The carbon tax just went up. What does it mean for your family? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show on April 1st, April Fool's Day, and our national clown, Justin Trudeau, has decided to make living in Canada even more unbearably expensive. Hiking the carbon tax from $65 per ton to $80 per ton, this will add hundreds of dollars in tax burden to everyday Canadians.
00:00:00.000The carbon tax just went up. What does it mean for your family? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:30.000April 1st, April Fool's Day, and our national clown, Justin Trudeau, has decided to make living in Canada even more unbearably expensive.
00:00:47.340Hiking the carbon tax has cost on everything from $65 a ton to $80. This will add hundreds of dollars in tax burden to everyday Canadians, even though Justin Trudeau often repeats the misinformation that Canadians will receive more back in rebates than they pay in the carbon tax. Look at this.
00:01:11.460The facts matter. The premiers, Conservative premiers specifically, are misleading Canadians.
00:01:21.600The Conservative opposition in Ottawa and Pierre Polyev are not telling the truth to Canadians.
00:01:30.960The parliamentary budget officer himself says very clearly that 8 out of 10 families across the country do better with the Canada carbon rebate because we have put a price on pollution.
00:01:49.300It is more money in the pockets of families right across the country at a time where more money is needed, and it's concrete action to fight climate change at a time where we're seeing the impacts of extreme weather events, floods, fires, droughts.
00:02:08.300Conservatives are ideologically opposed to fighting climate change, to making polluters, even big polluters pay, and we put a price on pollution that makes sure people are looking for ways to reduce their emissions,
00:02:28.300and families, and families, particularly low-income and middle-income families do better with more money in their pockets to continue to raise their families and build a future.
00:02:40.720That's what our price on pollution is all about, and that's what the Conservatives, politicians across this country are trying to mislead Canadians about.
00:02:51.940But his own parliamentary budget officer says something entirely different, as you'll hear from my guest today, Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, who joined me to break down all the misinformation about the carbon tax, what it means for your family's bottom line, and a lot more on how the government spends your money.
00:03:21.940My good friend, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and we are recording this on Tuesday, April 2nd, so we are one day into the enormous carbon tax hike.
00:03:36.780Chris, tell us how much the carbon tax is going up and how much it is going to cost your average everyday Canadian family already struggling to get by thanks to the government-induced inflation.
00:03:48.800Yeah, sorry to be the rain cloud, but I think it's really important that people know the math here.
00:03:53.800So the carbon tax is going up to $80 per ton.
00:03:57.300What that means is that it's now going to be $0.17 per litre of gasoline, $0.21 per litre of diesel, and $0.15 per cubic metre of natural gas.
00:04:07.580We, of course, use natural gas for things like heating our home, and some people even use it for their electricity.
00:04:12.820So that then means that the cost of everything is going up, because even if, you know, you're Monica and you're living in downtown Calgary and you're filling up a tiny hatchback, that is not the sum of your carbon tax bill.
00:04:26.900No, no, because we all eat and use things, so all of that stuff is brought to us on a truck.
00:04:33.460And a trucker now, just picture this, filling up a big rig is going to be spending over $200 extra just in the carbon tax, filling up those big rigs of diesel.
00:04:45.200That's not including the GST, not including other taxes, or, of course, the price of the fuel.
00:04:50.780And then farmers, farmers are also nailed, actually, by Justin Trudeau's carbon tax, because they have to keep things like barns of chickens alive in the middle of February.
00:05:01.120And they can't do that with solar panels.
00:05:03.500You have to use natural gas and propane to do that, to keep it at 30 degrees Celsius.
00:05:07.940And so farmers are actually nailed for heating their barns and drying their grain with the carbon tax.
00:05:14.040And so then you get this kind of layering effect at the farm, at the trucking level, at your level of driving to the grocery store, at the store's level.
00:05:22.680We're keeping things hot and cold using fuels.
00:05:24.980And so this is why this is such an enormous cost.
00:05:28.620And the parliamentary budget officer did the math.
00:05:31.600The average Alberta family will be out net more than $900 this year because of the carbon tax.
00:05:44.040So I was waving that around in Lethbridge yesterday.
00:05:47.200So, yeah, no matter what Prime Minister Trudeau tries to tell you, when he tries to look you dead in the eye and say, my increased taxes are making you richer.
00:06:17.380And, you know, there's another side note that, you know, when Justin Trudeau says, oh, I just offset it all with rebates.
00:06:25.800Well, no, because even if that were true, even if the rebates equaled the amount of money they were expropriating from your family cumulatively along the way,
00:06:38.260even if that were true, it has to be cycled through the hands of a thousand bureaucrats and they don't work for free either.
