British Columbia May Have Triggered an Economic Disaster

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]So, it's starting to look to me, Patrick, like there could be a setup here where EB's going to get fired. I don't know. There's a lot of news coming out. He's making admissions on he's mishandled some of this stuff. Let's talk about this because I think if there's any good news, maybe he's going to be out soon.

[00:00:18]>> H BC is >> and and we're focused on good news.

[00:00:21]Remember, in this episode, we were telling the producers, we got to be focused on the good news.

[00:00:25]>> We would be delusional to think there's good news. Well, if there is good news, it's the fact that EB actually has finally said, "Maybe I made a mistake."

[00:00:33]He didn't say it that way, but his quote in this, so I was I painfully watched his press conference and listened to him and he did say some things that finally and one of the things he said was, "It is possible to move off confidently in the wrong direct direction." And then he actually admitted he'd have preferred to being right the first time. So that's as close as EB's come so far to actually saying I screwed up.

[00:00:59]>> The the public relations people that write these things, it's probably AI now. I don't even know if the public relations still exists, but um it's incredible how they choose their words super super carefully. Right, Patrick?

[00:01:11]Not to make a total admission here, but just to skirt it a little bit.

[00:01:14]>> Well, this was the one good news. I don't know. There's good news around it, but my point is is that a reporter >> The good news is he might get fired.

[00:01:22]That's the good news.

[00:01:23]>> The good news is he might go. But back in August 2025 when this first hit, I we JG, you know me. I was like beating the drum like this is gonna be a show.

[00:01:33]>> And we know and we know how you like to beat the drum. Like we know that when you get on a when you get you're a dog on a bone sometime.

[00:01:40]>> Well, because I like to be right number one. That you know that's important. But no, more importantly is to let people know they have to pay attention to this stuff and that EB's got to go. He's taken this province in a really bad direction. So within the land indigenous land rights issue, we've got DRIPA, which is the framework. We've got UNRIP.

[00:01:58]And the point is is that he's been asked to repeal UNRIP and to shift things around. And he's not he's trying to kick the can down the road. He has up until now been reluctant to admit that, man, I messed up. Like I opened up Pandora's box. He finally did that. But the impact is already being felt in British Columbia and it's going to only economically get worse because it's um it's just causing so much uncertainty with individuals but as importantly with business with banks with insurance.

[00:02:30]We've talked about it many times before.

[00:02:32]So British Columbia has got people leaving. The economy is slowing down.

[00:02:37]Unemployment is going up. I mean, it's just you can't exist in this level of uncertainty that's been created by this particular uh premier and his government and his policies. So, but there's some takeaways I made notes on. So, first off, in this particular news conference, he admitted government was heading in the wrong direction. Yay. Finally, he confirmed the province faces serious legal exposure. Yes. Okay. Well, is that an epiphany, Eie? You knew that all along. He offered no policy solutions, nothing concrete. Again, no path forward. So, we're still in this uncertainty world. He actually reinforce the message that BC remains unstable for investment and decision-making. That's coming from the premier of the province.

[00:03:23]So, we already knew that. By the way, >> that's kind of that's kind of like a CEO stepping on TV and saying like, "Listen, I'm not really sure you should invest in our company right now cuz it's not going so great. we face some serious legal challenges ahead of us. We're going in the wrong direction. Like, you know, that CEO would get fired so fast. It would be unbelievable. And everybody would be thrilled. And that quite frankly, that CEO deserves to be fired because he's not doing it. He or she is not doing his job. Same thing here.

[00:03:52]>> He's I mean, he's just killing this economy. It's just frightening to know that he still can make these decisions.

[00:03:59]And then you know he what the term would be he blinked in negotiations. So he actually met with indigenous tribes some of the chiefs he had the opportunity to say hey this is what I'm going to do but instead he said let's let's talk about this later in the fall. So he kicked the can down the road rather than face it and go no we got to repeal this. And he didn't do that. So there's no uh def uh definite there's no path forward.

