Juno News - February 10, 2024


Liberals attempt to rebrand the carbon tax (ft. Kris Sims)


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

182.36736

Word Count

2,083

Sentence Count

4

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show
00:00:05.920 in any event it is monday and what we do every monday is we check in with our good friend chris
00:00:14.220 sims who is the alberta director for the canadian taxpayers federation chris good to have you here
00:00:19.200 thank you thanks for having us i mean the carbon tax you and i have called it a tongue-in-cheek
00:00:24.260 gift that keeps on giving because it just keeps on giving content but evidently our content has
00:00:29.200 been working because the liberals are trying to give it a little refrain refresh a little rebrand
00:00:34.140 they're uh trying to put lipstick on a pig here what on earth is happening it's pretty funny and
00:00:41.440 your term has been used a lot in politics and what i love about this is that it's been used a lot with
00:00:46.760 the carbon tax in fact it was former provincial ndp leader in british columbia carol james who called
00:00:54.060 the notion of a revenue neutral carbon tax lipstick on a pig this is way back in the olden days andrew
00:01:01.320 when the ndp didn't like the carbon tax i i'm old enough to remember that so it's really funny to
00:01:07.160 see this phrase coming back to bite them because that's exactly what they're trying to do this is
00:01:12.020 how it goes okay so prime minister justin trudeau's government has this big honking ugly carbon tax and
00:01:18.860 he's quadrupling the thing within the next seven years or so we peasants though andrew are too stupid
00:01:26.660 to understand just how wonderful and beneficial this carbon levy is and so in their magnanimity
00:01:34.160 the trudeau government has now decided to go back to their little whiteboard and figure out a way to
00:01:40.640 rebrand the carbon tax and especially its heavenly rebates so they're going to try to figure out a way
00:01:47.480 to try to bamboozle people i don't know what they're going to call the rebate now like super
00:01:52.440 stardust fancy rebate something uh double plus good who knows so all this is to say they're going
00:01:58.660 to be spending taxpayers money probably talking to a bunch of consultants and lobbyists to put their
00:02:05.060 heads together how to resell the carbon tax and the rebates to canadians when the facts are the math
00:02:13.060 speaks for itself the parliamentary budget officer has figured out that the average canadian family
00:02:19.840 especially here in alberta will be out more than 900 this year in 2024 with the rebates factored in
00:02:30.160 that's net because of the carbon tax so people aren't dumb they know that this is emptying their
00:02:36.420 wallets they know that this is basically a tax on everything but the trudeau government is undeterred
00:02:42.020 they're going to try to polish this one yeah and look i mean uh sales marketing advertising
00:02:49.420 communications all of these have a place they're all valuable but uh the one thing you should always
00:02:54.600 do is a bit of an introspection activity whenever you are thinking you need a rebrand is wonder whether
00:03:00.400 people are aware of the policy and dislike it on its merits and that's the thing here i mean it's one
00:03:07.680 area to say okay well people don't really understand this so we're gonna you know sell it to them so
00:03:13.120 that they understand it in this case the reason people don't like it is because they understand it
00:03:18.000 because they see how much it's costing them so in that case any rebrand is just going to be lying
00:03:23.020 yeah exactly the call is coming from inside the house folks this is the problem and it's one of
00:03:30.060 these things where you see no matter which government is in power which party is in power
00:03:34.500 quite often if they stay in government this long they can just really become ensconced in their
00:03:40.120 bubble they become tone deaf they stop listening to what us average worker drones are doing and saying
00:03:46.560 and they start believing their own spin and this is exactly what's happening in ottawa with this idea
00:03:53.140 of oh well we just need to explain it to these dumb dumbs better and then they will love us all again
00:03:58.620 it reminds me of that meme that they use for principal skinner all the time from the simpsons it's like
00:04:03.280 you know am i wrong no definitely it's the children that's what we're dealing with here
00:04:06.760 yeah i wanted to ask you about this other thing i hadn't heard of this until you brought it up
00:04:11.180 something called a wing night mutiny now i love wings i don't love mutiny as much but uh if there
00:04:17.160 are enough wings i can tolerate the mutiny what's the wing night mutiny yeah i'm just full disclosure a
00:04:23.300 huge fan of chicken wings myself if you ever go to a restaurant with me you'll wind up with like this
00:04:27.620 goblin pile of bones in front of you right so i think this is important so this is funny
00:04:33.260 the city of calgary following suit with the city of edmonton which is much more docile except for
00:04:38.840 their hockey team um the city of edmonton took this lying down a few months ago but the city of calgary
00:04:43.940 boy they're not taking this what this is is there's now a 15 cent mandatory tax per paper bag
00:04:51.940 there's a dollar mandatory municipal tax per reusable bag those ones that fill up all of our
00:04:58.640 under sink cabinets and in our trunks um the idea of plastic single-use bags like that's right out
00:05:04.180 right because prime minister trudeau banned those things but here in calgary it wasn't just the bags
00:05:10.060 they actually put forward this new law and enforced it saying you now must beg slash plead
00:05:17.620 for a napkin when you're at a restaurant or a wooden fork please mayor gondek may i have a fork
00:05:25.740 or utensil to eat my my meal so it's redonkulous because this local government like we're gonna save
00:05:33.080 the world by making people ask for napkins and so premier danielle smith had a really funny line
00:05:38.580 she said yeah this almost caused a week wing night mutiny so we're picturing people just revolting
