Juno News - March 31, 2021


Carbon tax fight is now a political one, not a legal one

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Andrew Lawton Show Aaron Woodrick Erin O'Toole Franco Teresano Russell Brand Jason Kenney Henry Ford Doug Ford
The media has failed to report the facts about COVID-19 De-Alienating the West

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13 minutes

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Summary

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

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Justin Trudeau's carbon tax is constitutional. Is this a win for the government or a loss for the opposition? We talk to Aaron Woodrick, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, to find out.

Transcript

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00:00:00.000 The Supreme Court of Canada last week ruled in a 6-3 decision that Justin Trudeau's carbon tax is, in fact, constitutional.
00:00:15.020 Now, I know a lot of people on the left are viewing this as, in some way, vindication for Justin Trudeau's policy,
00:00:21.840 and 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.
00:00:29.480 But in actuality, that wasn't what happened.
00:00:32.500 It is a win for the government.
00:00:34.060 Yes, the Supreme Court upheld that this thing that the government wanted to do was actually something the government was entitled to do.
00:00:40.360 One of the big issues here is that the government was given the green light by the Supreme Court
00:00:45.060 because of the determination that global warming was an issue of national concern
00:00:49.820 in the sense that regulating greenhouse gas emissions is an issue of national concern.
00:00:54.560 Issues where the court determines that provinces don't really have the ability to act
00:00:59.300 are areas where the federal government can, under rare circumstances, claim jurisdiction.
00:01:04.240 That was one of these circumstances, under the Peace Order and Good Government section of the Canadian Constitution.
00:01:11.180 Now, if I'm boring you, that's kind of the whole point of this.
00:01:14.020 This was not a case about climate science.
00:01:16.040 It wasn't a case about global warming.
00:01:18.220 It wasn't a case about any of the things that the government has tried to position it as being a case about.
00:01:23.220 It was about the separation of powers.
00:01:26.240 Aaron O'Toole, for his part, the leader of the Conservatives, has said that he will scrap the Trudeau carbon tax.
00:01:32.200 Last week, we spoke about Aaron O'Toole's speech at the Conservative Convention
00:01:35.860 in which he said climate change is real, the debate is over,
00:01:39.120 and then also took aim at deniers and said that we are not going to allow the Conservative Party to be branded as the party of deniers.
00:01:46.620 The problem is that Justin Trudeau has kind of positioned this as being the best, if not the only, remedy to climate change.
00:01:55.080 So if Aaron O'Toole comes out during the election and says,
00:01:58.000 no more carbon tax, Trudeau, no matter what, is going to say,
00:02:02.000 see, they don't have a plan.
00:02:03.520 See, they don't believe in climate change.
00:02:05.260 And we go back to square one with the Conservatives becoming, in the Liberals' eyes, the party of deniers,
00:02:10.120 but without the benefit of actually having been standing firm and not going to the infighting,
00:02:16.300 which Aaron O'Toole did by unleashing on the Conservative base at the convention last week.
00:02:21.500 But the reason I think this is important is because Justin Trudeau did win an election when he was pushing for this carbon tax.
00:02:29.040 He won an election when he was defending the carbon tax.
00:02:32.920 And politically, a lot of people could say Canadians have made their peace with it.
00:02:37.200 Is that actually the case?
00:02:38.940 Are Canadians on board with this?
00:02:41.140 And is that the case because they believe in it or because no one's put forward another option?
00:02:46.320 I want to talk about some of these implications with Aaron Woodrick,
00:02:49.400 who is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins me on the line now.
00:02:54.720 Aaron, good to talk to you again.
00:02:55.740 Thanks for coming back on the show.
00:02:57.220 Yeah, thanks for having me, Andrew.
00:02:58.840 Now, the CTF was an intervener in the carbon tax case.
00:03:02.600 And I know put forward some really great arguments,
00:03:04.560 not just about the implications of this from a constitutional perspective,
00:03:08.940 but even that fundamental question of is this a tax or not?
00:03:13.100 And for a lot of Canadians who have to pay it, that seems like an odd question to have to be litigated, but it did.
00:03:18.680 Yeah, it's true.