[00:04:26]There's still no plan in place. And so he was speaking off the cuff by the way.

[00:04:32]He didn't have a prompter in front of him and he got hit right out of the gate. Great big question right up front.

[00:04:38]I don't remember exactly what it was. So but it was like in your face kind of question. He said something and the reporter said, "So nothing's changed. So you're still doing the same stuff?" like it was really quite an aggressive assertive comment and Evie just you know he rifted off it and I don't know that that's the best play for him. It's like Carney you know you catch these guys off guard without a presscript and they um and they awe and they twist and they you make up and they say nothing for five minutes. So anyways the point is >> don't worry Patrick we're going to get to Carney's video after. Don't worry you'll get your piece on this.

[00:05:13]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the point is, you know, when we look at what's happening in British Columbia economically, it's just not good news. And and we have to create some certainty for investment capital come in. Canada's got the issue overall. But British Columbia is literally watching money seize up and or flow out of the province and stop coming into the province as we also start to see unemployment tick up. Of course, construction is slowing down given and those jobs are slowing down given what's happening in housing and what's happening in uh Vancouver proper and the condo world. I mean, there's just everything is coming to a halt or stalling. Big slowdown. And when real estate was your primary driver, that's a big deal. And then >> the rich the rich people are still going out for dinner. Patrick, you were out at a very fancy restaurant last week and it was packed. It's true. There is that.

[00:06:09]There is Listen, and we talked about this the the anecdotally you go where the heck like I thought everybody's broke it. You know, we were at like to your point a higherend restaurant in Vancouver and it was packed, but it's that top 20% 10% of the population that's floating a lot of the economy.

[00:06:27]The data shows things are slowing down dramatically and right across the country, but we're talking about BC in this particular case. And the reality of it is is British Columbia is really slowing down dramatically and you've got a lot of people moving away from the province. You actually have a population declining. It's a it's kind of messy right now. And I think that now when we look at what's happening uh given the war, Iran, well, we'll call it Middle East, the increasing costs that are going to just bulldoze us, I I think probably, you know, when I'm listening to the guys I listen to and looking at the data I'm looking at, I think by the probably midsummer, we're going to be feeling it. I mean, gas prices aside, JG, you know, you drive some diesel. You have some diesels on your fleet and uh look at the cost of diesel. So think about agriculture, think about industry.

[00:07:21]That's a huge part of the costs that go into any kind of production. So yeah, it's hard >> on that.

[00:07:28]>> Two two things on that note specifically. Uh I got some uh I got since I'm the optimist of the show, I've just self-proclaimed myself as the optimist of the show. I'm going to talk about some good news that you're you're you're missing here. So we'll talk about that in a second. But with regards to inflation, it's interesting. I'm glad that uh fuel prices have come down this week and I I'll say why even myself as a business owner uh Patrick and and you as well like I was just starting to think like I'm going to have to pass some of these costs on. I'm going to have to add a fuel search charge to some of my services, some of my products, so on so forth. And luckily they've come down enough for me to say ah let me just wait a little longer. So I'm kind of hoping everyone thinks like me which definitely they don't. So, I'm curious to see what's going to happen with that and to see if this sit You know what? I just hope doesn't happen, dude. Because if if this happens, I'm going to lose my noodle. I hope the government doesn't came out come out and say that this inflation is transitory because if they do, >> remember those were the words back in the day.

[00:08:30]>> This is just transitory.

[00:08:32]>> Well, here's a Let's just riff off this a little bit and and think about inflation. And, you know, we we weren't talking about interest rates, but let's think about interest rates a little bit.

[00:08:41]You know, we saw bond yields come down a little bit and >> they've they've come down a lot. They've like I got a chart here. I mean, they went from like they've they've t tumbled down quite a bit like a good amount.

