00:00:00.000The Supreme Court of Canada last week ruled in a 6-3 decision that Justin Trudeau's carbon tax is, in fact, constitutional.
00:00:15.020Now, I know a lot of people on the left are viewing this as, in some way, vindication for Justin Trudeau's policy,
00:00:21.840and vindication for the climate alarmism, and vindication for all of the things that Justin Trudeau has accused the Conservatives of being deniers and all of that stuff.
00:00:29.480But in actuality, that wasn't what happened.
00:03:26.460You know, we've always suggested that's a distinction without a difference.
00:03:29.940You can call these things fees or levies or taxes or regulatory charges.
00:03:33.520The point is, it's money that you don't have to spend on what you want.
00:03:36.920And that was relevant for our arguments because, of course, people will be familiar with the principle of no taxation without representation.
00:03:44.620And the fact that the federal carbon tax is imposed by cabinet rather than parliament made that determination of whether or not this was a tax pretty important.
00:04:01.840And one of the dissents in the decision actually addressed that, I think, very well, which was that all of a sudden we don't even have a parliamentary oversight to this because this legislation, which was passed in parliament, has really been supplemented by things that are just put at the direct cabinet level.
00:04:19.160And I think that's particularly important given in the last year we've already seen increases in the carbon tax.
00:04:24.840Yeah, you know, it's remarkable to see three dissents in a decision.
00:04:28.180Of course, there were six in the majority, but three separate dissents was unusual.
00:04:31.680And Justice Cote really focused on the process argument.
00:04:35.060She was essentially, she agreed that the federal government could legislate and sort of govern and impose things related to greenhouse gas emissions.
00:04:44.220But she had a problem with exactly the thing that we had raised, which was it wasn't parliament deciding this.
00:04:51.560I know that one of the arguments put forward, certainly in the Ontario case, it may have been put forward in the other ones.
00:04:57.780I don't know, was that if the government is able to claim this as an issue of national concern, which it did, in which the court has found, it would, in some respects, open the floodgates to other things that contribute to these sort of emissions.
00:05:10.840And I distinctly remember one of the examples, and it may have actually been one of the Ontario judges that put this forward, was something like if the government wanted to ban wood stoves.
00:05:29.460Do you think that this has now set a standard that would make it very easy for the government to go after anything else that is connected to emissions?
00:05:37.640Well, you don't even have to go down to a regular lawyer like me, Andrew.
00:05:40.740You can go with two of the dissenting justices at the Supreme Court.
00:05:43.760You know, Justice Russell Brown and Justice Rowe both made essentially this argument, which is that it's a really slippery slope and that the door has been thrown wide open.
00:05:51.980I think that's actually, interestingly, it might actually someday overshadow this case in terms of importance.
00:06:02.660But the balance of power between the federal government and the provincial government, I mean, Canada is a fine balance.
00:06:09.220It only works if you have that sort of that calibration right.
00:06:13.120And those justices have warned that, you know, this could open the door to tipping the scales in Ottawa's favour.
00:06:18.860So let me ask you, Aaron, when we're talking about the political implications of this, it's important to note the court didn't say this is working.
00:06:27.540It didn't say that everyone should embrace the carbon tax.
00:06:30.460It just ruled on the constitutionality.
00:06:33.480But on the political argument, Canadians have elected and re-elected Justin Trudeau knowing that this was something he wanted to do.
00:06:39.960Are you finding that there is, in general, in Canada, an appetite for this?
00:06:44.520Well, let's remember when Justin Trudeau was asked before the last election and his minister were asked if they would increase the carbon tax, they said they wouldn't.
00:07:12.900I think when you start to present people with the facts about how much it will cost them and their families personally, you start to see some pretty steep drop off in terms of support.
00:07:22.460And that's where I think people have it wrong about carbon taxes.
00:07:26.000I think a lot of people think they're great in theory.
00:07:27.740I think when they see how much it's going to cost them, just to give one example, at the pump, when they fill up their car with gas, a lot of them are going to start having second thoughts about their willingness to go ahead with it.
00:07:37.560Well, and one of the arguments as well that I would put forward is that we were not seeing the scenario that the Liberal government pretended it was going after, which was provinces that were just doing nothing.
00:07:50.040All provinces had some plan that they were working on in this effect.
00:07:53.960And also provinces were seeing declines in emissions.
00:07:56.880So the idea that this was only something that the federal government could do, and if left to their own devices, provinces wouldn't, just is fundamentally not true.
00:08:04.580Well, yes, and, you know, advocates for carbon tax twist themselves into pretzels.
00:08:09.100They rely on, oh, it's a Nobel Prize winning idea.
