Canadians are sick of Trudeau’s carbon tax
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Summary
In this episode, I'm joined by the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano, to talk all things carbon tax and why it's time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to just scrap the carbon tax.
Transcript
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Now, I realize when I just mentioned that like all of my guests end up running as conservative
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candidates, that's like an awfully big, an awfully big setup to my next guest, Franco
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Terrazzano, who is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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Absolutely not, other than the fact that Canadians are furious with the government raising
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And I will say, Pierre Paliyev yesterday in his endorsement of Jamil and his congratulations
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today said, I think it was the first thing he mentioned, that Jamil is going to help him
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So you don't want to extrapolate too much from by-elections, but when you look at how much
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the Liberals have been doubling down and tripling down on the carbon tax, and you look at where
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they are in their polls, it's clear that Canadians are not happy with this.
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Yeah, Canadians are sick and tired of the federal government in Ottawa making our lives more
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Not only does it make our lives more expensive, it makes the necessities of life more expensive.
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It makes it more expensive for you to fuel up your car, to get to work, to go to see the
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in-laws, it makes it more expensive for you to heat your home during the cold winter months,
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and it makes it more expensive for you to put food on your family's table because the
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carbon tax taxes the farmer, taxes the trucker, and therefore you pay higher bills.
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And look at these poll numbers that the CTF just released.
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About seven in 10 Canadians are against the Trudeau government's upcoming carbon tax hike.
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And no matter how you slice the numbers, every single demographic, age, gender, income level,
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education level, they're all, vast majority of Canadians against the carbon tax hike.
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And no matter which province they're in, again, the vast majority of Canadians are against the
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So Canadians are united in the fact that we're furious about the government making our lives
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The only question now is, are Trudeau and his Liberal MPs going to listen to Canadians,
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or are they going to keep cranking up their carbon tax?
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You know, to force you into a bit of a pundit role for a moment here, Franco, one of the
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things that I find the Liberals did that was incredibly short-sighted was offer that exemption
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on home heating oil that carve out to Atlantic Canada.
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Now, I think it's the right thing to give Canadians relief on the carbon tax.
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And I think they should have done it to every single region, every type of home heating,
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But when they did that, it was a strategic blunder because all of a sudden, every government
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in the country, including the NDP in Manitoba, conservatives elsewhere were like, whoa, whoa,
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Like, on one hand, you're positioning this as being this panacea for the climate woes.
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And then on the other hand, you're saying, okay, yeah, we can give a little exemption
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Not just for the reason that you bring up, but for the reason that it proves that the
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carbon tax does make life more expensive, right?
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Otherwise, why would Trudeau take the carbon tax off of furnace oil for three years, right?
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So there, the Trudeau government, their talking point is, oh, don't worry.
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Somehow the government will magically put more money in your pocket than it takes.
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And the reason Canadians saw through that talking point is because it's impossible to bring
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in a carbon tax, charge the sales tax on top of the carbon tax, skim hundreds of millions
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of dollars off the top to pay for bureaucrats to administer the carbon tax, and then somehow
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Canadians, all Canadians outside of the Ottawa bubble understand that.
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But the strategic blunder on that is that Trudeau essentially made it obvious himself
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when he announced that they're providing relief by taking the carbon tax off of one form of
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Because if the carbon tax didn't make that heating energy more expensive, then why would
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Trudeau provide that relief in the first place?
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Now, to your point earlier, it's good that some Canadians are getting relief, but he's leaving
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So the only fair thing to do would have been to just provide that relief to every Canadian.
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And of course, we'd like to see him go a step further and just completely scrap the carbon
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Yeah, and that's the one thing I've always pointed out on this is that the Supreme Court,
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I think, made the wrong decision on this when it adjudicated a few years back whether the
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federal government had the jurisdiction to do this.
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But even with that, there's always the political option, which is a government coming in and
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saying, we are going to get rid of the carbon tax.
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And this has become a flagship issue for the conservatives.
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I mean, even some new Democrats, I think, are getting a little bit stronger on this issue,
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certainly provincially in Alberta and Manitoba, and I believe Saskatchewan.
