Juno News - Carbon tax fails to slow emissions in British Columbia

00:00:00.000 There's not a consensus among ordinary Canadians that the plastics ban is the way to go and that

00:00:14.940 plastic straws should be just relegated to exile here. I want to welcome in our old friend Chris

00:00:20.860 Sims, our Monday correspondent and the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:00:25.420 Chris, what about you? Are you hearing this rumored consensus around the plastics ban?

00:00:33.040 Of the ban on plastic straws, you probably saw, of course, the famous now picture of Premier

00:00:39.260 Daniel Smith, your co-host. Is she still your radio co-host? I don't know. I've never been

00:00:43.780 technically relieved of my guest hosting duty, so I'm not sure. Andrew is always on standby at any

00:00:49.720 moment to step in as Alberta Premier. Just in case he throws down the microphone and leaves,

00:00:53.880 that's what he has to go do. Premier Daniel Smith had a pretty funny joke where I think she was

00:00:58.400 drinking a ginger ale and she had two plastic straws shoved together and she was drinking it like

00:01:03.160 this. It's one of those things where I think it's more than just it being silly to have this gross

00:01:10.740 paper straw that's disintegrating in your drink. I think it's because this has really gotten up

00:01:15.840 into people's faces, right? Like what you're choosing to eat with, right? What you're choosing

00:01:21.220 to eat, that sort of stuff. That's really kind of a domestic personal choice. And I think the plastic

00:01:27.020 straw thing versus the paper straw thing really bugged people. And so I think it's emblematic really

00:01:32.800 of how this government is operating. What I found interesting is that it sounds now like he's trying

00:01:39.060 to make noise that perhaps a global treaty on plastics and everybody agreeing on plastics might

00:01:46.300 be too complicated. That's the first time I have ever heard that minister tap the brakes on anything.

00:01:53.840 Now, I could be misinterpreting him, but some of the tone that was coming from Minister Guibo there,

00:01:58.800 I found a little bit more slowed down than he usually is. I'll also point out that people just don't

00:02:05.960 want these sorts of bans. So in the city of Edmonton, for example, there's now this big

00:02:11.260 bag fee. It's 15 cents per bag, and then it's going to be going up to 25 cents per bag. Pretty

00:02:17.780 soon it's going to be $2 per reusable bag. You know, those things that are filling up all of our

00:02:23.500 sink cupboards and all of our pantries, at least speaking for myself. And so that's really costing

00:02:28.280 people a lot of money and people are pushing back on it. They push back on it so hard in Calgary,

00:02:32.820 Andrew, that they've had to repeal it. So Calgary tried doing this whole, you're going to have to

00:02:37.660 pay every single time you use a bag. And now they've had to back off on it completely. So I

00:02:42.500 think they are getting some serious pushback on this. Yeah. And I mean, my view on the plastic

00:02:47.820 straws thing has never been that plastic straws are my hill to die on. It's that a government that's

00:02:52.600 going to regulate something so small and so minor will also regulate the big things that do matter.

00:02:58.780 And I think you need to push back against these small incursions. And to be fair, a lot of companies

00:03:04.260 now are keeping with the plastic straws. Now, I don't know if that's just because they're buying

00:03:09.140 into the environmental argument, or if it's just because they're not exactly confident that the

00:03:13.040 ban won't be reimposed, or they had to invest so much in all of this inventory and redo their supply

00:03:18.000 chains around it, whatever the case is. But I've never been against individual companies doing that.

