Juno News - Proposed ‘pick-up truck tax’ the latest in Trudeau’s war against the working class

00:00:00.000 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau loathes the working class. The latest example his government is

00:00:04.520 cooking up is a new tax on pickup trucks. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm

00:00:09.180 Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So you might have seen this article over

00:00:25.400 at the Toronto Sun. The headline is Trudeau is planning a tax on trucks. Well, I have the author

00:00:31.700 of that piece with me today. Her name is Chris Sims. She's a BC director over at the Canadian

00:00:36.540 Taxpayers Federation. Chris spent time in Ottawa working both as a political staffer and a

00:00:41.080 communications director. She was also a print and radio journalist. Her first role in the news

00:00:46.260 was at 580 CFRA News Talk Ottawa. She became an anchor over there, then became a reporter at the

00:00:52.260 CTV Parliamentary Bureau. She was also a founding reporter over at the Sun News Network, where I

00:00:58.040 had the pleasure and the honour of working with her. She covered the big important issues of the day,

00:01:02.600 including the growing big government, personal liberty, and rural Canada. So Chris, thank you

00:01:07.920 so much for joining the show. It is so great to see you. Thank you. Yeah, so tell us about your report.

00:01:14.260 Tell us about this new pickup truck tax the Trudeau government is trying to, I don't know, sneak by

00:01:19.700 or sneak in or what his plans he's scheming about introducing this tax. For sure. So I first saw

00:01:27.400 an inkling of this in Blacklock's reporter, and it was around a month ago or so. And they mentioned,

00:01:33.800 it was a very brief posting that they had on their website. They said, hey, there's this advisory panel

00:01:38.520 to the prime minister that is recommending, among other things, a levy on pickup trucks. I'm like,

00:01:45.200 that's kind of interesting. And so because of my experience on Parliament Hill, I know that these

00:01:51.620 so-called advisory boards often have a lot of clout in Ottawa. So I started digging around on the

00:01:58.060 Environment Canada webpage. Sure enough, right there in the official report, I'm talking the 2030 emissions

00:02:05.740 reductions plan published by the Ministry of Environment with a foreword from Minister Guibo,

00:02:12.060 calling it a roadmap, was right there. Recommendation. It was on page 192. And word

00:02:18.480 for word, it included the recommendation to remove the exemption for the green levy so that it also

00:02:25.260 affects vehicles like pickup trucks. So what that means in normal people talk is that right now we

00:02:32.240 have the so-called green levy, but it only hits really big SUVs. So I'm talking like the Toyota Sequoia,

00:02:39.680 the Nissan Armada, those really big SUVs. It was put through by the Harper government in 2007.

00:02:46.240 But pickup trucks are expressly exempt. It's right there in the regulations. It does not touch pickup

00:02:53.240 trucks for obvious reasons. They're the most popular vehicles in Canada. If you step outside

00:02:58.860 any downtown urban core, they are the workhorses on all of our roadways. And so that is why they,

00:03:05.260 of course, exempted them because they didn't want to nail that many people with such a big tax.

00:03:09.140 This recommendation says in black and white, they should remove that exemption.

00:03:14.720 More importantly, I went and checked to see where the regulations kick in. You know,

00:03:19.480 how much fuel do you have to use in order to be nailed with this tax? And the answer is

00:03:24.420 more than 13 liters per hundred kilometers. So I went and checked all of the, you know,

00:03:31.380 fuel usage of the most popular vehicles. And sure enough, the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado 1500,

00:03:37.820 the Dodge Ram pickups 1500s, the light duty trucks would all be nailed with about a thousand dollars

00:03:44.920 tax. The bigger ones, if you need to get, say, a 3500, if you're towing a trailer, if you've got

00:03:51.660 construction equipment and you need a pickup truck with more snort to it, you're going to be hit with

00:03:56.860 either $3,000 or $4,000 on the sale of a new pickup if they enacted this tax. And so that's why I wrote

00:04:03.940 the piece for the Toronto Sun and sounded the alarm.

