00:06:02.220And this is kind of the same thing that we're seeing from the O'Toole plan.
00:06:06.180The Conservative defense of this is that it's not a tax because the government isn't able to spend it.
00:06:12.740They're saying it's not a tax because they're putting it in your personal low-carbon savings account.
00:06:17.880But I don't really think that adequately neutralizes the tax allegation.
00:06:23.220Any money that you have to spend on top of the market price of something because the government has made it so that that happens is a tax.
00:06:33.000And maybe I'm taking too simplistic a view here, but I think if you have to spend more for something than you otherwise would if government hadn't put it in, it's a tax.
00:06:43.600So the other problem with this, and I was hoping to talk about this with Aaron O'Toole,
00:06:47.980is that he's previously said that he wants to put the provinces front and center.
00:06:54.360This is a bit of a lengthier exchange, but I want you to hear it in full because Aaron O'Toole and I actually fleshed this out
00:07:00.860at considerable length back in the summer during the Independent Press Gallery fireside chat that I moderated
00:07:07.620because Aaron O'Toole's plan in his platform had said that he wanted to put a large industrial framework in to go after industrial emitters.
00:07:15.860And I was wanting to make sure this was not, in fact, a carbon tax.
00:07:19.620And it took a little bit of pressing, but he gave a very unequivocal answer ultimately,
00:07:24.240which was that, no, the carbon tax is over.
00:09:02.140The Court of Appeal in Alberta in February just supported my view when they said Trudeau's carbon tax is unconstitutional.
00:09:08.380We actually have to say on the federal government, how can we make sure we respect the different approach within a national framework and say this is how we're going to reduce emissions?
00:09:19.800Not with a tax, but with partnering with the provinces to get their emissions down.
00:09:24.900But does your platform or does it not say pricing?
00:09:31.940So can you say that there is not going to be any federal price on carbon at a federal level for anyone, whether it's a family or an industrial emitter?
00:09:41.780The provinces will be in the driver's seat.
00:09:46.400But what if a province says they don't want any part of it?
00:09:48.740A provincial government in some provinces says we don't believe that we need to deal with emissions, we don't believe in a carbon tax.
00:09:54.800Does inaction fit into that national framework if that's what a province chooses?
00:09:58.740If that's what the province chooses, yes.
00:10:00.360So again, and I gave him a scenario, which may not be a realistic one, but it still is nonetheless a possibility that a province says we don't want to play ball.
00:10:09.040We don't want to have this carbon tax or this framework in any way.
00:10:12.720And he said, yeah, if that's what a province wants, that is its right.
00:10:17.260Well, the new plan, and I looked through it considerably.
00:10:20.020I've read it, I think, about three times now.
00:10:21.700It makes repeated references to working with provinces and having provinces' interests represented.
00:10:32.260It's very difficult to see how a province could opt out with what the Conservatives have said about this plan.
00:10:39.320And the Conservative Party of Canada sent some additional information to media about it.
00:10:44.000And they said this, it will, quote, be a national program, but provinces will be able to apply to have a program of their own considered equivalent.
00:10:56.900So the best thing that a province could do is hope that if it has a made in Alberta or made in BC or made in Saskatchewan approach to the carbon tax, that the Conservatives under Aaron O'Toole would allow it to exist.
00:11:11.320This is a complete reversal from what's available now of what Aaron O'Toole said in the summer about how provinces will have the right to do this.
00:11:22.760And I want to see some more clarity on this.
00:11:26.320I have asked Aaron O'Toole's office for an interview.
00:11:33.720I would happily talk to Aaron O'Toole at any point about this or other things.
00:11:37.260But in particular this, because I have not seen a single message of support for this from a Conservative supporter in the last 24 or however many hours since it was unveiled.
00:11:48.720I've seen some caucus members defend it, but I've not seen a single grassroots Conservative say, yeah, you know what, I think this is a good idea.