00:06:48.100Yeah, it costs us hundreds of millions of dollars to both administer and process the carbon tax and also the GST, which is added to the carbon tax.
00:06:58.500I know that just I get quite a few emails about that of what this is a tax on tax.
00:07:03.400Yes, brothers and sisters, this is a tax on tax and it's costing you megabucks.
00:07:07.980And your point is exactly correct, Sheila.
00:07:10.340And I just want to encourage people because politicians of every strike, once they've been in power for a while, they can kind of take on the characteristics of a bully.
00:07:19.560OK, and I don't care what party you're in and a bully will often tell you that them picking on you is your fault, right?
00:07:33.080If you are struggling to get by, if you are shocked at how much it is costing you on your heat bill, if you're like gagging when you're trying to fill up your pickup truck because it's costing you so much money, this is not your fault.
00:07:44.320OK, when the prime minister tells you, you get more money back than you pay in, don't listen to that.
00:07:50.040OK, so, you know, the the very, very poor, OK, who can't even afford a car, all right, who are already taking the bus or walking to whatever they need to do close to their home.
00:08:00.700Yeah, they're going to be getting some money back.
00:08:02.900But again, that's the very, very poor.
00:08:05.100When they launched this carbon tax, remember, folks, this was to save the planet.
00:08:09.720This was to dramatically reduce emissions in order to save the planet.
00:08:15.420This was not supposed to be a wealth redistribution plan.
00:08:20.300But now, bizarrely, we are seeing ministers admit to basically that.
00:08:25.420It's like, yeah, this is a way to redistribute wealth to those who need it.
00:08:28.360Like this was never what the carbon tax was supposed to be about.
00:08:31.820OK, and now they're panicking and scrambling and trying to change the narrative.
00:09:36.840So, again, you're out net more than $900.
00:09:38.720And there are people who, you know, like, you realize that this is driving food inflation.
00:09:46.700I mean, you don't need a Parliamentary Budget Officer to tell you that your two liter of milk at the grocery store right now costs as much as the four liter did three years ago.
00:09:58.860Just go and check it out for yourself.
00:10:01.120I looked at that the other day because you have to buy milk.
00:10:08.300And, you know, grabbing it off the shelf, I'm really realizing I'm paying 100% more for it than I did.
00:10:15.520And then when you think about families who are on the cusp who have to make hard nutritional decisions now, not just hard recreational decisions.
00:10:23.660No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:10:24.800But nutritional decisions because of the carbon tax.
00:11:29.740Inflation itself, which is also the federal government's fault.
00:11:33.540So the next time that the federal government tries to say, oh, well, this was, you know, the global phenomenon, like it like as if like a tsunami suddenly rolled naturally around the earth and they did not cause this.
00:11:45.140It's like, no, no, you guys are the ones who locked down businesses, who drove the economy to a grinding halt, who stopped the production of goods.
00:11:53.560OK, we're talking about dollars and goods and the basics of supply economics here.
00:11:58.260So you guys ground the production of goods in many cases to a halt or a trickle for a long time.
00:12:05.120And on the other side of things, you printed hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air.
00:12:09.880So as my friend and economist Franco Terrazano would say, you're having too many dollars chasing too few goods.
00:12:49.280But inflation in Alberta was high that month, but lower in Saskatchewan because Saskatchewan was able to produce reliable electricity at a reasonable rate without collecting the carbon tax.
00:13:05.920And Alberta had to buy coal fired electricity at an increased cost because of supply demands and charge the carbon tax on it from our friends in Montana and Wyoming.
00:13:16.460So that's just one little place where inflation is affected directly by the carbon tax.
00:13:22.600And it happened to Alberta where we're just we're the Saudi Arabia of coal that we are not allowed to use for some reason.
00:13:29.280And and it's because of green schemes, carbon taxes, electricity shortages.
00:13:35.320And apparently we're having a Dickens of a time of getting new gas gas gas fired plants online.
00:13:44.780And I was talking to my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, and she said a lot of that has to do with the it takes time to get these natural gas powered plants online and they just can't get built overnight.
00:13:58.640And what happened was with the NDP in power, those plants weren't being built with.
00:14:04.580So you have the NDP in power in Alberta plus Justin Trudeau.
00:14:08.160You've got a lot of regulatory uncertainty.
00:14:10.960Companies don't want to make multibillion dollar investments in electricity production in a place where they might tell you, actually, now that's illegal.
00:14:44.020So never did I think moving to Alberta that I would have the premier having an alert going across your phone saying we might have to be rolling blackouts.