00:04:07.500 It's so interesting that they would try to sneak that by. So the minister puts it out by him on his

00:04:12.280 own. It's part of his report. And yet the minister responded to your piece over in the Toronto Sun,

00:04:19.520 Environment Minister Stephen Goebbaut. He responded. He said that the proposed tax doesn't exist. In fact,

00:04:25.540 he called your piece disinformation, divisive, and fear-mongering. This is, of course, because

00:04:31.120 conservative politicians like Pierre Polyev, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe have all been sharing your piece

00:04:37.120 with their base and with their email lists, rightly so, to say, look, this is what the Trudeau government

00:04:42.460 has planned. So what do you make of the minister's dismissiveness of your piece and how do you respond

00:04:51.420 to that? Well, it's pretty concerning. And so what they could have done if they really wanted to dump

00:04:56.980 water on this, if they were truly panicked, they could have said, you know what, this is a small

00:05:01.540 mistake. We actually should have put a dissenting opinion by the minister right underneath the

00:05:06.480 recommendation, or we shouldn't have included the recommendation at all in our piece. There's lots

00:05:11.940 of options when you're sitting around the minister's table on how to handle this sort of a situation.

00:05:18.340 But instead, he went on the attack against the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We are more than 30

00:05:24.600 years old. We are a grassroots organization. We have a ton of supporters, as you know. So they went after

00:05:30.920 us, calling us disinformation. They went after the Toronto Sun, calling them disinformation. They've been

00:05:36.860 putting out newspapers since the early 70s. So very standard, respected media. And what I actually find

00:05:45.180 very concerning about this is that the minister responsible for calling that disinformation is also

00:05:53.020 the minister who spearheaded Bill C-10, which is now called Bill C-11. And that, of course, is the

00:05:59.600 proposed internet gag law, which would put bureaucrats in charge of what you can see, hear, and share on the

00:06:06.080 internet. So to have that minister of the crown calling this piece, which is fact-based disinformation,

00:06:14.400 is really concerning. And also, it's annoying because anyone who's ever worked on Parliament Hill

00:06:22.480 knows how this works. This is how baby taxes are born. You know, mommy report walks down the aisle 0.96

00:06:29.840 with daddy proposal, and then the bureaucrats write it up, and then they present it in the House, and then

00:06:35.140 they debate it at committee, and voila, new bill, new taxes are born. That's how that works. And so

00:06:41.780 anybody knows this. And now it's the playing dumb that's pretty annoying. 0.99

00:06:47.700 Well, not just playing dumb, but pearl clutching and going on the attack by calling you 0.99

00:06:51.620 disinformation, the exact same buzzword, that's like the latest buzzword on the left, 0.97

00:06:55.700 that they use to describe information that is true, but they just don't like it. And it isn't just the

00:07:01.060 minister. I mean, I've been in the same situation, Chris. I had an opinion piece once in the Toronto

00:07:05.620 Sun saying that the carbon tax was a tax. And the environment minister at the time, Catherine McKenna,

00:07:11.860 tweeted out, this is fake news. It's not a tax. It's a rebate, right? And we all know how that ended.

00:07:18.820 But this idea that you have really powerful people, ministers of the crown, attacking journalists,

00:07:24.980 reporters, researchers like yourself, and using these buzzwords like disinformation or fake news,

00:07:30.740 and then turning around saying we're going to ban disinformation and fake news. It's like,

00:07:34.100 what you're really doing is banning views that you don't like, opinions that you don't like,

00:07:38.020 or things that are going to be politically problematic for you. Because I know that your

00:07:42.020 piece is getting shared left, right and center, that it is a big rallying issue for conservatives,

00:07:46.820 because it's a culture war issue as well. Before we get into some of those culture war

00:07:51.940 questions, I have to note that Aaron Weary, a reporter over at the CBC, has also jumped into

00:07:57.940 the fray. And he said that basically, everyone's getting worked up about a tax that doesn't exist.

