Juno News - November 27, 2019


Liberal-connected environmental group wants to quadruple carbon tax


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

176.19885

Word count

801

Sentence count

26


Summary

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

A new report from the Ecofiscal Commission calls for a $210-a-tonne carbon tax in Canada, up from the current $50/tonne proposed by the federal government. Andrew Lawton explains why this is a bad idea and why we need a much bigger carbon tax.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 When it comes to the federal government's carbon tax it was clear from the get-go enough was never
00:00:10.720 going to be enough. We are already on track to have a $50 a tonne carbon tax, thanks to the
00:00:16.840 federal government, imposed on provinces that decide they don't want to tax businesses and
00:00:22.360 consumers into oblivion. But now a report from the Ecofiscal Commission, a body that has been
00:00:28.560 lobbying heavily for a carbon tax scheme in Canada for years, has said that we need a $210 a tonne
00:00:36.480 carbon tax in Canada. In other words they want to quadruple the maximum tax that is on track in the
00:00:43.680 current legislation and more importantly they want to do it by 2030. Now it's easy to say all right it's
00:00:50.040 just some activist group we don't need to listen except the federal government has leaned heavily
00:00:55.240 on working with the Ecofiscal Commission in the past. If you look at who makes up the body it is
00:01:01.720 a litany of former liberal premiers and federal government officials almost exclusively Liberal
00:01:08.440 Party of Canada or provincial Liberal Party representatives. The Ecofiscal Commission has
00:01:14.160 pushed for very radical quote-unquote solutions to the climate crisis. They've even said that the only
00:01:20.020 way to avoid quote climate catastrophe unquote is by a carbon tax as though we can tax our way
00:01:26.580 out of any potential environmental problems that we have in the country. This isn't something that
00:01:31.920 should be a surprise however. We've known for some time that the carbon tax the federal government
00:01:37.080 said would be the silver bullet in the fight against global warming would not be enough. Just a couple
00:01:42.960 of months ago the International Monetary Fund said in a report that not even a $75 carbon tax would be
00:01:49.240 enough for Canada to meet its Paris targets. We've had other groups as well that have said we need to
00:01:54.440 be doubling or even tripling the carbon tax in place now and presently a group is advocating to
00:02:01.580 quadruple. Now we already know that the carbon tax is causing job losses. It's causing job losses in the
00:02:08.620 oil and gas sector, in mining, in forestry and we haven't even seen the spin-off effects in adjacent
00:02:14.320 industry like retail for example where they are selling products that need to be shipped and
00:02:19.460 therefore products that have a reliance on these other sectors and a reliance on frankly greenhouse
00:02:25.200 gas emissions. So we're going to be looking at this long term but right now we are at a critical
00:02:30.820 juncture in Canada where we need to push back against the government and say well hang on why were
00:02:36.240 you just trying to get your foot in the door to put a bigger tax long term? Why were you essentially
00:02:42.320 hiding that this is what was going to be necessary down the road? That's what it seems like here that
00:02:49.180 the government was telling us oh it's just going to be a little itty bitty tax you can manage you can
00:02:53.220 absorb but then all of a sudden it's not enough we need to tax more we need to spend more and that
00:02:59.260 will be the only way we can deal with it. Now I was in the courtroom for Ontario's carbon tax
00:03:04.280 constitutional reference. Now ultimately the Court of Appeal for Ontario like the Saskatchewan Court of
00:03:10.140 Appeal said this was constitutional. Both cases will be going to the Supreme Court as will Alberta's
00:03:16.900 challenge. One of the arguments that was put forward by a number of advocates in the intervener
00:03:22.440 list was that we are in a climate emergency and that we can suspend with constitutionality because
00:03:28.240 it's critical we have to do this now. If the government adopts that rhetoric which they have
00:03:33.860 certainly flirted with there will be no stopping $210 carbon taxes there'll be no stopping a $300
00:03:40.980 carbon tax because the government is doing whatever it's doing under the auspices of protecting us
00:03:46.940 against an emergency. So you have to be very mindful when groups like Canada's Ecofiscal Commission
00:03:52.620 jump up with this report and say that we need to push the envelope even further because this is always
00:03:58.580 the baseline for what the government can get away with doing down the line. True North is standing up
00:04:05.160 for Canadians and this means pushing back against carbon taxes that are rooted in politics and
00:04:10.480 ideology and not sound economics. Now we need to do this because the mainstream media isn't which means
00:04:17.100 it's important there is an independent voice in Canada talking about these issues. If you can support
00:04:22.540 the work we're doing please head on over to tnc.news and join my heritage club your support will go a
00:04:28.740 long way and is greatly appreciated. For True North I'm Andrew Lawton.