Canadians say they can’t afford Trudeau’s carbon tax
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Summary
On April 1st, Canadians across the country gathered to protest the Trudeau carbon tax and its 23% increase that comes amidst a already dire cost of living situation. While at the protest, I ran into two people who deal with people that are impacted by this tax. The first is Melissa McKee, the wife of Pastor Rob McKee and the other is Janet Creighton, who works with mushroom farmers.
Transcript
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On April 1st, Canadians across the country gathered to protest the Trudeau carbon tax
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and its 23% increase that comes amidst a already dire cost of living situation.
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Canadians are also frustrated that while their taxes are going up, so are the salaries of
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politicians. Members of Parliament are now going to be enjoying a $203,000 a year salary,
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while Trudeau will be earning a $406,000 salary. For the MPs, this makes them the second highest paid
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legislators in the world. Now, if they deserve to be the second highest paid legislators in the world
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or not, it's not for me to decide. That's for people like you at the next election. But nevertheless,
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I thought I would go down to the protests in Ottawa and speak to people, get their thoughts on what's
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going on and also see how the tax has personally affected them.
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Well, I'm here fighting this tax that our government is putting all on us and more rules,
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more regulations, and it's just got to stop or there ain't going to be no farmers, no farmers,
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If the government increases tax, which means that you have less money, you have less freedom.
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When I was young, at 25, everybody at 25, we had a job and we had a house, we had a car,
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we had a family. Now the people at 25, they live with their parents in the basement. They don't
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even have a job and they don't expect anything good for the future.
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People are already struggling heavily for everything, so we can't afford this tax. We
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can't afford the raises that they're giving in Parliament right now. I mean, people are struggling.
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I still think Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world, but it's very sad that
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I know that my children won't be able to have the same quality of life that we had.
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While at the protest, I ran into two people who offered some important insights because
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they deal with people that are impacted by this tax. The first individual is Melissa McKee,
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the wife of Pastor Rob McKee of the Vanier Bikers Church. You may remember them from a video I did
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two years ago where I visited their church after they were targeted and we did a tour of the church
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and it is quite phenomenal what they do for the community. And the other individual is Janet
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Creighton who works with mushroom farmers and they both told me some pretty significant stories.
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At the church, they are getting a quite significant increase in the people needing their resources,
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while some of the mushroom farmers that Janet works with say that they are getting astronomical
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carbon tax bills. So here's what they told me. I mean, you and your husband do a lot of great work
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in the community helping people in need. Have you seen this tax impact people in your church,
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you personally and people in the community? Absolutely. We looked at our tax, not our tax bill,
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our hydro. No, sorry. It was the gas bill. Yeah, just the other day. And I could not believe the amount.
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Just in carbon tax alone, we paid $700 a month on a $2,300 bill. So that's taking money from other places.
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Our food bank, we don't even have a food bank, we have a food pantry that people donate to.
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And so honestly, it's grown by, I don't even have a number of what it's grown by. We may have helped
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two or three people a month before. Now we're helping people weekly, multiple people. Our drop-in has
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reopened. We've got 80 plus people coming every week for a meal and to access our food pantry. We're
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serving over 200 people a week in our free store, which is our secondhand store where everything's free.
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So our numbers have almost doubled from last year.
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And I mean, there's obviously a lot of factors in this affordability crisis. A lot of it could be
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linked to the government. Do you think the carbon tax is one of the reasons why so many more people
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are coming to your church for help versus in the past? Because food is more expensive, gas is more
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expensive, heating is more expensive. And when you've got kids, that does add up.
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Well, we're a family of five. And our grocery bill has gone up considerably in the year. And that does
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directly have to do with the carbon tax. And if I think about Canada having less than 2%, contributing
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less than 2%, taking into account the forests that we have, the amount of trees that we have,
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are we really contributing with carbon emissions? Not enough to tax us this way.
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And I think that tax, income tax, tax was supposed to be a temporary measure because of war.
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And there are people like the middle class is going to be erased soon. People that used to be okay are no
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longer okay. And we can't work more than two jobs because there's just not enough time in a day. Our kids
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are suffering. Their education is suffering. Social lives are suffering. It's just one thing after the other,
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piled on top. We don't even know what's at the bottom anymore.
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Melissa, thank you very much. You work with farmers. How has it impacted them? What stories are you
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hearing from farmers about the impact of this tax? Well, for example, one individual mushroom farm
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just outside of Ottawa here is paying close to $200,000 for carbon tax alone. All the farmers are pretty
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much saying that. We know by 2030, they're going to be paying like a billion dollars a year in carbon tax.
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And what that means is the American farmers aren't paying it. So it makes our food very uncompetitive.
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And the grocers will begin to ship the food in from the United States, which is a heck of a lot more
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expensive for consumers. And it's also going to be worse for the environment.
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So do you think this tax is actually having reverse effects? It's not actually
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doing anything good. It could actually do more harm and basically not do what it's intended to do?
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Yeah, more harm for the environment, sustainability, more harm for the farmers,
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because it's going to be making farmers go broke. So one of the things I looked up and I'll be speaking
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about later is businesses in Canada, there's 126% increase in bankruptcies for businesses. And so
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that's like an unbelievable amount. And the mainstream media is not reporting that. I couldn't
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find a single article saying that it was only on stats can. So I think that now farmers will be going
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broke if they do not reverse and spike the hike or give some carbon tax relief because we have to get
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the carbon tax off our food supply system because we're being taxed on a tax on tax again and again
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throughout the supply chain. That's why the food is more expensive in Canada.
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