go. Or quite frankly, I don’t know, have we not heard of Purolator? I’m sure the King could get a discount.
Gene Valaitis: Winner, winner, chicken dinner! His name is Liedtke, Jon Liedtke. Great take this morning, buddy. Have a great weekend.
Jon Liedtke: You too. Thanks, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: All right, there he goes. Jon Liedtke’s Got a Take. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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