Juno News - A carbon tax revolt is underway (ft. Kris Sims)

00:00:00.000 Ideally, a government would represent the interests of all Canadians, not just Canadians

00:00:14.220 in liberal-held ridings. But what do I know about politics? Well, there is a bit of a silver lining

00:00:20.600 in this. I think that the government's messaging on this and the inconsistency has started a bit

00:00:26.400 of a rebellion. Scott Moe, the Premier of Saskatchewan, had this to say today.

00:00:32.620 As Premier, I cannot accept the federal government giving an affordability break to people in

00:00:38.140 one part of Canada, but not here. So today, I am calling on the federal government to offer the

00:00:44.180 same carbon tax exemption to Saskatchewan families by extending it to all forms of home heating,

00:00:50.360 not just heating oil. It's only fair to other Saskatchewan and Canadian families.

00:00:55.560 Hopefully, that exemption will be provided soon. But if not, effective January 1, Sask Energy

00:01:03.540 will stop collecting and submitting the carbon tax on natural gas, effectively providing Saskatchewan

00:01:10.420 residents with the very same exemption that the federal government is giving heating oil

00:01:14.520 in Atlantic Canada. The federal government may say that's illegal and that you simply cannot

00:01:20.400 choose to collect and pay your taxes. In most cases, I would agree with that. But it's the federal

00:01:27.600 government that has created two classes of taxpayer by providing an exemption for heating oil. An exemption

00:01:33.760 that really only applies in one part of the country and effectively excludes Saskatchewan.

00:01:39.440 As Premier, it's my job to ensure Saskatchewan residents are treated fairly and equally with our fellow

00:01:45.440 Canadians in other parts of the country. And that's what I am doing today.

00:01:49.280 Shots fired. Let's talk about this with our regular Monday correspondent, Chris Sims, who is the Alberta

00:01:58.560 Director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chris, that must have been music to your ears.

00:02:03.600 Yeah, it was really awesome. I'm just going to adjust my shot so I'm not literally standing in front of a garbage can for you.

00:02:09.200 So, all right. So there are better metaphors for Canadian politics. Actually, no, wait, there aren't.

00:02:14.400 So I'm here actually at the Edmonton Legislature because, of course, it's the throne speech.

00:02:19.760 So it's everybody's first day back at school, so to speak, here in Alberta. So, wow.

00:02:26.960 Hearing that from Premier Mo, can he do it? We don't know. We'll put it this way. Mo's heart is definitely

00:02:35.040 in the right place. And Trudeau here is definitely in the wrong. And boy, oh boy. I thought we'd already

00:02:42.560 seen enough of it last week, Andrew, when they said, oh, we're going to do a car vote. We're going

00:02:47.280 to do a suspension, but just for furnace oil. Who uses furnace oil? Almost, you know, exclusively folks

00:02:54.400 in Atlantic Canada. So they really stepped in it there. And then the Liberal Minister's like, no, wait,

00:03:00.960 there's more. But if you voted Liberal, we'd be nicer to you. Like, this is a dumpster fire for

00:03:07.040 this government. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to unpack there. Because if anyone followed along

00:03:13.760 with the carbon tax Supreme Court case and the cases before the Court of Appeal for Alberta and

00:03:19.040 Ontario, et cetera, the government's whole argument was that, no, no, no, climate change is national.

00:03:23.920 Greenhouse gas emissions are national. We can't let provinces come up with their own

00:03:28.160 local approach to this. We can't regionalize or provincialize this. And here's the federal

00:03:33.360 government doing that, saying, well, we're going to treat this differently in Atlantic Canada than

00:03:37.280 we are elsewhere, which undermines the government's whole approach, which is why I think Scott

00:03:42.240 Smoe may actually have at least a moral leg to stand on, a legal one we don't know yet.

00:03:48.320 Premier Danielle Smith, I haven't seen the clip, but I understand earlier she's talked about

00:03:52.240 reevaluating the Supreme Court case as well and in light of this. So it does sound like the

00:03:57.680 government here has really stepped in it. I mean, not even politically, possibly legally.

