Juno News - January 28, 2019


Justin Trudeau's carbon tax goes on trial this year

Topics
carbon tax battle
Hosted by
Andrew Lutton
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Jason Kenney Manitoba
John McCallum has gone and blown it Liberals don't want ＂misinformation＂ to influence election. But who defines it？

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

179.6

Word count

671

Sentence count

40


Summary

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

In this episode, Andrew Lutton talks about the challenges to Justin Trudeau's proposed carbon tax in court in Ontario and Saskatchewan, and why the federal government should not get its nose in what is supposed to be a provincial matter.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 With a federal election looming, 2019 may well be the year that Canada gets rid of Justin Trudeau.
00:00:08.260 But the departure of the much-loathed carbon tax might take place earlier in the year.
00:00:13.640 There are two cases coming up in the court calendar, one in Saskatchewan and the other in Ontario,
00:00:18.640 where the respective provinces are putting a constitutional question to Justin Trudeau's carbon tax.
00:00:24.640 This is, of course, the policy that Justin Trudeau wants to federally impose,
00:00:28.200 a tax that will work up eventually to $50 per ton of emissions, something that will be a job killer.
00:00:35.060 And we're already starting to see the implications and impacts of job-killing carbon taxes in Canada.
00:00:42.120 The province of Saskatchewan is fighting this in court,
00:00:44.900 saying basically that the federal government doesn't get to put its nose in what is supposed to be a provincial matter.
00:00:51.160 That's the argument that Ontario is putting forward.
00:00:53.580 But the interesting thing about this battle is that it used to be just Saskatchewan versus the country.
00:00:59.400 And now Justin Trudeau is very much in the minority.
00:01:02.580 Saskatchewan's against Trudeau's carbon tax.
00:01:04.640 Alberta soon will be when Jason Kenney's the premier.
00:01:07.740 Manitoba's against it.
00:01:08.860 Ontario, PEI, New Brunswick.
00:01:11.080 Trudeau is very quickly finding himself with only one ally, and that's British Columbia.
00:01:15.500 Now, I love BC, but let's face it, they're not exactly the province we should be following on, well, pretty much anything.
00:01:20.700 Now, what's interesting is that BC is intervening in the Saskatchewan case as well as the Ontario case.
00:01:27.200 They're actually going to court to stand up for Justin Trudeau's carbon tax,
00:01:31.380 saying that it is in fact federal jurisdiction because the fight against climate change has to be a national one
00:01:37.060 rather than isolated provincial efforts.
00:01:40.000 Saskatchewan will be arguing its case in just a couple of weeks' time.
00:01:43.800 Putting the question to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals,
00:01:46.620 Ontario will be intervening to support Saskatchewan's belief,
00:01:50.800 and the reverse is going to be true as well.
00:01:53.460 When Ontario has its carbon tax appeal in court in April,
00:01:58.000 Saskatchewan will be intervening.
00:02:00.300 The fact that we have these two separate cases going on in two separate provinces
00:02:04.840 is indicative of the fact that this case is going to eventually wind its way up to the Supreme Court.
00:02:10.440 But we still have to pay very close attention, not just to what happens in the courtrooms,
00:02:15.360 but what arguments the federal government uses to justify this carbon tax.
00:02:20.800 Remember, this isn't just about Justin Trudeau saying that he supports a tax on carbon
00:02:25.340 and he supports the economic negative consequences.
00:02:28.960 This is Justin Trudeau saying that individual provinces with democratically elected governments
00:02:33.720 don't have the right to say no.
00:02:36.700 That they don't have the right to determine their own economic and environmental policy.
00:02:41.760 That's what's at stake here.
00:02:43.220 So for the case coming up in Saskatchewan in just a couple of weeks,
00:02:46.140 the way the federal government defends its position
00:02:48.300 is likely to become the model for what happens in Ontario.
00:02:51.940 These things likely to wind their way up to the Supreme Court.
00:02:55.360 Now, of course, all of this is a moot point.
00:02:57.160 If there are enough changes in government,
00:02:58.860 including perhaps a change in the federal government
00:03:01.480 that may reverse the carbon tax right then and there.
00:03:04.740 But we can't hold out hope on that
00:03:06.800 because we need a decisive decision
00:03:08.860 that prevents any future government
00:03:11.020 from being able to impose this top-down carbon tax its own way.
00:03:15.760 This is a fight that we're not giving up.
00:03:17.680 This isn't just about standing firm against job-killing carbon taxes.
00:03:21.820 It's also about standing up for the right of individual provinces and their governments
00:03:25.740 to determine their own policy directives.
00:03:27.980 We can't be in this fight alone.
00:03:29.820 We need your support.
00:03:31.260 Join my Heritage Club by going to www.truenorthinitiative.com
00:03:35.960 and for just a small monthly contribution,
00:03:38.200 support the work that my colleagues and I are doing here for you and your rights.
00:03:42.460 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.