[00:08:54]>> Yes. But we have to look at these are all indicators, right? When we look at what's happening, but at the end of the day, when we look at inflation, this is going to be a supply driven inflation issue. So, what do you think the Bank of Canada is going to do? because you're going to have inflation, but it's going to be because of supply, not demand.

[00:09:15]It's going to be lack of supply, not an increase in demand. So, increasing interest rates, is it going to fix inflation? No. It's going to slow the economy down even more if they increase rates. And we would think, well, why would they increase rates? Because, again, that is the one tool that they use when it comes to trying to manage inflation. It's >> the only tool they have. Well, that's it's one of the only tools they have, basically.

[00:09:40]But it's this is that you just described you just described stagflation right there which is a failing economy with inflating prices. It's the worst of all the situations. It's the worst. Uh because if you have inflation because of a rip roaring economy, that part I mean you can you can manage that. You can work with that, but it's hard to work with with stagflation. And uh and it's interesting. It's uh there's still a I'm curious to see your thoughts though, Patrick. I know you know who's back on the circuit. I don't know if you're seeing him in your feed at all. Jeff Booth is back in back on the circuit.

[00:10:15]you know, for a while we you and you and I interviewed him at Rain uh gosh, probably four years ago. He wrote a book called >> You had him on the podcast. He was he wrote a book called The Price of Tomorrow. And then he kind of took I think a couple years off like in terms of, you know, not speaking to so many people and being on so many podcasts, but he's back on it now. But his theory is deflation is coming. Forget inflation, deflation. He's still on the deflation bandwagon.

[00:10:41]>> Well, I think he's right. And I think there's going to be some things that actually come down in terms of cost, but that's not going to be an overarching thing. And I think it's going to take some time for that to happen. But JG, when we think about stagflation, you and I literally on this show were talking about stagflation at least two years ago, maybe even more. And so the question is is that if somebody's listening to this, they're going, "Well, what the hell do I do? What what does this all this mean?" I think it goes back to what we've said before. It's not the time to overlever.

[00:11:11]It is not the time to uh overspend. You know, you need to maintain liquidity.

[00:11:18]You need to stay ahead and not overlever in your investments. Whether that be real estate or the equity market, doesn't matter. Right now, cash is going to remain king. You've got to stay liquid. That's the biggest thing. And of course, accumulate assets. And we talk a lot about real estate, but what you know, and I've said just recently, you know, it used to be all real estate all the time in Canada, and now it's not. It's some real estate, it's some equities, it's probably some precious metals, it's some other assets that we know go up as the rest of the world inflates. And so that is a critical part of it, but without overleveraging, you know, don't get, you know, big on a margin.

[00:12:00]>> And the other thing, that's a good point, Patrick. The other thing is keep in mind when we talk real estate, especially you and I, we're talking about cash flowing real estate, income producing real estate. And that's critical because, you know, a lot of the comments I see in our feed, >> people that own homes and and they have these theories about about when they should buy a home and and it's all about their their own personal home. That's not what we're talking about. We talk about real estate. We talk about income producing real estate stuff that generates positive cash flow where uh you know it's it's not only appreciating it's also generate you're also doing principal buy down and not to mention uh you're generating cash flow and between those three things Patrick I will put real estate up against any other real estate other investment out there and real estate does incredibly well when you look at it from a a a real estate investment perspective, not just a home ownership perspective.

[00:12:56]>> Yeah. And and let's just expand on that one more step, which is also a long-term perspective. You know, we're talking seven, 10 years. And and given what's going on right now, I I don't know, you know, we we can talk about we can we'll we'll talk about housing prices and where we think they're going. I think there is a a certain uh you know, there's certain markets that we have to look at the overbuild situation of rental housing and you know, the challenges that that's going to create in the rental market. We're already seeing rental uh rents come down overall and that's also triggered by number one over supply and guess what we we're we're losing people JG. We're actually I think it's the first time in 150 years.