00:03:19.440 And the court, you know, they made a point of saying from a constitutional standpoint that this is not a tax.
00:03:24.140 It's a regulatory charge.
00:03:26.460 You know, we've always suggested that's a distinction without a difference.
00:03:29.940 You can call these things fees or levies or taxes or regulatory charges.
00:03:33.520 The point is, it's money that you don't have to spend on what you want.
00:03:36.920 And that was relevant for our arguments because, of course, people will be familiar with the principle of no taxation without representation.
00:03:44.620 And 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.
00:03:53.980 So the court said it's not a tax.
00:03:55.680 That means it's OK for a cabinet to impose it rather than parliament.
00:03:59.360 Yeah, that's an important point.
00:04:01.840 And 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.
00:04:19.160 And I think that's particularly important given in the last year we've already seen increases in the carbon tax.
00:04:24.840 Yeah, you know, it's remarkable to see three dissents in a decision.
00:04:28.180 Of course, there were six in the majority, but three separate dissents was unusual.
00:04:31.680 And Justice Cote really focused on the process argument.
00:04:35.060 She was essentially, she agreed that the federal government could legislate and sort of govern and impose things related to greenhouse gas emissions.
00:04:44.220 But she had a problem with exactly the thing that we had raised, which was it wasn't parliament deciding this.
00:04:49.660 It was cabinet doing.
00:04:51.560 I know that one of the arguments put forward, certainly in the Ontario case, it may have been put forward in the other ones.
00:04:57.780 I 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.
00:05:10.840 And 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.
00:05:19.700 Would that now be permissible?
00:05:21.780 And I know CBC has a story saying that legal experts are saying this won't open the floodgates, but you're a lawyer as well.
00:05:27.860 You're an advocate for taxpayers.
00:05:29.460 Do 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?
00:05:37.640 Well, you don't even have to go down to a regular lawyer like me, Andrew.
00:05:40.740 You can go with two of the dissenting justices at the Supreme Court.
00:05:43.760 You 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.
00:05:51.980 I think that's actually, interestingly, it might actually someday overshadow this case in terms of importance.
00:05:58.960 Right now, it's about the carbon tax.
00:06:00.960 It's a polarizing issue.
00:06:02.660 But the balance of power between the federal government and the provincial government, I mean, Canada is a fine balance.
00:06:09.220 It only works if you have that sort of that calibration right.
00:06:13.120 And those justices have warned that, you know, this could open the door to tipping the scales in Ottawa's favour.
00:06:18.860 So 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.
00:06:26.200 It didn't say this is good policy.
00:06:27.540 It didn't say that everyone should embrace the carbon tax.
00:06:30.460 It just ruled on the constitutionality.
00:06:33.480 But on the political argument, Canadians have elected and re-elected Justin Trudeau knowing that this was something he wanted to do.
00:06:39.960 Are you finding that there is, in general, in Canada, an appetite for this?
00:06:44.520 Well, 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.
00:06:51.780 They said they had no plans to.
00:06:53.320 And then after the election, they decided to do it.
00:06:55.920 So, you know, some people will like that and some people won't.
00:06:58.700 But it's certainly not brave or honest to do things that way.
00:07:02.060 So I think it's really misleading to claim that people love it.
00:07:05.380 Look, Andrew, I think most people, if you ask them, they say, should we do something about climate change?
00:07:09.860 Almost everyone says yes.
00:07:11.260 Why not?
00:07:11.880 It sounds like a great thing.
00:07:12.900 I 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.
00:07:22.460 And that's where I think people have it wrong about carbon taxes.
00:07:26.000 I think a lot of people think they're great in theory.
00:07:27.740 I 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.
00:07:37.560 Well, 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.
00:07:50.040 All provinces had some plan that they were working on in this effect.
00:07:53.960 And also provinces were seeing declines in emissions.
00:07:56.880 So 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.
00:08:04.580 Well, yes, and, you know, advocates for carbon tax twist themselves into pretzels.
00:08:09.100 They rely on, oh, it's a Nobel Prize winning idea.
00:08:11.400 Well, 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.
00:08:19.120 That's not how it was supposed to work.