00:11:56.280Some people are resigned to accept that, well, Conservatives might need to have a climate change plan.
00:12:02.120And therein lies the question, if this is just about neutralizing the issue so that the Liberals can't say they don't have a plan, then this is, I think, a pretty brazen way of doing that, not a particularly good way.
00:12:14.220If it is actually about running into the election with gusto, saying we're the people that are going to cut emissions while not damaging the economy, you're never going to win on the left's turf.
00:12:24.000You're never going to win if the election is about the environment.
00:12:28.840There are four other parties that are running to be the same voice on that.
00:12:32.880The only way you can win as Conservatives is by bringing the argument to a different terrain.
00:12:39.440And this is a mistake that Conservatives make time and time again.
00:12:43.140So now we have Erin O'Toole saying he's running on this plan that is not a carbon tax and that the actual carbon tax that Trudeau is doing, which has the same functional effect, is gone.
00:12:54.480I want to break this down with Erin Woodrick, who is the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins me now.
00:13:04.980You and I spoke a couple of weeks back, I think it was, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Trudeau carbon tax was, in fact, constitutional.
00:13:13.740And I think the prevailing sentiment of our discussion and other areas in which I discussed this on the show was that now it is a political issue.
00:13:21.560So you need a strong opposition from a political party.
00:13:24.700And the only party that's been saying no to the carbon tax is the Conservative Party under Erin O'Toole.
00:13:30.380Does this plan that Erin O'Toole put forward yesterday, consequentially, in your mind, mean an end to the carbon tax?
00:14:14.480And, you know, they've got some explaining to do, given they have for years railed against exactly the sort of thing they're now proposing.
00:14:33.840The Conservatives at the time said, we don't buy that, you know, verbal gymnastics that you're doing here.
00:14:38.800If you're taking money from people, it's a tax.
00:14:40.840But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
00:14:43.540Well, people are getting really caught up in these semantics.
00:14:47.220But again, the point I always make is a lot of people try and focus on what the money is used for in sort of determining whether or not it's a tax.
00:15:19.440And now it's the same with the Conservatives.
00:15:21.160I think most people roll their eyes at the idea that you can just not label it a tax and somehow it will not function as a tax on people.
00:15:28.360I should, you know, put so many asterisks in front of this to establish that I'm not defending the Liberals.
00:15:34.120But one thing I will say is that with the Trudeau carbon tax, the climate action incentive rebate that they gave, which I summarily mocked when it was introduced because you're trying to bribe people with their own money.
00:15:45.620But at least when I cashed my climate action incentive check, I could spend it on whatever I wanted.
00:15:51.140O'Toole bucks are not fungible in the same way.
00:15:53.880Well, that's frankly the danger that I think Mr. O'Toole has raised here is that he suddenly, for some people, made the Trudeau rebates look nice by comparison, right?
00:16:03.300If they were struggling to come up with a way to compete with Mr. Trudeau and they basically landed on coupons or loyalty points instead of cash.
00:16:11.520I mean, look, people like loyalty points, but they rather have cash given the choice.
00:16:15.960And again, I know that Mr. O'Toole says, well, you know, Mr. Trudeau may keep that money.
00:16:21.380Well, guess what? You just broke a promise too.
00:16:23.860So how do we know that you might not change your mind on things later on as well?
00:16:28.280I want to go back to, and you mentioned that he made a promise.
00:16:31.480He didn't just say it in interviews with me, but I know actually signed a pledge with your organization, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:16:38.580And I want to put that photo up on the screen for people to see.
00:16:41.480I know you can't make out the text of it, but basically what was that pledge?
00:16:45.260Yeah, the pledge was to scrap the Trudeau carbon tax and to not introduce a similar carbon tax or cap and trade system.
00:16:54.180So, you know, this is a pretty explicit that he has reversed himself on that.
00:17:00.600And look, I think that's something that he's going to have to answer for with the people who supported him and support him now.
