Juno News - June 25, 2019


Andrew Lawton sits down with Jim Karahalios, the founder of AxetheCarbonTax.ca

Topics
carbon tax debate integrity and ethics of politicians carbon pricing narrative
Mentioned
John Brown Andrew Scheer Doug Ford Justin Trudeau Brian Pallister Kathleen Wynne Michael Chong Jim Carahalios Stephen Harper Jim Carajalios Mike Harris John Tory Tim Hudak Rob Ford
Trudeau's latest attack on Canada's energy sector The government's approach to ＂hate speech＂ and ＂Islamophobia＂

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

185.73

Word count

3,373

Sentence count

189

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jim Karahalios, founder of Axe the Carbon Tax, joins me to talk about the fight against the federal carbon tax, and why it's a good idea to have a carbon tax in the first place.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.880 Welcome to another True North talk. I've covered a fair bit in recent months, the fight against the federal carbon tax, a fight that's taking place in courts in Ontario, Saskatchewan, soon to be Alberta.
00:00:14.460 We have New Brunswick as well that's been joining these fights.
00:00:17.760 And despite the ruling that came out from the Saskatchewan court that the carbon tax is constitutional, there's another dimension to this,
00:00:26.340 which is that if politically it becomes untenable to do it, the legal analysis is pretty irrelevant.
00:00:33.100 But I want to talk about this in both contexts here.
00:00:35.320 Very pleased to welcome Jim Karahalios, who is the founder of Axe the Carbon Tax, which you can get at axthecarbontax.ca.
00:00:43.160 Jim, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:00:45.700 Hey, Andrew. Thanks for having me on. It's always good to talk to you.
00:00:48.180 I want to go back to the beginning here because I think that as much as this battle is characterized as being left versus right,
00:00:55.740 that really wasn't the start of Axe the Carbon Tax.
00:00:59.280 Tell me how this came about for people that aren't in Ontario.
00:01:03.000 Well, if you remember back in 2017, we had Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown,
00:01:08.680 who won the leadership of the PC party in Ontario against carbon taxes and kind of like a fiscal conservative.
00:01:15.240 And then he came out and shocked everyone at his first convention, said he was actually in favor of a carbon tax.
00:01:21.220 At the same time, Brian Pallister, the newly elected PC Manitoba premier, he also came out and said he was going to put a carbon tax.
00:01:31.860 And with the with those two conservative provincial leaders and especially Patrick Brown,
00:01:37.460 it kind of paved the way for Justin Trudeau to say he was going to impose it.
00:01:41.400 Because if you remember, in 2015, Trudeau said he was going to work cooperatively.
00:01:45.400 And then as soon as Brown said he was going to bring it in a few months later, Trudeau changed gears and said he was going to mandate a carbon tax across the country.
00:01:55.700 So I thought it paved the way, you know, the liberals depend on Ontario seats.
00:01:59.160 So I started the Axe to Carbon Tax campaign because it's really a defining issue for conservatives to kind of get Patrick Brown and Brian Pallister.
00:02:09.380 We actually started the campaign in Manitoba to change their mind on a carbon tax and oppose a carbon tax,
00:02:15.440 just like our federal conservative party and most of the candidates running in that.
00:02:20.100 It was supposed to be kind of like this, quote unquote, inside baseball policy discussion for conservatives.
00:02:25.080 The whole thing blew out of proportion when Patrick Brown and the PC Party executive threw me out of the party,
00:02:32.920 denied me entrance into their convention and sued me.
00:02:36.360 All three of those, I think, are a first for the PC Party of Ontario.
00:02:39.960 Certainly there hasn't been a political party that sued anyone before or denied them access to a convention.
00:02:45.800 And I beat their lawsuit in court in six weeks as a decision by a judge that saw through it as an attempt to kind of shut me down.
00:02:53.540 Freedom of speech type issue.
00:02:55.480 And shortly thereafter, we went to the PC leadership.
00:02:59.220 All the candidates in that leadership said they were against the carbon tax.
00:03:02.920 Obviously, Doug Ford won.