00:14:58.920Now, I wanted to ask you about how it felt to see Canadians out yesterday, Monday, all across the country protesting the hike in the carbon tax.
00:15:09.560I know you were out there just doing your little solo protests, but there were thousands of Canadians out in small towns and big cities in places you wouldn't expect it, like Vancouver and Ottawa, although Ottawa is becoming a bit of a conservative protest hub lately.
00:15:29.020But in spite of the fact that the federal government doesn't like it when conservatives are out protesting on the street, they considered a national emergency.
00:15:37.240People were out there, and I think across all party lines, I should say, protesting the hike in the carbon tax.
00:15:43.740And I was at one in Lloydminster to the site of, you know, the cross-border holy hands against the carbon tax protest.
00:15:54.920But how did it make you feel as someone who objects to taxes, generally speaking?
00:15:59.160You know, it's something that the CTF has been fighting since it was first hatched in British Columbia way back in 2008 by then-BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell.
00:16:10.760And that's how it slid under the door in Canada, by the way, because they sold it as revenue neutral.
00:16:15.680And to be fair, it was for the first year or so because they did a corresponding income tax cut.
00:16:19.740But like an alligator, these things grow, and then they eat your family.
00:16:24.120So that's exactly what's happened with the carbon tax now.
00:16:26.680So CTF has been fighting this forever.
00:16:28.880You can even tell because, like, some of our bumper stickers are old versions.
00:16:32.260So it was wonderful to see people speaking up, again, across party lines, saying, we want this thing gone and scrapped.
00:16:39.060And that is showing true with the polling.
00:16:42.500So we've seen polling coming out now that around 70% of Canadians, 7-0, either want this thing frozen or scrapped.
00:16:49.380We now, I think, Wab Kanu of NDP Premier of Manitoba has now officially said, yes, I want this thing frozen or scrapped.
00:16:57.380So I think that's now 8 out of 10 provincial premiers.
00:17:03.740And we've also, keep in mind, that's, again, across party lines because we have the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Premier Fury, saying the same thing.
00:17:11.460So this is really encouraging to see people finally finding their confidence, finding their bravery in their voice and speaking up and pushing back on this.
00:17:20.480And I'm pretty happy to hear, for example, that you said there is a protest in Vancouver.
00:17:24.380They should be protesting in Vancouver.
00:18:22.900She was paying around $25 to $2,600 a month rent.
00:18:27.320With her adult son living with her, who is a tradesman, she started crying, Sheila, because her son couldn't afford to fill up even his small little pickup truck, his little Chevy S10, to get himself and his tools over to the job site in Maple Ridge.
00:18:43.780Because, of course, people had to commute down the valley.
00:18:46.940Nobody could afford to live, you know, close to the epicenter of Vancouver, including tradespeople.
00:18:52.260And so when that kind of a working person is at their rope's end, this is when people, they must, they must speak up.
00:18:59.440Like, we don't care who you vote for or whatever, but you need to pay attention to the topics and the conversation.
00:19:04.160And it's good that people were out protesting the carbon tax.
00:19:07.860I did some media chats yesterday, and then I stood on Mayor McGrath here in Lethbridge by the gas station and got people honking and waving.
00:19:15.360But it's, I think, I think the tide has turned.
00:19:18.140I think it's turning on the carbon tax.
00:19:20.000And I don't think that the Trudeau government can sustain this kind of pressure for that much longer.
00:19:24.520When you have that many people speaking up and so many premiers pushing back across party lines.
00:19:29.620I'm actually hearing now, the scuttlebutts through different staffers and stuff in Ottawa, is that the provincial level of the party, of the Liberals, have put out kind of a communique, so to speak, of keep up the fight.
00:20:39.120And they are making the connection now that climate change policies are driving the problem with affordability.
00:20:50.860And I think really only the conservatives right now are the ones speaking to young people about those affordability issues.
00:20:58.460And they are leaving the Liberal Party in droves.
00:21:01.620Like those are your reliable Liberal voters.
00:21:05.020And they are saying we can't afford to live in Trudeau's Canada.
00:21:10.620And I think the Liberals are going to get mugged by reality at the polls.
00:21:14.540Mugged by reality is a great term for this.
00:21:16.120And you know what's kind of grim and a little bit fascinating at the same time is, so rewind years ago, before the carbon tax had started costing this amount of money and before it came to this kind of a head.
00:21:27.180Because keep in mind, it's not just carbon taxes.
00:21:51.300You know, let's not kill off all the whales.
00:21:53.680Like those normal environmental sort of concerns that decent people have.