[00:13:38]>> That part's not good. That's a concerning stat that I'm keeping my eyes on very very closely because I really that's that's a really not a good thing.

[00:13:46]You know, uh, population is the second major key driver of any real estate market. And this is important for >> any economy. Any economy, not changing, that's changing because of AI and because of the robots. You and I have had this argument before. So, I'm not as worried about it from an economy perspective, but I can't rent my place to a robot. I can't rent my place to AI.

[00:14:10]I have to rent my place to a human. And I want as many humans nearby as possible. That's for sure. But let's let's talk about specifically, Patrick, for real estate investors and what they should be looking at because, you know, our producers told us that we have to uh make sure we deliver real value for these investors. So, so here's what I would say to to investors that are a little freaked out right now. Number one, when when you say what you just said, Patrick, about people leaving Canada, you are right because in general, it shows that a lot of people are leaving Canada. We're not we're not bringing in as many people immigration as we used to. As a result, in some areas, we're having net outflows versus net inflows. Not good for an economy, not good for a region. But that's the thing. You have to look at your region because if you're investing, for example, in Peterborough, as I do, it's very different than if you're investing in downtown Toronto, very different than if you're investing in Vancouver, very different if you're investing than Edmonton, Patrick. So my point is is that real estate investors have to again get regional, look at the real estate market regionally and see what's happening from the regional perspective in terms of population. Because if you're investing in a place right now and and I'll always remember this, my my uh you know, one of my early mentors uh in real estate uh learned his lesson big time by buying inexpensive real estate in markets that were declining. And that is a recipe for disaster. And you know, you could buy all the real estate you want in Capiscasing, Ontario. And I have family in Capiscasing. No shade on Capiscasing. I love Capiscasing. It's my it's my hood. But I'm not going to put my investment dollars in capiscasing.

[00:15:48]Why? Because that economy is going nowhere but to zero over time. And that real estate doesn't appreciate like it does when there's inflow of people. And this is something real estate investors have to get their mind around. And they got to look, they got to go do that research and they have to be willing to like get in the mud and go figure that out.

[00:16:07]>> To your point, you got to be willing to go figure it out and and and do the diligence on why. What are we trying to do here? I mean, at the end of the day, we're trying to head stay ahead of what we call inflation and we're trying to stay ahead of a devaluing fiat currency.

[00:16:23]We're trying to maintain our buying power and we have to put our capital to work in order to do that. Let's just get really solid in why we're investing in real estate. There's a big part of that, but we have to do our diligence to make sure that we're in the right market to your point. Because if you look at, for example, we look at Canada and we know that there's a brain drain. There's a lot of qualified people that are moving out of this country. There's a lot of uh individuals who, you know, let's put it this way. So, in the past, we're thinking, well, it's the immigrants who came into the country, they're leaving.

[00:16:55]Yes, there's some part of that, but there's a lot of highpaid people who are smart, who had great jobs are going, I'm out of here. I just had somebody on uh the Everyday Millionaire podcast who Canadian, very successful in Canada. He's in Florida, paid all of the taxes to get the hell out of Canada, moved all of his businesses, moved everything out of Canada. He said, "I'm done." And I'm going, "Wow, that guy had He probably employed 60 people in Canada and now he's moved that all to the US. He's so happy he's out. He just took the hit tax-wise. It cost them millions of dollars to get out of the country. But you start to think about how many times can we take that hit and we've got some numbers here to show that it's actually happening a lot. So back to the immigration, we look at Canada and we say a lot of people leaving Canada. But let's get down to where what's really happening. So you look at British Columbia, a lot of people leaving British Columbia. We're seeing net negative growth. Ontario, the same thing. Whereas we're seeing Alberta, we're seeing Saskatchewan, Manitoba actually increasing. Quebec too, I believe. So the point is is that it's also interprovincial and we have to look very regional. To your point, >> like, subscribe, and if you like this content, watch full episode here.