00:03:04.660 And we went into a general election campaign in Ontario where really the only campaign promise that Doug kept going back to was to scrap the carbon tax.
00:03:12.280 And he ended up scrapping the cap and trade carbon tax.
00:03:15.220 And I think that was the domino or the trigger for conservative leaders across the country to really take a second look at either being in favor of a carbon tax or being quiet on it.
00:03:27.620 And we see now this national debate on the carbon tax that's going into the federal election.
00:03:32.520 Conservatives have always been the ones fighting against taxes.
00:03:36.860 I mean, whether they do it effectively or not is a different story.
00:03:40.000 But that's always been the cornerstone of conservatism.
00:03:42.640 If you're a conservative candidate, the safest thing you can do is be anti-tax.
00:03:46.780 So why has there been this temptation for Patrick Brown, for Brian Pallister to go into that pro-carbon tax, especially a carbon tax, which is probably one of the worst of taxes?
00:03:58.620 Why is that temptation there for purported conservatives?
00:04:02.520 Look, I want to give Manitoba Premier Pallister credit because he's still holding strong against the carbon tax.
00:04:09.380 You know, there's a bit of this temptation, I think, with pressure from the left to say we've got to say something about it.
00:04:17.060 Or conservative leaders, even in the federal party, that always just want to cut their losses and cut a deal and say, oh, we can't oppose this, we can't oppose that.
00:04:25.320 But if you really keep backpedaling on it, you know, what what's left to define us from the liberals?
00:04:31.900 I think it'll be a consequence of us continually losing elections if we adopt carbon pricing as a mainstay conservative policy in Canada.
00:04:44.280 Ninety percent of, you know, polls have been released.
00:04:47.160 Eighty to ninety percent of conservative voters are against it.
00:04:49.600 And most polls show that the vast majority of Canadians, regardless of province, are against the carbon tax.
00:04:56.440 And I also think that there are specific interests.
00:04:59.260 Look, I think the green lobby that wants the carbon tax is very well funded.
00:05:03.380 They have lobbyists in every level of government.
00:05:05.920 We don't know what's discussed in those private meetings with ministers at any level.
00:05:10.360 They're really pushing it hard.
00:05:12.240 And if you look at it on the other side, the corporate interests that should be against the carbon tax are not.
00:05:19.120 They're a bunch of pushovers.
00:05:20.200 Most of the oil CEOs have backed off it and they say they're for it.
00:05:25.580 They've sold out on the issue.
00:05:27.200 And because it's not really a corporate issue, it's a taxpayer issue because, you know, an oil company can get a carbon tax slapped on them.
00:05:34.860 They'll just pass the cost down to the consumer or the taxpayer, whatever you want to call it.
00:05:41.180 And so the consumer is really left without a choice on the product they're going to use.
00:05:45.920 They have to swallow the carbon tax.
00:05:47.920 It's not going to change the environment.
00:05:49.460 They don't have a voice for someone to lobby for them the way these corporate interests do on the left to impose a carbon tax.
00:05:56.400 And it really is the best way for government to take money from taxpayers, fill government coffers, and hand out government handouts by their friends, by certain placements, by certain projects, in certain ridings they want to certain corporations.
00:06:16.380 So it really is terrible even just from the beyond the policy.
00:06:21.840 It's terrible from the politics as well.
00:06:23.460 Well, I'm actually glad you brought that up because you have a few different battlegrounds for this.
00:06:28.140 You've got the legal side.
00:06:30.120 Is it constitutional that's going on through the courts now?
00:06:33.300 You've got is it good politics or not, which I know has been a big part of the last little while with the Patrick Brown era and now the Doug Ford era of the PC party.
00:06:42.180 And then you've got the efficacy.
00:06:43.720 Is it good for the environment?
00:06:45.020 Is it good for the economy?
00:06:46.200 Does it accomplish its goals?
00:06:47.980 Where has been the crux of your opposition?