00:03:23.120 It's always been when government is the one that manages it and manipulates it. And absolutely,

00:03:27.320 if they're going to, because that's how regulation comes. That's how government grows. They regulate

00:03:32.100 the things that people are already doing. And then they start encroaching a little bit more on other

00:03:36.640 things. And at a certain point, the regulatory regime has gotten so large, you can't really

00:03:41.320 dismantle it. Yes, exactly. And before you know it, you're trying to balance all of your groceries

00:03:46.640 leaving the store. In fact, just this past weekend, when I managed to go get our groceries,

00:03:52.200 I was watching this lady and she clearly, you know, I don't know if she didn't have the money to buy 1.00

00:03:56.500 another bag on top of another bag that she must have forgotten in her car, but she was trying to

00:04:00.900 leave. And you know, those little roast chickens that come in like the plastic container thingy, 0.58

00:04:05.440 and they've got the little cardboard sleeve. She had three of them in her hand. Like she grabbed like

00:04:10.880 this, like without the bag, and she's trying to get past the lottery counter and they're about to fall

00:04:16.080 out. And so luckily, one of the checkout ladies ran after her and just gave her a paper bag, like, 1.00

00:04:22.320 shh, don't tell anyone here. Right. And she managed to make it to her store. And this is what I'm

00:04:26.760 getting at is, yeah, is that the hill to die on? Well, logically, no, but that's such a personal

00:04:32.100 thing, right? They're right up in your grill, right at the grocery store counter all the time.

00:04:36.540 They're right there for your meal with your family at the restaurant all the time. And to your point,

00:04:41.520 I think that then is what gives them more incursion into your life. And further on the idea of a global

00:04:48.160 issue when it comes to plastics. A couple of years ago, it was in the New York Post. And I'm trying

00:04:53.840 to recall from memory here, I think they reported that nine out of 10 of the plastic polluting rivers

00:05:00.720 in the world were in Asia and in Africa. Meaning this is not a problem, you know, that terrible idea

00:05:08.640 of the garbage patch and the big floating amount of plastics pollution in the ocean. It's not coming

00:05:13.720 from North America and it's not coming from Europe. So why the strange impositions on Canadians? Like

00:05:19.980 I have never seen someone pick up, you know, a coffee cup and throw it into a river. People would

00:05:26.480 have a stroke in Canada if you watch somebody do that. Further, I often see volunteer organizations

00:05:33.580 from every walk of life. That's often what they'll go do is pick up litter in the spring and make sure

00:05:39.500 our shorelines are nice and clean. And so it would be probably smarter for the Trudeau government to

00:05:45.060 encourage that sort of behavior instead of always with the stick, which doesn't result in anything.

00:05:50.840 Yeah. And a lot of it, I mean, it's funny because the government will always use moments where it

00:05:56.380 believes it has political capital to do big things. So in Canada, we've seen firearms law that have done

00:06:01.820 this. A lot of the push for a plastic span came after that viral video of a sea turtle, a poor sea turtle

00:06:06.580 that had a plastic straw suck up its nose. It was tragic. It was difficult to watch. It also was

00:06:11.020 not Canadians' problem and it was not Canadians' fault. This was the, you mentioned it earlier,

00:06:16.000 this was the Danielle Smith picture where she celebrated the plastics ban and engaged in a 0.99

00:06:23.780 consumption of ginger ale there. I still like mine better though. This, because I was a bit more

00:06:28.440 celebratory, I think, than the premier was. There we go. Yeah.

00:06:31.540 That was mine. It reminds me. Take that, sea turtles.

00:06:36.180 Take that, sea turtles. Oh, you know what? No sea turtles were harmed in the making of that gag.

00:06:40.280 But again, it's the little things that matter. Yeah, for sure. And you know what? The sea

00:06:44.900 turtle picture, and I remember it because it was very impressionable, right? And it's awful.

00:06:49.180 It reminds me, I grew up in the 80s. It reminds me of this video footage that all of us 80s kids saw

00:06:54.360 of, you know, those six ring plastic things that go around a six pack?

00:06:58.440 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, um, yeah. It showed a duck.