00:21:57.640Remember when the smart people were often pointing out, you know what, as countries, not here, as countries become more wealthy, as people have more disposable income and the ability to, you know, they don't need to worry about feeding their kids.
00:22:13.620They don't need to worry as much about being able to afford a house or heat or that sort of stuff.
00:22:19.460Then an environmental consciousness can start manifesting.
00:22:23.720Then you start wondering, hmm, do I pick the free-range eggs versus the caged eggs?
00:22:29.240Do I want to go to this direction or that direction?
00:22:31.860Because it frees up their minds in order to think about lofty goals like that.
00:22:37.160Isn't it startling that now we are seeing the same sort of bare-knuckles mentality coming down to our own young people?
00:23:09.180And again, getting back to, like, inflation has helped cause this.
00:23:12.620So much government policy and lack of policy has helped cause these problems.
00:23:17.180And so isn't it interesting how now these sort of more lofty foreign affairs magazine ideas have come home to roost here in Canada and they're playing it out economically?
00:23:26.380I want to ask you, before we move on to a couple of other things, you are disappointed in Premier Danielle Smith because she's been so great on the carbon tax and pushing back against the fence on their, you know, clean energy regulations and emissions caps, all the things that stifle economic growth and job creation out here in the West.
00:24:18.020And so I think this is why I'll admit this is kind of a tough situation, a bit of a tricky situation where I would argue most kind of freedom oriented, small government, low tax people, especially in Alberta, to exactly your point, really like the Premier.
00:24:35.440So I want to separate this from the personal.
00:24:47.300So they did the Alberta government did the right thing when they dropped the Alberta fuel tax, which is usually 13 cents per liter of gasoline and diesel.
00:24:56.480They dropped it all the way down to zero.
00:24:58.660Premier Smith, when she made her announcement, said, and I'm paraphrasing, affordability is a major crisis.
00:25:04.200People are struggling to buy the basics.
00:25:06.680I want to put up a shield against Prime Minister Trudeau's carbon tax.
00:25:10.380Again, I'm paraphrasing and do the right thing.
00:25:12.560So she dropped it to zero for an entire year, which was awesome.
00:25:16.000So Albertans saved around a billion dollars with a beat.
00:25:23.680I did an entire tour praising this government for doing that.
00:25:26.620But now we've come down to this point where yesterday we had this huge carbon tax hike coming from Prime Minister Trudeau, which got a lot of attention.
00:25:35.340But on the same day, our provincial fuel tax went all the way back up to 13 cents per liter.
00:25:49.940And here we have just today, like I think it was just an hour ago, NDP, Premier of Manitoba, Wob Canoe, announced, by the way, my fuel tax holiday is extended.
00:26:00.620So for the first, yeah, for the foreseeable future, Manitobans are paying zero for their provincial fuel tax, 14 cents gone here in Alberta, full freight, 13 cents a liter.
00:26:13.420So this is where it's frustrating, where you can cheer on a premier going to a committee and doing the right things, like yelling at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over his carbon tax.
00:26:24.360But yet here, coming out of Edmonton, we're getting a tax hike nonetheless.
00:26:29.860And so this is where I'm in a bit of a quandary.
00:26:32.200I would, you know, if a viewer is watching and they have an explanation or some advice for me, like, please email me because I'm a bit stumped.
00:26:38.620Yeah, I don't know how Justin Trudeau's fuel tax is bad, but our fuel tax is good.
00:26:44.160Like, take out the motivation for the fuel tax, whatever it might be.
00:26:49.340If one is making me poorer, then surely the other one is too.
00:26:58.640And it's one of those things where, even just from a, if you can put my communications hat on, why did they do this on the same day?
00:27:05.920Because, right, like, you could have had the entire song and dance of going to Ottawa, and everybody could have just cheered vigorously while you're going out for the carbon tax.
00:27:18.580But if you do, if you increase your own tax at home, like, that took at least 50% of their messaging away.
00:28:42.880Franco has said federally, keep in mind that over all these past four years, right, during lockdowns and people losing their businesses, people getting their wages drastically slashed, like losing, like, pretty much everything, every single year, these folks have gotten a raise.
00:29:05.420And the prime minister, to put a dollar figure on it, is now making around $400,000.
00:29:12.740A cabinet minister or a leader of the opposition, the very similar sort of levels of authority in the House of Commons, now is close to $300,000.
00:29:22.920And to really describe it, like, the prime minister lives in a mansion, like, everything is basically paid for.
00:29:33.760And then keep in mind, also, just MPs in general, like, for the most part, their power bills are paid, their food is paid for, their travel is paid for, all that.