00:06:50.340 Because I know you are a lawyer, so I know you can understand, you know, the constitutional side of this thing.
00:06:55.720 But where has your primary focus been on tackling this?
00:07:00.640 What do you mean by that, Andrew, in terms of?
00:07:02.640 Well, look, I mean, you could argue, look, this is just not the purview of the federal government.
00:07:07.340 You could argue this is bad for politics.
00:07:09.760 It's bad for conservatives.
00:07:10.880 Or you could argue this doesn't work.
00:07:13.120 And I'm curious if you've taken one specific part of that that's been your focus or if really all of it has been the above.
00:07:19.880 Oh, I see.
00:07:20.540 Right.
00:07:20.900 Well, I think it's all of the above.
00:07:22.460 The but the key to the acts, the carbon tax campaign that I think that's been overshadowed is at its core, it's a question of integrity and accountability.
00:07:33.100 Right.
00:07:33.700 You have conservatives who, when they're looking for a vote in a leadership, say that they're against carbon taxes and they are fiscal conservatives.
00:07:42.380 They brand themselves a certain way to get that vote.
00:07:45.880 And after they get the position they want, they reverse course and they tell their voters that they're actually for some form of a carbon tax.
00:07:56.160 That was certainly the case with Patrick Brown.
00:07:59.160 And if you look, there was a poll out the other day that said the number one issue that voters are going to be looking at at the federal election has nothing to do with policy.
00:08:07.340 It has to do with integrity and ethics of the politicians.
00:08:10.320 Because if you present yourself a certain way to your voters and you get those votes and then you decide to reverse course, that's frowned upon, I think, even more than if you present a certain policy position that voters won't agree with, but they at least respect you for explaining and taking the position.
00:08:27.560 Certainly, that's why Brian Pallister suffered, why Patrick Brown suffered amongst his voters.
00:08:33.820 And I think that's going to that's an interesting thing to look at in the federal election as well.
00:08:38.980 And that, you know, that betrayal of the base or the people that are going to get you the vote to win is, I think, at the top of the issue for the thousands of people that support the campaign and are against the carbon tax.
00:08:55.000 That's a really good point.
00:08:56.020 You mentioned about I guess it would have been two years ago when the federal leadership race was on.
00:09:00.480 And I was moderating a debate and there were, you know, at the time, like 97 candidates or something for the leadership.
00:09:07.140 And I had this debate, you know, we go down and, you know, it takes three hours to get from one end to the other.
00:09:11.800 And then Michael Chong, who was the leadership candidate, a conservative MP, says, you know, I support a revenue neutral carbon tax.
00:09:19.000 And there were a few people that booed him at that point.
00:09:21.680 And I actually, as much as I found it to be just a reprehensible notion that the conservative party would champion a carbon tax, I very much appreciated the transparency of it.
00:09:32.820 And I think that you're bang on there.
00:09:34.260 People have a lot more respect for someone who says, look, this is what I believe, this is my goal, versus someone who changes that goal depending on whether their audience is the internal party battle or trying to win over the hearts and minds of the media and all of these other things.
00:09:50.540 And that's where I do think that it's going to backfire on anyone that does that bait and switch.
00:09:57.360 I agree completely.
00:09:58.680 And, you know, the other thing that we keep hearing, this false narrative, it's complete baloney, this false narrative that if conservatives don't adopt a carbon tax, they can't win.
00:10:10.420 And this is the thing that was being pushed.
00:10:12.620 And Ford won the leadership, went into the general election.
00:10:16.940 Basically, he kept going back to scrap the carbon tax because the campaign was not very good because of all the distractions with rigged nominations, voter fraud, corruption in the party.
00:10:27.000 He kept going back to scrap the carbon tax.
00:10:29.060 And he got 2.3 million votes, which is the most votes that any party has ever gotten in Ontario's history.