00:08:20.920 You also look at provinces like New Brunswick and PEI, which essentially introduced offsetting gas tax cuts and do not meet the federal standard.
00:08:28.900 And yet the Truro government allowed them to implement those policies instead of the federal regime.
00:08:34.640 So there's contradictions and inconsistencies all over the place.
00:08:38.040 And 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.
00:08:47.740 Yeah, 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.
00:08:58.000 But 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.
00:09:06.800 But 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.
00:09:16.840 And 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.
00:09:28.580 And then a year later, those standards could change, correct?
00:09:31.180 Well, yes, I mean, it's a rising standard.
00:09:35.500 And 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.
00:09:50.320 And so they want to give them some flexibility.
00:09:52.640 And 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.
00:09:59.260 And that seems to be Justin Trudeau's government's approach to the carbon tax.
00:10:02.800 You can have any regime you want as long as it's the one that we say is okay.
00:10:06.920 Yeah, I mean, who am I to tell the Supreme Court majority they got it wrong?
00:10:10.120 But I did, when I was reading through the majority decision, find that to be a little bit odd.
00:10:14.260 They were, it seemed like, overstating the autonomy that provinces have as the defense against the federal government regulating this.
00:10:21.740 But again, if the federal government is still forcing them to do that, autonomy within those narrow parameters isn't really that much autonomy.
00:10:29.580 Yeah, you know, the test is supposed to be, and the Supreme Court laid out this test.
00:10:33.560 And 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.
00:10:41.260 What 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.
00:10:52.500 In this case, it's obvious that the provinces could do it working together.
00:10:56.640 And yet the court somehow found that regardless, well, just because they could and they're not doing it the way Ottawa wants to,
00:11:02.520 that gives Ottawa a hammer to bring down on them and force them to do it the way that Ottawa wants.
00:11:07.020 So now that this is in the political realm, what do you think Canadians need to know about this?
00:11:11.980 Because you're right earlier when you pointed out that a lot of people would say, yes, I want to do something about this issue.
00:11:17.620 Is it working?
00:11:20.100 Well, look, people in Canada point to British Columbia as the gold standard on the carbon tax.
00:11:24.740 And I don't know why, because one, it's not revenue neutral anymore.
00:11:28.560 They hold it up to say, oh, look, taxes don't go up.
00:11:31.600 Well, they do. And it happened for exactly the reason we weren't about, which is the feds give it back for now.
00:11:37.300 But 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.
00:11:43.160 And they're going to start asking themselves, do we really want to give that away when we literally already have it in our hands?
00:11:47.800 That's exactly what happened in British Columbia with theirs. 0.71
00:11:50.260 The other is emissions aren't going down in B.C.
00:11:52.760 They're rising more slowly.
00:11:54.980 So 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.
00:12:00.420 But that's not what they promised.
00:12:01.900 They promised that emissions would go down.
00:12:03.740 They're not going down.
00:12:04.700 They're going up.
00:12:05.440 Yes, they're going up more slowly, but that's not going to get us to the net zero that everyone keeps talking.
00:12:10.900 So 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.
00:12:19.540 Yes, look, and I don't deny there's a rebate.
00:12:21.640 People say, oh, why don't you mention the rebate?
00:12:23.340 Yeah, it's better that they give some of the money back.
00:12:26.200 I don't deny that at all.
00:12:27.480 My 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.
00:12:36.240 Why should we give it back?
00:12:37.180 Why don't we just quietly stop giving it back?
00:12:39.280 And that's my fear as we get up to, you know, $150 a ton.
00:12:43.740 And right now people are getting rebates every year with their taxes, $500, $1,000, $2,000.
00:12:48.580 That could go away.
00:12:49.660 And then you're really, you know, up the creek because you're paying a lot more and you're getting nothing to offset.
00:12:55.280 Aaron Woodrick, Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:12:58.620 Always a pleasure, Aaron.
00:12:59.460 Thanks for your work on this.
00:13:01.340 Yeah, thanks a lot, Andrew.
00:13:02.280 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:13:04.500 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:13:09.600 The Andrew Lawton Show.