00:17:05.620I know the loyalty program is, if you can even call it that, is the main impetus behind this plan.
00:17:12.600But there were some other things buried in there that I thought were equally concerning.
00:17:16.540One that jumped out at me, and partially for personal reasons, because, you know, covering the election campaign had me flying all over the country in 2019, back when that was allowed.
00:17:26.200It says, studying the potential for introducing new taxes on frequent flyers, non-electric luxury vehicles, and second homes to deter activities that hurt the environment.
00:17:36.740Now, obviously, this is kind of a wink-wink in a way to the left, because these are activities that are associated with wealth and elite status and all of these things.
00:17:45.500But at the same time, this is a very ostentatious usage of the word tax.
00:17:50.360So they're quite open about the fact that if you have a second home, which sounds like something that is a privilege for the 1%, but there are a lot of middle-class families that have family cottages or people that may have a condo that they rent out and are not by any means wealthy, they may be facing new taxes.
00:18:07.480Yeah, well, and that's our concern as an organization that fights for lower taxation, is that they've opened the door wide open to all kinds of potential new taxes and new increases for people.
00:18:17.880Look, we never got into these debates because we're against fighting climate change.
00:18:22.780What we're against is crippling people and businesses and families with higher costs, with newer taxes.
00:18:30.440You know, if the end result of a new measure is that it hammers families or businesses with higher costs, then we're against it, because we think that's damaging.
00:18:40.860And frankly, especially in the case of these carbon taxes, we're not seeing the upside.
00:18:45.100I mean, everybody points to British Columbia as the sort of golden example.
00:18:50.620Well, they've had a carbon tax there for years and emissions have not gone down.
00:18:54.560One thing as well that was a problem with the national carbon tax, in addition to the tax part, was the national part.
00:19:00.780And this was something that was rammed down the throats of provinces, which was really the thrust behind the challenges in court, one of which ended up being found unconstitutional in Alberta.
00:19:11.320But I have to ask about this because I've read through this and there are numerous references to working with provinces, but it still is a national program.
00:19:19.780And I think in a lot of ways, even more national than the Trudeau approach, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, because that act says if a province meets this emissions reduction standard, the federal one doesn't kick in.
00:19:31.700Whereas all that I'm seeing here is that provinces can apply, basically, to have their programs recognized as equivalent.
00:19:40.660And I don't know if you've had any conversations or have looked into this and found any areas where provinces do have explicit autonomy within this plan.
00:19:48.200No, I mean, I do recall Mr. O'Toole saying, you know, that it's going to be a partnership and then it's, you know, they're going to work with the provinces.
00:19:56.120So it sounds like they want to be flexible on it.
00:19:58.060But, you know, that's the same thing that Mr. Trudeau said and he put in a backstop.
00:20:02.080So if he's going to simply replace one backstop, the rebate backstop with the loyalty points backstop, I mean, it's essentially the same.
00:20:10.600It is still Ottawa dictating terms to the provinces.
00:20:13.400Aaron Woodrick, Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:20:17.840Not the greatest day for people like you and I who have been advocating against the carbon tax for some time, you especially.
00:20:24.640But I appreciate you joining me nonetheless.
00:20:45.360So everyone's going to have an O'Toole Bucks card of some kind.
00:20:49.460And I want to say, by the way, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and I came up with that separately.
00:20:56.540So it works out well for a nice synchronicity that we both naturally ended up on O'Toole Bucks is the name for this plan.
00:21:02.900But the whole point of this is that you are, when you go and buy gas, going to have to somehow find a way to tell the government that you've amassed O'Toole Bucks that are then going to convert to your account.
00:21:14.340So like literally, is everyone going to just have to like walk around with like an O'Toole Bucks card?
00:21:19.960And then when you want to redeem them, now all of a sudden we have to have a government bureaucracy that is defining what constitutes a green purchase.
00:21:29.720So if you want a bicycle, well, that's a green purchase.