00:29:44.100All that stuff that you and I and normal working people are like, oh, got to get these bills paid, that's covered, for the most part, for MPs.
00:29:52.460Even little things, or people would call it little things.
00:29:56.400A lot of members of Parliament, even when they're in Ottawa, okay, I'm not talking about if they're traveling or having to go somewhere far out of their way, but at Ottawa, where they have apartments, okay, and lunch and dinner are served to them in the House of Commons lobby, like, hot fish type stuff, yeah, every day.
00:30:20.200Even though they've got, like, they're not just living out of a suitcase, they're not in a hotel, they're in, like, an apartment that is paid for.
00:30:26.340But I know, not all of them do it, but I know for a fact that some MPs do it every single day, they rack up the most per diem they can every day while in Ottawa.
00:30:38.080So, yeah, we want, and again, it happens all on the same day, and I know it sounds like a cruel joke, and for the longest time, I couldn't understand what was happening on the same day, and it's, of course, because it's the end of fiscal.
00:30:49.080So, fiscal financial nerds, like, you and I celebrate New Year's Day on January 1st.
00:30:54.700Financial nerds, for some reason, they do this at the end of fiscal, which is April 1st, so go figure.
00:31:09.220Now, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about the recent news that the Justin Trudeau liberals have managed to waste, unsurprising to, I think, nobody, 42, I think it is, million dollars in their gun confiscation program without confiscating any guns.
00:31:30.820And I'm happy, don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the government ineptitude here.
00:31:35.600I'm overjoyed that they can't manage to take our guns away.
00:31:40.260I'm annoyed with the amount of money they've spent to accomplish nothing.
00:33:54.100However, I've got to get back to the Foreign Interference Commission to find out how much money and time the government wasted doing nothing about things that we knew were happening.
00:34:05.620How do people support the work that you do over at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?
00:34:10.140And not just support the work that you do, but really get involved in the fight?
00:34:19.560If you can't donate, we do understand, for real.
00:34:22.480But we want you as part of the team, nonetheless.
00:34:25.300So, you can join up on whatever version of the army you want, which was great.
00:34:29.400So, if you're a gunny and you own firearms legally and you want to push back against the confiscation, we have a team for that.
00:34:36.200So, just go to our website, taxpayer.com.
00:34:39.140Sign the petition with your email and your name against the gun buyback or the gun ban, whatever you want to call it.
00:34:45.300And then, whenever anything like that happens, whenever there's news about waste, whenever there's new elements of the legislation happening, coming through the House, we'll alert you.
00:34:59.940Same deal goes for things like, you know, defunding the CBC, even niche things like getting rid of the sales tax on used items, which just hurts poor people.
00:35:59.880Oh, so, led by, I will point out, led by the NDP provincial government looking out for the little guy, nuking poor people for buying used cars.
00:37:00.260If you've got something to say about the show today, put gun show letters in the subject line so that it's easier for me to find.
00:37:06.920But maybe you are not watching the paywalled version of the show.
00:37:10.940Maybe you are waiting around for a couple of days so that you can watch a clip or a segment or even the full show for free on YouTube or Rumble.
00:37:21.260And you're sitting through a couple ads.
00:37:37.660So, actually, today's comments come to us.
00:37:42.560There are two of them, although they're on the same issue on my reporting from Monday's protest at the Lloydminster, Alberta, Saskatchewan border with relation to the carbon tax hike.
00:37:57.040I was there all day with my friend and head of documentary filmmaking here at Rebel News, Kian Simone, and a couple of our beloved volunteers, Elise from Saskatchewan and Marion.
00:38:08.020And we worked hard all day to bring you the other side of the story.
00:38:15.120Anyway, from that location, I was on Ezra's emergency livestream broadcast where us rebels who were out in the world across the country covering the protests.
00:38:30.980He brought us onto the show remotely, anyway, from a ditch.
00:38:36.860For me, along the side of Highway 16 with horns blaring in the background and flags waving in the background.
00:38:45.680And we clipped that and we put it up on YouTube and I thought, what were people saying about what I had to say while I appeared on that emergency livestream broadcast?
00:38:56.060And there were two things that stuck out to me and I want to address them because I think these people are absolutely wrong.
00:39:04.500And I'll tell you why, in the nicest possible way.
00:39:07.120So, the first person is SeifonLawrence2044 who says,
00:39:15.700Protest amounts to nothing, unfortunately.
00:39:19.600We'll just hang tight and we'll come back to that in a second.
00:39:21.600And the other one, named Extinction Hauling, 247, also writes,