00:07:01.640 I was going to describe them and I realized you already did. I know exactly what you're talking

00:07:04.720 about. Yeah, yeah. It showed a duck and this poor bird, this waterfowl, don't remember what

00:07:09.380 kind of duck, sorry, but this waterfowl had this around its neck. And I remember this video was

00:07:14.320 everywhere and this is way before the interwebs kids, but it really made an impression. And so now

00:07:18.700 you can find like any Gen Xer, if you watch them with those things, they're snipping them into little 0.98

00:07:23.280 tiny pieces before. My wife does that as well. And I always wonder, maybe she got the video.

00:07:27.600 I guarantee you, she saw the video of this duck. And so this is my point, is that people

00:07:32.960 who are in a position to care, do care. And they take efforts to make sure that they aren't

00:07:39.320 endangering the environment. And I think that's what annoys people a lot is when they see something

00:07:44.460 like this coming from the Trudeau government saying, you know what, guys, I've got this.

00:07:48.480 How about you guys figure out how to balance the budget or maybe run the passport office in

00:07:52.880 town. I can figure out my recycling in my own home. And on top of this, if they start getting

00:07:58.680 into something like a plastics registry, I just shudder to think at how much money they're going

00:08:03.320 to spend on this. To your point earlier, with the failed long gun registry, we wound up blowing

00:08:08.700 almost $2 billion on that thing. And it didn't make Canadians any safer from the lawful duck hunters 0.73

00:08:15.400 here in Canada. Same thing going with this current gun confiscation. Again, taking firearms away from

00:08:21.140 law abiding firearms owners, they haven't seized a single one yet. And they've already blown millions

00:08:26.600 of dollars. So just imagine what kind of money they could burn with the plastics registry here in

00:08:31.580 Canada. So I wanted to move to your old province here for a moment, British Columbia. British Columbia

00:08:38.160 is a useful test case for a lot of things. I think for drug policy, it's been a useful test case now

00:08:43.160 because this is what happens when the decriminalization harm reduction left gets its way. But also on the

00:08:49.220 carbon tax, because BC had a carbon tax. I was going to say before it was cool. It's not cool

00:08:52.760 now. But BC had a carbon tax before the federal government pushed one. So we've got a fair bit

00:08:58.040 of runway in BC to see what a carbon tax does. And shocking answer is, Chris? Emissions have gone up.

00:09:06.200 Up, not down with a carbon tax. And thank you for giving me a chance to highlight this because this

00:09:11.740 is something that was brought up. I did a debate. Sorry, I talked to another show host, but it wasn't for

00:09:15.920 very long and I didn't. All right, get lost. I did a debate on TVO with Steve Bacon. I wasn't

00:09:23.460 debating him, but I was debating a University of Ottawa professor. And he said something to the

00:09:28.100 effect of, and I'm paraphrasing, well, emissions in British Columbia have gone down. No, they have

00:09:33.080 not. And in fact, if you pull up the government website and you can pull up the actual data, I don't

00:09:38.980 know if you guys have the screen captures there. It looks like a super boring website, but you can click

00:09:43.800 on something called provincial inventory and it pulls up this spreadsheet and it goes way back to

00:09:49.060 like, you know, the 1990s, right? So there we go. So this is the British Columbia government website.

00:09:55.340 If you click on the provincial inventory there, where you see that hyperlink and it pops up into

00:10:01.740 an Excel sheet. And from there, you can take a look at the data. So the BC liberal government led by

00:10:08.460 then premier Gordon Campbell introduced the provincial carbon tax in British Columbia back in

00:10:13.680 2008. So it came into effect in fiscal year, 2008, 2009 back then, just to note, they introduced it

00:10:22.320 as being revenue neutral on paper. It was because it did do a corresponding income tax cut that year,

00:10:27.980 but very quickly it became just a huge tax grab. So spoiler alert, but if you go to the actual data

00:10:33.680 site and you take a look starting in 2009, you can see how many total megatons of carbon CO2 was emitted

00:10:42.980 that year. Then if you follow along 10 years. Okay. So 10 years is usually a good data set go from 2009

00:10:50.680 to 2019 emissions went up Andrew by more than 7%. Even if we wanted to include the terrible years of

00:11:02.320 when people were locked in their homes or businesses were shut down and they weren't allowed to travel

00:11:06.520 during the pandemic and the lockdown years of 2020, 2021, it still went up by nearly 2%.