00:08:04.100 I find it really interesting, because his piece sort of repeats what you said, that this was an annex,

00:08:09.780 that the government released a report, and this was annexed to it, and it was part of

00:08:14.420 recommendations. It wasn't government proposal, it wasn't legislation. So he kind of just repeated what

00:08:19.140 you said, but his headline was very snarky. Some conservatives are condemning a truck tax that

00:08:24.820 doesn't exist. And, you know, and so he walks us through exactly what your report says. And then

00:08:30.500 he spends like the rest of the article talking about how, well, we probably should have a truck tax

00:08:35.540 because climate change and blah, blah, blah. So what do you make of the fact that the CBC has come

00:08:41.300 swinging into Justin Trudeau's rescue, and trying to pour water on this whole issue for them?

00:08:46.980 Well, I'm not surprised. I sure don't like paying $1.4 billion to that corp for them to come to

00:08:54.420 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's defence. I find it rather silly that the same people who will say,

00:09:01.540 we shouldn't have these, quote unquote, gas guzzlers on the road, that pickup trucks are bad

00:09:06.500 for the environment, etc, etc. That's a legitimate position to have. I completely disagree with it,

00:09:12.020 but at least it's a consistent position. But then they turn around, and as you put it,

00:09:16.900 pearl clutch to say, how dare you suggest they would ever impose such a fee on these pickup trucks

00:09:23.300 that we despise? Like, it's so weird. It's, you know, pick a lane, pick a lane. Do you want to tax

00:09:30.820 these things so that people might not be able to afford to buy them anymore? And ergo, in your mind,

00:09:36.500 they're not putting out as much fuel or emissions or whatever? Or do you not want to do this? Just

00:09:42.660 decide what you want to do. And to the point of saying it's in the annex, that was one of the

00:09:48.260 silliest arguments I've ever heard coming out of government. And it was pure spin. Annex means 0.83

00:09:54.820 in addition to. It's in the report. The report cover calls it an emission reduction plan. It's called

00:10:03.860 The Road Ahead Roadmap. You take a look and you read it. It's right in there. And frankly, a lot

00:10:09.300 of times when you're reading government documents, the most important information is in the annex.

00:10:15.060 If you look at a federal budget, everybody who's ever covered a budget well knows to flip to the back.

00:10:20.820 Get past all the fluffy stuff of why they're doing this to save women and children and whatever.

00:10:24.980 Then you get to the hard numbers which are in the back. So saying it's in the annex is super silly. 0.52

00:10:30.980 It's right there. And what also concerns me here is that if I was still a reporter and I always put

00:10:38.820 the shoe on the other foot, I ask myself, what if a conservative prime minister did or the purple

00:10:44.820 monkey party prime minister did? I don't care what party it is. We don't want to tax on pickup trucks

00:10:49.780 because we're the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. So I ask myself, if another prime minister of some other

00:10:55.140 colored jersey party was promoting a pickup truck tax, would I chase them down and say,

00:11:00.580 hey, this is in your report? Are you going to denounce this completely and swear you're never

00:11:04.900 going to do this? Darn tootin' I would. Of course I would. That's just standard W5 journalism. And so 0.98

00:11:11.620 this is where I'm a little bit scratching my head saying, okay, then why don't you ask the minister to

00:11:16.740 say we will never, ever, ever do this? And it was just a recommendation. And we're not doing this ever.

00:11:22.420 They haven't done that. It's one of the strange things with the media in Canada, Chris, where

00:11:27.780 rather than hold the politicians and the people with power accountable and to account for the

00:11:33.300 things that they're doing, they turn around and they hold the public or reporters or independent

00:11:38.660 researchers or the Canadian Taxpayers Federation accountable for their opinions or their positions

00:11:43.780 against the government. It happens time and time again. And every time it's like we're living in

00:11:48.820 this weird, bizarro world where, you know, Aaron Weary rather than, like you said, chasing down

00:11:53.780 these politicians and saying, well, wait a minute, is this coming? Is this something that you're

00:11:56.820 planning to do? He instinctively and immediately turns around and writes a piece that could have

00:12:01.380 been written by Stéphane Galbault. It could have been, I would say it could have been written by