00:05:46.240 in pubs across canada and like flinging their chicken wings at people i don't know if that
00:05:51.620 happened i have not yet heard reports but wing night mutiny became a thing and that actually helped
00:05:56.920 energize uh local politicians some of the city councillors on calgary city hall it kind of gave
00:06:03.000 them the the courage to speak up and to say you know what this is stupid we shouldn't have a 15 cent
00:06:08.400 bag tax it's going to be 25 cents next year and we shouldn't be nuisancing people to death on things
00:06:14.440 like forks and napkins for goodness sake stick to your knitting city hall so this really gave uh city
00:06:20.560 councillors around calgary city hall table the courage to speak up and to say you know what
00:06:26.040 we shouldn't be nickel and diming people to death with nuisance taxes like dumb things like these bag
00:06:31.120 taxes and we certainly shouldn't as mayor be telling people whether or not they can have napkins like
00:06:37.780 that's so dumb and so what's really interesting here is that now this could cascade into edmonton
00:06:44.700 the folks of edmonton might now find their voice because the people of calgary have spoken up but
00:06:49.740 it's not over yet in calgary they still need to email their councillors they still need to phone the
00:06:54.720 mayor's office see stuff like this though is infuriating for not just because i i too like chicken
00:07:00.600 wings but uh because it's the kind of thing that people pretend is little and people pretend is small
00:07:07.760 they say oh what's the big deal they still have napkins you just have to ask for them but it really
00:07:12.820 speaks to an attitude issue here because when government is regulating things so small and so
00:07:18.500 seemingly insignificant it's licensing government to regulate the big things to regulate the giant
00:07:23.500 things and at a certain point it's going to be where i literally this would not be far off to
00:07:28.880 believe where governments mandate cloth napkins yep uh where governments mandate cloth napkins and
00:07:33.680 all of a sudden your crappy hole in the wall diner has to have linen like it's a you know a michelin
00:07:37.800 star restaurant or whatever because that's what the government has decreed and that's i think the
00:07:43.220 problem here is that when you license government to encroach on something like this you're giving it
00:07:48.800 a power that will only expand and balloon just like the carbon tax has increased and ballooned yes exactly
00:07:55.400 the carbon tax started at oh it's only you know it's only ten dollars per ton well it's going to
00:08:00.860 be a hundred and seventy dollars per ton pretty soon folks it used to cost you about 50 cents in the
00:08:05.700 carbon tax pretty soon it's going to be costing you twenty dollars every single time you fill up with the
00:08:10.600 carbon tax and you really nailed nailed it here andrew because we can even give you an example of how
00:08:16.580 quickly this can escalate so in vancouver the city of vancouver they still have their bag tax yes
00:08:23.160 but they did have to climb down on this weird cup tax i don't know if you heard about this but i was
00:08:30.520 living next to vancouver when this all happened so it was pretty crazy so the city of vancouver along
00:08:36.180 with their bag fee also imposed this weird cup tax so that every single time you went to a coffee shop
00:08:42.200 or a gas station or some mom and pop corner store and you dared use a disposable paper cup they were
00:08:48.920 charging you an extra 25 cents where did that quarter go it didn't go to the city so where was
00:08:56.500 it going i phoned them and asked them this was the plan they wanted to force all of these stores
00:09:03.440 to collect these quarters save them all up because in the very near future the city of vancouver was
00:09:10.940 going to ban all disposable or single use cups every single one of them would not be allowed within the
00:09:18.560 city limits how are we to drink coffee you ask they actually wanted to force vancouverites to share
00:09:25.860 a communal pool of cups i'm not kidding and the money that these businesses were being forced to
00:09:34.880 collect was supposed to go to a dishwasher so that now these businesses would be responsible
00:09:41.120 for washing everybody's cup that has been you know in their backpack on sky train for a week or
00:09:47.000 under their truck seat or whatever just imagine imagine hundreds of thousands of people being
00:09:53.240 forced adults to force to share this group of cups it was so weird that they actually had to back down
00:10:01.000 but again this is what happens when you give them that inch yeah no very well said it'd be like the
00:10:06.200 stanley cup craze in the uh i think it's mostly in the u.s now those like i don't even get the stanley cup
00:10:11.800 craze it's not even a hockey thing it's like some there's some like weird like reusable cup that
00:10:16.840 everyone is uh like going crazy over and it's like it's just a reusable mug so i don't know stanley
00:10:22.760 actually there's a stanley park in bc isn't there it's the stanley park cups we'll say yes i would like
00:10:27.480 to think that or i'd like to think it's a hockey thing but what's really funny is that in actual fact
00:10:32.120 like stanley the company's been around forever it's like thermos right it's almost become synonymous with
00:10:37.320 something that keeps your coffee hot and like working men at like construction sites have had
00:10:43.320 these things in their trucks forever but for some reason these big pink ones took off and i don't
00:10:49.160 know some pretty you know what uh the liberal government should hire the stanley marketing
00:10:53.320 team to do their carbon tax rebrand uh because clearly they've managed to uh to do something
00:10:59.640 pretty good on their own rebrand over at stanley looks like a shade of lipstick you know yeah there you go
00:11:05.320 all right uh chris sims we will talk to you next monday always a pleasure thank you so much for
00:11:10.360 coming on thank you thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to
00:11:16.040 true north at www.tnc.news