00:08:11.400Well, the economists that won the Nobel Prize for it didn't propose a carbon tax that was layered on top of this web of other regulations and rules.
00:08:19.120That's not how it was supposed to work.
00:08:20.920You also look at provinces like New Brunswick and PEI, which essentially introduced offsetting gas tax cuts and do not meet the federal standard.
00:08:28.900And yet the Truro government allowed them to implement those policies instead of the federal regime.
00:08:34.640So there's contradictions and inconsistencies all over the place.
00:08:38.040And it's going to be really interesting to see going forward how the four provinces that fought this tax are going to, you know, handle it going forward.
00:08:47.740Yeah, and I imagine, I know your counterpart, Franco Terrizano, has been on the show talking about Western alienation and some of the economic situations that are facing Albertans.
00:08:58.000But I can't imagine that the West will take too kindly to not just the Supreme Court telling them, you know, that what their court determined has now been overturned.
00:09:06.800But also that, again, a made-in-Alberta version of this or a province that has a made-in-wherever version of this is not good enough unless the federal government deems it to be so.
00:09:16.840And the part that I find more concerning is that someone like Doug Ford in Ontario, say, or Jason Kenney in Alberta or any other government could meet the standards that the federal government has set out.
00:09:28.580And then a year later, those standards could change, correct?
00:09:31.180Well, yes, I mean, it's a rising standard.
00:09:35.500And look, the whole reason that the feds, and that's the whole reason they've imposed a backstop, so they say, rather than a, you know, one-size-fits-all for the country, is they recognize that different provinces are affected in different ways by the requirements.
00:09:50.320And so they want to give them some flexibility.
00:09:52.640And yet, you know, it brings to mind the old saying, Henry Ford said, you can have any color Ford car you want as long as it's black.
00:09:59.260And that seems to be Justin Trudeau's government's approach to the carbon tax.
00:10:02.800You can have any regime you want as long as it's the one that we say is okay.
00:10:06.920Yeah, I mean, who am I to tell the Supreme Court majority they got it wrong?
00:10:10.120But I did, when I was reading through the majority decision, find that to be a little bit odd.
00:10:14.260They were, it seemed like, overstating the autonomy that provinces have as the defense against the federal government regulating this.
00:10:21.740But again, if the federal government is still forcing them to do that, autonomy within those narrow parameters isn't really that much autonomy.
00:10:29.580Yeah, you know, the test is supposed to be, and the Supreme Court laid out this test.
00:10:33.560And what confused me with the majority is they, I don't know how they managed to twist things around to see the Greenhouse Gas Emission Act meet it.
00:10:41.260What it's supposed to say is, where there's an area of national concern, if provinces together do not have the ability and the willingness to do it, then the feds can step in.
00:10:52.500In this case, it's obvious that the provinces could do it working together.
00:10:56.640And yet the court somehow found that regardless, well, just because they could and they're not doing it the way Ottawa wants to,
00:11:02.520that gives Ottawa a hammer to bring down on them and force them to do it the way that Ottawa wants.
00:11:07.020So now that this is in the political realm, what do you think Canadians need to know about this?
00:11:11.980Because you're right earlier when you pointed out that a lot of people would say, yes, I want to do something about this issue.
00:11:20.100Well, look, people in Canada point to British Columbia as the gold standard on the carbon tax.
00:11:24.740And I don't know why, because one, it's not revenue neutral anymore.
00:11:28.560They hold it up to say, oh, look, taxes don't go up.
00:11:31.600Well, they do. And it happened for exactly the reason we weren't about, which is the feds give it back for now.
00:11:37.300But at some point, especially now with all the debt we're racking up during the pandemic, there's going to be a big pot of money sitting there.
00:11:43.160And they're going to start asking themselves, do we really want to give that away when we literally already have it in our hands?
00:11:47.800That's exactly what happened in British Columbia with theirs.
00:11:50.260The other is emissions aren't going down in B.C.
00:11:54.980So the people continue to be advocates for carbon taxes down, move the yardsticks and say, oh, well, that's better than it would have been.
00:12:05.440Yes, they're going up more slowly, but that's not going to get us to the net zero that everyone keeps talking.
00:12:10.900So in that way, it moves further and further to that argument you raised at the beginning that this is a tax because government's collecting revenue when it goes up.
00:12:19.540Yes, look, and I don't deny there's a rebate.
00:12:21.640People say, oh, why don't you mention the rebate?
00:12:23.340Yeah, it's better that they give some of the money back.
00:12:27.480My point is we've already seen in British Columbia what happens is eventually governments realize that, hey, we've got this big pot of money that we really need.