00:04:03.280 Yeah, exactly. So it was interesting to hear what Premier Smith had to say. So

00:04:07.440 in Saskatchewan, they have a Crown Corporation. So that's part of the government. So the Premier

00:04:12.560 there is able to say, hey, wing of government, arm of government, we want you to do this. Now, again,

00:04:18.720 this is legal federally. Godspeed. We don't know. We're leaving that up to the legal beagles.

00:04:24.880 But here in Alberta, it's a private power industry. So we have competing companies that offer private

00:04:31.680 power to different homes, etc. You get to choose and pick and choose. It's not like Alberta power.

00:04:37.120 So they don't have that ability. And she was very careful today when she answered her question. She

00:04:42.320 said, I wouldn't want to advise a private company to maybe go against the law. But she's looking at this

00:04:48.080 really hard with what's great about this, Andrew, is like you just said, all of a sudden, the Prime

00:04:53.760 Minister has to now admit that this isn't so much about the science, is it? It's about political science.

00:05:01.520 Yeah. And I think that's the other thing that they've undermined here, not just that this has

00:05:05.920 to be the same nationally, there has to be a one size fits all solution. But the government's other

00:05:11.040 argument was that this is so important, we can't offer anyone a reprieve, even on a temporary basis,

00:05:17.120 because you at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation have been calling on the government, the conservatives

00:05:21.760 have been calling on the government to offer a bit of a break with the cost of living crisis. Let's

00:05:26.320 just pull back on the carbon tax. Let's just stop the hikes of the carbon tax. And the government has

00:05:31.360 said no. And their argument has been no, no, no, climate change is so important. We can't do this.

00:05:36.160 This isn't about now. It's about 10 years from now, 20 years from now. And it is about right now,

00:05:41.200 if you're in Atlantic Canada and voted Liberal. Yes, exactly. And so we've been in the game for a

00:05:46.880 long time. This is so obvious. Like, it's really obvious. The fact that they singled out just furnace

00:05:54.320 oil. Okay, so around three or 4% of Canadian households use furnace oil or heating oil for their

00:06:02.560 homes. Of that three or 4%, the vast majority of those homes are in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia,

00:06:09.840 Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, a little bit in New Brunswick, but not quite as much.

00:06:14.240 Yes, there are some isolated folks up in the north of Ontario and up north, maybe across the west,

00:06:19.520 a little tiny bit, but not usually. Usually it's furnace oil for the Maritimes in Atlantic Canada

00:06:25.840 and natural gas for those of us here across the west and mostly in Ontario as well. What's getting me

00:06:31.600 here too, Andrew, is that there's a whole lot of seats around the 905 and around your area there

00:06:38.480 of Ontario. They use natural gas. Like, what are they, chopped liver? Like, what message are they

00:06:44.800 sending to all of those Liberal seats there in Ontario? But what the big win here is, is that now

00:06:50.880 the Prime Minister has had to admit, one, this is unaffordable. Two, apparently this isn't the big

00:06:57.600 honking crisis that he said it was going to be because he's willing to suspend the usage of a

00:07:03.520 carbon tax on a much more heavier particulate burning fuel for the next three years until after

00:07:11.040 the next election. That's the obvious part here. Why did he give a timeline on it? It just made it even

00:07:16.960 worse. Yeah, I think that is in and of itself there too. And I wonder if this is looking at some

00:07:24.240 of the polling and seeing Atlantic Canada as wavering of it. I mean, Pierre Polyev had been,

00:07:29.920 I think, doing a rally that night that this announcement came out in Atlantic Canada. Now,

00:07:35.520 I don't think Atlantic voters are so stupid as to be hoodwinked by a very temporary promise. I mean,

00:07:41.760 by a government, it's basically the can you stop hitting me thing and then a person stops hitting

00:07:47.200 you and you don't just thank them, you know, in the grand scheme of things. You're like, okay,

00:07:51.200 well, thank you for stopping. But I'm not going to forget that you were the guy doing that in the