00:10:35.360 No one cracked 2 million.
00:10:37.140 Only Mike Harris, the former PC leader and premier of Ontario, cracked 2 million.
00:10:42.700 Ford was only the second person to crack 2 million.
00:10:45.780 And he didn't have a position in favor of carbon pricing.
00:10:48.060 And yet, even after he wins, we've got this proposal he has out that's supposed to come in this summer on industrial emission standards, where he agrees on the Paris targets.
00:10:58.800 He agrees with carbon pricing.
00:11:00.400 He wants to replace the federal version with an Ontario version and generate $400 million for Ontario coffers.
00:11:06.940 So there's something in the narrative amongst the lobbyist class and the media class that kind of pushes this idea that if you don't adopt carbon pricing, you can't win.
00:11:18.420 And yet, all the evidence suggests conservative parties will suffer if they adopt carbon pricing and they can win in opposition to carbon pricing.
00:11:28.960 And yet, it doesn't seem to matter.
00:11:31.080 Some people, they keep pushing the narrative because it is a clever narrative from the left, right?
00:11:34.620 Kind of getting the conservatives to drift to the left where there's no difference between them and they lose their base of support and the support starts collapsing.
00:11:43.280 Well, and I saw that.
00:11:44.880 I was sitting in the courtroom for the Ontario carbon tax appeal back in April.
00:11:49.020 And in the Ontario case, as well as the Saskatchewan case, the governments of Saskatchewan and Ontario, and also in the Ontario case, the lawyer representing the United Conservative Party, which is now the government of Alberta,
00:12:01.700 they were arguing tooth and nail that, no, no, no, we agree with everything the federal government says about global warming and the environment and climate change.
00:12:10.420 We agree it's a danger.
00:12:11.380 We agree with, and, and, you know, if they do fine, but when you accept all of those premises, you set yourself up for exactly what you're describing, which is then, okay, what are you going to do about it?
00:12:23.620 And I feel that that is putting conservatives in a corner in a way.
00:12:27.640 I mean, they're putting themselves there because they don't want to say, well, actually, we don't think it's as bad as you say, or we don't agree with this particular part of your, your, your findings or your statement.
00:12:38.780 And you're always going to then be forced with, okay, well, what are you going to do about it?
00:12:43.440 And then you get governments like Doug Ford saying, okay, we have to put an Ontario solution forward.
00:12:48.500 And, and I know Andrew Scheer will be in that same position.
00:12:50.960 And the key thing that, you know, it's really simple.
00:12:55.060 The key thing that you mentioned is if you concede the argument that the Paris Accord and the arbitrary number that Justin Trudeau picked of 30% reduction in emissions, if you concede the argument that all of that in carbon pricing will solve climate change, then I don't know how you went in court and say that the federal government shouldn't put it in because our provincial carbon price or carbon tax is better or just as good.
00:13:20.180 It's a really weak position to go into, they should have went into court, poking holes into the entire Paris Accord, the arbitrary targets for every country, the fact that the fact that if Canada reduces its emissions by 30%, global emissions will go up because of carbon leakage.
00:13:38.560 They should have poked holes in all of that instead of coming forward and saying, we have our own carbon tax, carbon price through regulatory means, that's the Ford government, and betraying the voters that, that voted for him on the pledge to scrap the carbon tax.
00:13:52.820 Andrew Scheer is going to be in the same position.
00:13:55.100 I don't think he's going to, look, he won the leadership.
00:13:58.400 He was the strongest against the carbon tax.
00:14:00.640 I think if you go back to that federal leadership, and one of the things that we haven't discussed is Bernier was actually pretty weak on the entire carbon tax question.
00:14:09.380 He put most of his ammo on supply management.
00:14:13.460 If he was as hard against the carbon tax as Andrew was, maybe he could have squeaked it out.