00:11:13.400 So this is the whole point. When the BC government first hatched this carbon tax back in 2008, which

00:11:20.160 by the way, is the model. The Trudeau government has said out loud that British Columbia is their model

00:11:25.320 for the carbon tax. So what you see there, they're the canary, right? So they promised back in 2008 that

00:11:31.880 their carbon tax would stop at $30 a ton, be revenue neutral, reduce emissions, and that they would provide

00:11:39.380 a whole bunch of alternative affordable energy sources. None of those things is true today.

00:11:45.700 The problem that I have with this is that the sensible response is that someone says, oh, wow, I guess this

00:11:52.540 isn't working, but that's never the way they go. The way they go is, wow, we're not doing it aggressively

00:11:57.820 enough, or it would have been worse if we didn't. And that's the most challenging part of this is that

00:12:04.660 you're making an incredibly valid point that will be completely reversed in meaning by the people that

00:12:09.780 brought us in here in the first place. You're right. And that is often what they say. So on the first one,

00:12:15.340 wow, that means we're not doing it hard enough. Okay. What do you guys want? Like you already see

00:12:22.240 record lineups for food banks. Okay. You already see people not being able to afford to heat their

00:12:28.740 homes. So the average Alberta family, for example, is going to be out more than $900 this year net with

00:12:36.240 the carbon tax that's caused by the, by the carbon tax. The folks in British Columbia, they're getting

00:12:41.880 screwed even more, frankly, Andrew, because by the time a two person working family hits around $72,000 a

00:12:48.740 year around there out there, they get zero for a rebate. So if you are a hairdresser and you're

00:12:55.820 married to a grocery store manager, you're not getting any rebate in British Columbia. Like all

00:13:01.300 of the middle class there is getting completely screwed on the carbon tax. So my question to them

00:13:05.460 then would be, okay, what do you want? You want people freezing to death in the dark? What do you mean

00:13:09.880 do it harder? And secondly, the idea that, oh, well, if we hadn't done it, it would have been higher than

00:13:15.700 it would have been. That's magical thinking because we can't know. Like we cannot know that.

00:13:21.720 And what's interesting here is that politicians will promise you all sorts of things. Like I

00:13:25.880 mentioned, they said it was going to stop at $30 a ton, be revenue neutral, reduce emissions,

00:13:30.340 all that great stuff. And then when their scheme doesn't work out, they run out onto the pitch and

00:13:35.320 they move those goalposts really fast. I've also heard people say, oh, well, you know, there's more

00:13:40.360 people there now. Okay. So what then you want to shut down immigration to British Columbia?

00:13:43.920 Is that your plan? Because none of this makes sense. Every single time they try to set something

00:13:49.440 up, it doesn't work and it doesn't make sense. And what's super frustrating is that when you give

00:13:53.640 them a mathematical solution of, okay, tackle the big end of the arithmetic problem, sell natural gas

00:13:59.200 to your point with the, with the Polish leader there, sell natural gas to India, reduce their super 0.57

00:14:04.860 heavy duty emissions. They don't like that answer. They're clinging to this carbon tax in almost a

00:14:10.100 religious way, even though it's not working. Yeah. Very well said. All right. Well, great 0.94

00:14:15.180 points all around, Chris. We will check. Oh no, I'm off next Monday. So we'll check in with you in two

00:14:19.140 weeks. Oh, but thank you so much as always for coming on. Always great to talk to you, Chris,

00:14:23.520 from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Safe travels. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:28.040 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 06, 2024

Carbon tax fails to slow emissions in British Columbia

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