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But at a certain point, do you think that's going to be a mobilizing issue for voters when
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I mean, dude, it's like the price of a jug of milk, of hamburger meat has gone through
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I saw that the bag of milk era is coming to an end.
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And maybe I misread that, but I saw that come across my Twitter feed.
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I mean, just the basic necessities of living in Canada are getting more expensive.
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And one of the reasons for that is the carbon tax.
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And another thing, too, is when people are seeing their grocery bills rise, their gas
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It's pretty easy to just look south of the border where even a new Democrat-run White
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House doesn't have a national carbon tax, right?
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Also, the vast majority of countries don't have a national carbon tax.
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Canada now has two national carbon taxes, right?
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So Canadians, not only are they seeing the cost of living going up, but they're saying,
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How does making it more expensive for me to fuel up my sedan or to heat my home or to
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buy groceries, how does that reduce emissions in places like China, India, Russia, or the
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So, you know, not that I'm a political pundit, but I think it's pretty clear that the key
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economic issue facing Canadians right now is the cost of living.
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And the carbon tax makes all of the necessities of living more expensive here in Canada.
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Did you follow this morality accusation in Saskatchewan?
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So Saskatchewan has been like, you know, Alberta protesting the carbon tax.
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They've said they're just not going to submit the carbon tax money, which is like a great
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trump card because the federal government really can't do anything with it if the money's not
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But then you had Stephen Gilbeau say that it's immoral to do this.
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Well, what about making people's lives more expensive when they're already lining up at food
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Or just Canadians who are stressing out about getting their natural gas bill, right?
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Or what about the farmers who work so hard to feed us and the carbon taxes on natural
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gas and propane is going to cost them a billion dollars by 2030?
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But on the point about Saskatchewan, look, Scott Moe's heart is in the right place, right?
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It's good to see a premier come off the bench and actually stick up for his constituents.
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Now, I'm not going to talk about the legal issue here.
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I'll leave that for the legal beagles, the people who are smarter than I am.
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But what I do know is that it's good to see premiers pushing back against this federal
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And, you know, Trudeau, he's in the wrong here.
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Like, what did Trudeau think was going to happen when he did that political ploy, clearly political
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ploy, when he had a press conference with his Atlantic caucus announcing that he would
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take the carbon tax off of furnace oil while leaving 97% of Canadians out in the cold?
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But let me just illustrate the point that outside of Ottawa, fuel tax relief is a nonpartisan
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Everyone knows Alberta, Ontario, the conservative governments there provided fuel tax relief,
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but also the NDP government in Manitoba completely suspended its fuel tax.
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The liberal government in Newfoundland and Labrador has also provided significant income tax or
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So while Ottawa has been cranking up our gas taxes, you have a bunch of governments across
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Canada, regardless of party stripes, doing the right thing and providing fuel tax relief.
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So one question I'll ask you in closing here on this, Franco, is where you see this going?
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Because I know that I think you and I, it might have been Chris and I or all, I mean, not that
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you, I don't view you and Chris Sims interchangeably, but you're both so witty and intelligent.
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So I can't remember who it was I was talking about this with, but the rebrand, the lipstick
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on a pig of the carbon tax here, do you take from all of this that that isn't sinking in
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with Canadians, that they're not falling for it?
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Well, you know, Trudeau's big problem with his rebrand is that Canadians aren't dumb.
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Canadians know generally how much they spend for the necessities and they know generally how
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This whole rebrand, this whole lipstick on the carbon tax pig is really just an insult
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The Trudeau government appears to seem like, oh, the problem with Canadians is that they,
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we, that us Canadians just don't understand their infinite wisdom in the federal government.
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But the problem for them is that we do understand that the carbon tax makes our lives more expensive.
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We do understand that the carbon tax is not an environmental solution.
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We do understand that the vast majority of countries do not have a national carbon tax.
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We do understand that Canada's economy is heavily reliant on natural resources and that these
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energy taxes are particularly damaging in a big, cold, vast country that depends on these
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So look, Trudeau seems to think, or at least this is the narrative in the media,
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Look, the PMO's communications, it's been sloppy.
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But Trudeau's real problem isn't a communications problem.
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Trudeau has a carbon taxes making people's lives more expensive problem.
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Franco Terrazano, federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.