00:14:19.280 So, Scheer is going to have a challenge here to see, you know, all the voices in this caucus, and there's obviously voices like Michael Chong that want the party to adopt a carbon tax, and we'll see which road they go later in the month.
00:14:32.320 But, you know, I'm an advocate against the carbon tax.
00:14:35.620 Ninety percent of conservatives are against the carbon tax, and my job is to hold their feet to the fire, regardless of party, regardless of stripe, because it really is a conservative position to take.
00:14:47.020 And if they don't want to take it, they can't just hide behind the blue sign and the capital C conservative in the title.
00:14:53.340 I think Doug Ford's win in Ontario came down to a lot of things.
00:14:57.320 I think opposition to carbon tax was a part of it, but frustration with Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals, frustration with hydro rates, all of these, and the integrity issue that you mentioned earlier.
00:15:07.600 When push comes to shove, looking ahead to the federal election, do you think carbon tax is the valid issue for a lot of people?
00:15:15.080 Because the one reason I asked that, when I was knocking on doors as a candidate, only one person mentioned the environment was their top priority.
00:15:24.120 I asked thousands of people, one person said the environment, that's it.
00:15:27.560 Whereas I had hundreds that said, thousands actually, that said taxes, cost of living, etc.
00:15:33.480 So do you think the carbon tax specifically can be a valid issue that is a winning one for conservatives?
00:15:38.560 I think if you go back to what I said earlier, the poll that was out the other day, that said the number one issue for voters is integrity and ethics from a politician.
00:15:49.940 And how that ties into policy is voters always look, are you consistent with the message and the vision that you're selling us?
00:15:57.960 Or are you flip-flopping and are you wishy-washy or are you just changing your mind based on whoever puts a microphone in front of your face?
00:16:07.560 And are you going to cave when the pressure mounts?
00:16:10.780 Doug Ford did not only win because Kathleen Wynne was unpopular.
00:16:14.740 If you look at the numbers, the Liberal vote dropped and most of that vote went to the NDP.
00:16:20.400 They kind of traded numbers, 1.1 and 1.8 million voters.
00:16:24.200 But Doug Ford and the PC Party's votes went from 1.5 million to 2.3.
00:16:28.580 He got 800,000 more voters than we had gotten under Ernie Eves, John Tory and Tim Hudak in the last four elections.
00:16:36.840 And those are conservatives who largely just skipped the last four elections.
00:16:42.340 And it closely resembles the Stephen Harper vote of 2 million.
00:16:45.860 And what drove that was obviously people were tired of Kathleen Wynne, which is why the Liberal vote collapsed. 1.00
00:16:53.060 But based on the Ford Nation brand that Rob Ford built and presenting a fiscal conservative and a conservative vision of Ontario inspired 2.3 million voters to come out.
00:17:04.600 And if he starts backing off with industrial emission standards and starts wavering every time the heat gets pushed, that 2.3 million will collapse very quickly.
00:17:13.320 We're seeing it in the polls right now.
00:17:14.940 And federally as well, I think carbon taxes is a serious issue.
00:17:20.320 But what's more serious for voters is in the integrity and the principles and the ethics of the candidate.
00:17:26.120 Are they standing behind the vision that they've always had or will they cave under the pressure?
00:17:31.120 Will they inspire people or will they just tell people what they want to hear in any certain interview at a certain time?
00:17:36.640 I think that's what it always comes down to.
00:17:38.520 Policy is difficult.
00:17:40.380 You have the base of every party that agree with their policies and you've got the small, you know, quote unquote swing voter that could be persuaded.
00:17:49.300 You've got to persuade the largest number of people to vote for you at the end of the day.
00:17:53.960 Well, I think you've hopefully persuaded some people with your comments today.
00:17:57.560 Jim Carajalios, founder of Axe the Carbon Tax, joining us now.
00:18:00.940 Thanks a lot, Jim.
00:18:01.900 Really appreciate it.
00:18:02.620 Thanks, dude.
00:18:06.780 You're welcome.
00:18:07.660 You