00:21:34.900If you want to do a home renovation and you want to buy energy efficient windows, that might be one.
00:21:40.300Or an energy efficient furnace, they gave it as an example.
00:21:43.720But now all of a sudden that means that you're going to have individual business owners like some, you know, local HVAC technician in, you know, Lloydminster, Alberta or Lloydminster, Saskatchewan for that matter,
00:21:53.980that has to find a way to redeem O'Toole Bucks.
00:21:57.340And I can see like a black market for this forming very easily where someone says, well, you know, the O'Toole Bucks are non-fungible currency,
00:22:05.780but I'll give you, you know, 80%, you know, I'll give you eight Canadian dollars for 10 O'Toole Bucks.
00:22:11.500And, you know, I'll say that I put some windows in.
00:22:13.740Like, and it's not to say that you want to define a program's infrastructure or logistics by the worst examples of it.
00:22:22.020But you have to think this through, and I have no idea how this is going to be enforced.
00:22:26.820Right now, when I swipe my credit card at the gas station, my credit card company knows and gives me points based on buying gas that are different than points based on buying something else.
00:22:38.380But the problem with that is that it doesn't know how many liters I'm buying.
00:22:43.180So how are the consortium of financial service providers that the conservative plan says could run this going to know how many liters you're buying and therefore how many O'Toole Bucks you are eligible for?
00:22:57.240And again, I don't want to get hung up too much on the details here because the big picture is that this is money that the government is taking from you.
00:23:06.420It is a tax, even if they're putting it in loyalty points in a separate account that you can use.
00:23:12.080If you can only use that for things they tell you you can use it for, it is in fact a tax.
00:23:17.780And if it is a tax, the conservatives have to own it and explain why they have so drastically changed their mind from what wasn't just a mild opposition they had, but something that in a previous time they would go to war over and now are just going along with.
00:23:35.280When we come back in a couple of moments, more of The Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:23:42.200You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:23:47.780Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:23:53.120Just on an amusing note, CBC had done up a story about the conservative climate plan.
00:23:58.560CBC actually broke it before the conservatives did, which goes down that road of why conservatives always leak things to CBC.
00:24:06.240You know they're hostile, but this is, I think, the problem here is that the conservatives were trying to show off to the CBC types that they had this big progressive climate plan.
00:24:16.440And CBC said, this story, this is in the corrections section, this story had been updated from an earlier version, which stated the liberals' carbon tax is $30 per ton.
00:24:27.260In fact, the price went up to $40 per ton April 1st.
00:24:31.440So my response to that was, well, it's okay, CBC.
00:24:34.360It's hard to keep up with the Trudeau tax grab.
00:24:37.160And yeah, when I mentioned earlier that I haven't seen any grassroots conservatives support the conservative climate plan, Gerald Butts has.
00:24:44.300So when you've won Gerald Butts over, you are sure to win over the bulk of the conservative base.
00:24:50.940Well, in any case, back to the things that have been dominating Canadian news for the last few weeks, but seem to be getting worse and worse.
00:25:02.440I'm in Ontario, which is basically ground zero of the never-ending lockdown.
00:25:06.760We don't have a curfew like our friends in Quebec do just yet, although it's something that seems to be perennially on the discussion table among Ontario's conservative government.
00:25:17.100Even places like Alberta, which have in the past been saying that we're open for business, are drifting back into lockdown mindsets and restriction mindsets.
00:25:26.160And the carrot that the government has been dangling in front of voters since the very beginning of this pandemic, well, not the very beginning.
00:25:33.740At first, it was two weeks to flatten the curve, and then two weeks more, and then, hang on, let's just get past Easter, and then it was, okay, until there's a vaccine.
00:25:58.540I think it's really important that we work from facts and understanding of the science around things.
00:26:05.280We know, for example, that the UK is ahead of just about everybody else on vaccinations, and yet they maintain very strong restrictions and are facing a very serious third wave.