00:07:54.560 first place. And that's really what's happening here. And I mean, look, I'm not telling anyone

00:07:59.040 how to vote. But I do think for Atlantic Canadians, they're probably not going to forget that this

00:08:05.040 reprieve was not really offered to them till now. And all of these increases, the addition of the

00:08:09.360 carbon tax was entirely the doing of the feds in the first place. Yes, exactly. I think most folks in

00:08:15.680 that area will remember that only when all of those facts and safe seats in Atlantic Canada

00:08:22.400 were suddenly tanking in the polls, all of a sudden, the politicians got really into listening

00:08:27.520 to people. It was just miraculous. See, this is what we try to say at the Canadian Taxpayers

00:08:32.080 Federation. If you want to make change happen, go right after your member of parliament and say so.

00:08:38.720 And if they don't listen to you, that's when you say, you know what, next time, the next election,

00:08:44.160 I'm going to get a group of 10 friends together. And I'm going to door knock against you in your

00:08:48.320 writing on this issue. You get their attention real fast. Why? Because it's their butts on the

00:08:54.320 line this time. So that cabinet minister who said, Oh, well, maybe you should elect more liberals and

00:08:58.880 we'll actually listen to you on something as unaffordable and unfair as the carbon tax.

00:09:02.880 Whoa, all of a sudden, her salary of 200 something thousand dollars with all expenses paid for travel

00:09:09.680 and food and home heating, by the way, that's suddenly in peril. And that gets their attention

00:09:15.840 real fast. So this is really clear. What we're happy about is now, finally, finally, at the federal

00:09:23.040 level, the crack is there, the crack is breaking, and they're realizing that the carbon tax is

00:09:28.320 unaffordable. And it doesn't it doesn't fix the environmental issues.

00:09:31.680 Yeah, and I always like doing the flip on political stories and say, you know,

00:09:37.040 what would I think if this were reversed? What would the critics think? And I was kind of imagining

00:09:41.120 this fantasy scenario of some Quebecer in, you know, 2013 makes a comment about the federal

00:09:46.320 government. And Stephen Harper just glibly says, Well, if you want to be heard, you got to elect

00:09:50.400 conservatives like there would be outrage on that. I mean, now that I say it, I'm like, I would kind

00:09:55.600 of be amused in that context. But that doesn't mean it's the responsible thing to do when people are

00:10:00.400 hurting. And that's really what the government is saying here. And like, again, if Pierre

00:10:04.080 Pauliev said that to some suburban Toronto voter, well, if you want anything, you should have voted

00:10:09.200 for me like that. That's not prime ministerial. No. And in fact, one of the first things whenever

00:10:15.360 there's somebody elected, okay, a premier, a prime minister, it doesn't matter what party,

00:10:20.880 you've been watching this game long enough, you know this, one of the first things out of their

00:10:24.720 mouth is they say, while I was elected by this percentage of Albertans or Canadians,

00:10:30.400 I will be the premier, I will be the prime minister for all of you. That flies in the face

00:10:37.280 of what that cabinet minister just said. Like, that was a huge misstep. But what's good about

00:10:43.920 this misstep, and everybody's human, so they screwed up. Yep. What's good about this misstep is now

00:10:49.360 this message of the carbon tax is unaffordable, and it doesn't fix emissions issues anyway. So why are we

00:10:56.080 paying for it? Why are we punishing Canadians for staying warm in winter in Canada? It is not right.

00:11:03.360 Scrap it for everyone everywhere across Canada. That's becoming the dominant message now even in

00:11:09.120 Ottawa, which is excellent. It's a long time coming, but it needs to happen. Well, we'll see if this

00:11:15.280 starts a bit of a ripple effect across the country here, the Prairie Rebellion, I guess we can call

00:11:21.600 it. Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation joining us live from the Alberta Legislature in

00:11:27.280 Edmonton. Always a pleasure, Chris. We will chat with you next Monday. You betcha. Thanks for

00:11:31.840 listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - November 06, 2023

A carbon tax revolt is underway (ft. Kris Sims)

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