00:26:17.960Vaccinations on their own are not enough to keep us safe.
00:26:21.640We need to engage in the right kinds of behaviours, do things that the Conservatives aren't always good at, like wearing masks, keeping distances, and obeying public health rules.
00:26:29.380Now, that clip of Justin Trudeau has been summarily mocked all around the world.
00:26:34.100Tucker Carlson did a lengthy segment on Justin Trudeau's mishandling of this, in which he played that clip, and again, raised the obvious question of what is then the point?
00:26:46.480If you say that Canadians are doomed to a life with mask mandates and lockdowns and other restrictions, even with being vaccinated, what is the whole point of getting a vaccine?
00:26:55.940You're either saying that the vaccine is ineffective, or you are saying that it doesn't matter, and that you like exacting this control over the population,
00:27:05.140which is precisely what anti-lockdown advocates have been saying since the very beginning of this.
00:27:10.660And I do believe that the people who are open to lockdowns that aren't dogmatically in favour of them are very much moving away from that position.
00:27:21.560I've seen, as governments plunge people into third lockdowns, more and more people who are not conservative or not even political start to say,
00:27:40.660So now when they hear the government, remember that some businesses cannot exist with the restrictions.
00:27:47.400Restaurants cannot turn a huge profit when they have to take out half the tables in them.
00:27:51.980Church attendance is already something that is under strain.
00:27:55.360Churches cannot make a lot of money in contributions if people are not in the pews and actually contributing and putting into the collection plates.
00:28:02.220There are lots of other examples of where businesses, institutions, agencies cannot survive under their modified reopenings.
00:28:09.220That's if they're even allowed to be open in modified form, which is not something that can be taken for granted in this day and age.
00:28:18.180So when everyone is looking at the government and then Justin Trudeau gets up there and says, well, even with the vaccine doesn't really matter.
00:28:24.560Now, I think part of that is that he's trying to deflect from the fact that most people in this country are not fully vaccinated.
00:28:31.340I think Canada's like Canada likes to look at the percentage of people that have their first dose of a vaccine, which is in and of itself not worth writing home about.
00:28:40.760But for fully vaccinated, Canada is sitting at, I think, like 2.2%, maybe 2.5% as of the time this comes out.
00:28:49.120And that means that 97 plus percent of Canadians are not immune in the sense of what the government has previously stated is its target for immunity.
00:29:02.820And what in the United States the CDC is saying means you can go around and walk free.
00:29:07.280What's allowing the United Kingdom to open up?
00:29:09.660So when Trudeau says that the UK is heading into a dangerous third wave, even with vaccines, well, that's not what the numbers are saying.
00:29:20.460And Boris Johnson has claimed that lockdowns, not vaccines, were what saved people, which is in and of itself a load of bunk.
00:29:27.560But the UK has people out in pubs, partying in the streets, hanging out, and they are very safe if you look at the numbers.
00:29:34.780So the reason I bring all of this up is because there's more and more, I think, of a shift towards a lot of the concerns that anti-lockdown advocates who were derided as fringe were bringing up months ago.
00:29:47.580The End the Lockdowns Caucus, a movement of federal, provincial, and municipal current and former politicians, I've talked about it before.
00:29:56.120They had a press conference on Parliament Hill Thursday in which Independent MP Derek Sloan, Independent Ontario MPP Randy Hillier, Pastor Michael Thiessen, and former MP and now PPC leader Maxine Bernier talked about what they see as being the greatest threat to Canadians right now.
00:30:14.060And it wasn't just, by the way, COVID, but the lockdowns that governments have imposed as a response to COVID.
00:30:22.220And I asked a question that I thought yielded a very interesting response, which was, this is something that affects everyone.
00:30:28.840It's not just people on the right that are upset with lockdowns.
00:30:31.780Why are we not seeing more of a shift towards embracing the End the Lockdowns Caucus from people who aren't conservatives?
00:30:42.200And one of the things that I'm seeing just from ordinary Canadians is that there's a lot of opposition to lockdowns coming from people who are not partisan conservatives or not even particularly political.
00:30:55.160And we're seeing this across the spectrum.
00:30:57.160But I noticed that in the End the Lockdowns Caucus, it's not just politicians who have been identified with conservatism or with right-of-centre movements, but even a smaller subset of that.
00:31:09.820So I'm wondering why you're not seeing more support for your cause from politicians that disagree with you on other things, but may agree with you on ending lockdowns.
00:31:24.120You know, a lot of it has to do with a lot of it has to do with party discipline in this country.
00:31:29.120Actually, the majority of people in our federal and provincial parliaments belong to a specific party.
00:31:35.980And we have a very we have we have strict discipline here.
00:31:38.540There's there's an understanding, either implicit or explicit, that you, you know, you told the party line and none of the party leaders have decided to, you know, be against the lockdowns or message on these things.
00:31:51.900And so I think a lot of people that that have issues or maybe questions are afraid to to to color outside of the lines.
00:31:59.020You know, overall, I think by leaders and others, it's a it's a it's a failure of courage, a failure of being willing to perhaps stand up and say, hey, we made some mistakes.
00:32:12.820And I think that that's what Canada needs right now is more courage.
00:32:15.860I think what Derek gave a good encapsulation there, I'll just maybe flesh that out a tiny bit.
00:32:26.480The problems that we're facing in our society of the need to conform within society, our political environment is much the same.
00:32:38.460But in a smaller microcosm of the of the distortions and the perversions, that's what's happened, what's happening.
00:32:48.080And people in elected office, especially at the federal and the provincial level, many of them understand that their path to reelection is only through a registered political party.
00:33:06.480And they will not jeopardize their path to reelection, even if it means forsaking their children's and their grandchildren's future.
00:33:18.620They are going along, many of them, knowingly knowing that what we're doing is wrong and cast a significant darkness for our future.
00:33:31.700The same thing happens, although not quite as clearly identified at the municipal level.
00:33:38.400But we've seen what has happened with members of the end of the lockdown caucus at the municipal level who have joined.
00:33:46.860Stephen Van Leeuwen was ostracized and attempted to be and faced much scorn for joining the end of the lockdown caucus.
00:33:57.920He was removed from the position as deputy mayor.
00:34:02.660We've seen others, Mayor David Blisma from West Lincoln, was removed from the COVID health committee for joining the end of the lockdown caucus.
00:34:19.260COVID is being used to beat people into submission and into conformity.
00:34:29.560That you, anybody knows, if you want to have honest, truthful, public discussion and discourse, you will pay a price.
00:34:41.520I'm very thankful that the end of the lockdown caucus are strong men and women across this country who know what it is to be Canadian and know that they will, whatever the price that we were asked to pay, that we will pay it.
00:35:02.760Because our children and our grandchildren, their future is worth it.
00:35:12.680I thought that was a valid enough answer.
00:35:14.720There is more than one way to skin a cat, as the expression goes.
00:35:17.720Although I believe cat skinning has been declared a non-essential service in most provinces.
00:35:21.760So no cat skinning today and not until we flatten the curve or whatever the case is.
00:35:25.660And the problem is that you get a lot of people that want the debate to be had in their area and under their concerns specifically.
00:35:33.680So there were a couple of Alberta MLAs that departed the end of the lockdown's caucus because they didn't like that Randy Hillier shared a comparison to the Nazis.
00:35:43.040And then you have Roman Baber in Ontario who's trying to do his own thing and taking the government to court.
00:35:47.820And he doesn't want to associate with these people.
00:35:49.840And you've got some left-wing voices that are speaking out against it that don't want to be aligned with conservatives.
00:35:54.640And ultimately, I would love to see a cross-partisan array of lawmakers who say,
00:36:00.060Yeah, we may disagree on taxes, on climate change.