00:12:04.740 Justin Trudeau, but we all know that Justin Trudeau doesn't write his own stuff. So it could have

00:12:08.340 been written by one of Justin Trudeau's own assistants or someone in the PMO. But instead,

00:12:13.780 you know, it's put out as legitimate news by the CBC. It's really wild. I want to pick up on this

00:12:20.740 idea. You know, pickup trucks are the most popular vehicles in Canada. I have a stat right in front

00:12:25.620 of me. Four of the five best-selling vehicles in Canada in 2020 were trucks. The number one spot

00:12:29.460 was a Ford F-150. 28,000 were sold in Canada. And that was a bad year because of COVID. That's

00:12:36.420 according to the CBC. So when we're talking about a proposed tax, it's significant. You're talking about

00:12:42.260 $1,000 to $4,000. It's a huge chunk out of someone's pocket. You know, you can't help but

00:12:48.340 feel like this really, you know, it's an attack, not just on people who drive a certain vehicle,

00:12:54.420 but on a certain way of life. Because in certain parts of the country, having a pickup truck is

00:13:00.340 absolutely necessary. I mean, we saw even just anecdotally during the trucker convoy, the CBC,

00:13:07.540 at one point, one of their vans fell into a ditch. I don't know if you saw this. And one of the

00:13:11.860 the truckers, with the pickup truck, pulled them out, right, without any hesitation. And,

00:13:16.740 you know, despite all of the name calling that CBC had been waging against these truckers. So,

00:13:22.100 you know, it's become kind of like a cultural symbol. And I just can't help but think that

00:13:28.100 this proposed tax is sort of punishment towards the working class. What do you think about the

00:13:32.020 culture war element here? That's definitely an element. I was raised in rural blue-collar working

00:13:37.780 class British Columbia, same as my husband. And if you just turn your head, you can usually see

00:13:44.100 eight to 12 of them downtown whenever we go down to pick up the mail or whatever. They're just standard,

00:13:49.140 like they're just so common. The idea of taxing them with this big thing is pretty concerning,

00:13:54.100 which is why I was so concerned about it, which is why I read the entire report that they put out,

00:13:59.060 and I wrote the story. And for folks who say, oh, well, you don't need it. No, you don't understand

00:14:04.900 then. Those folks probably haven't packed a bunch of poultry feed into the back of a Prius. They

00:14:10.980 haven't tried to shove a bunch of gyprock into the back of some, you know, tiny little hatchback if 1.00

00:14:15.940 they're a drywaller. There are tradespeople who rely on pickup trucks every single day to bring their 1.00

00:14:23.460 tools around. And even if they're not like directly employed in the trades, there are rural working

00:14:29.700 people who use them every day, like I just said, for bringing their feet around, towing some cattle.

00:14:35.220 You're not going to tow one of those horse trailers or a cattle trailer with a little hatchback. You just

00:14:42.260 can't. It doesn't have the power. And maybe one day we will all eventually have an electric vehicle that

00:14:49.700 runs on, I don't know, like the lithium crystals or a magic battery that's really easily rechargeable

00:14:55.220 or affordable. Who knows? That's not our beef. Our beef is here and now these vehicles are the most

00:15:02.020 popular selling vehicles in Canada. People across Canada rely on them. The government of Canada is

00:15:08.660 including a recommendation in their official report to tax them big time. And as you well know,

00:15:15.300 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we're the watchdogs. It's my job to start barking the moment

00:15:21.940 I see that burglar in your backyard. It's a failure if I wait to start barking when he's already running

00:15:28.820 down the street with your TV. Okay? So this is the entire point. We see things like this coming,

00:15:34.420 we bark really loud and we make sure that they never actually come to fruition.

00:15:38.180 Well, I think you've done your job because it looks like they're scared away so much that they're now

00:15:42.580 saying, no, no, not only are we not going to introduce this plan, we never even planned on

00:15:47.220 introducing this tax. So bravo on that. You wrote your piece. I thought this was really good.

00:15:52.660 Taxing someone's truck is kind of like taxing someone's laptop or someone's Zoom account for

00:15:57.620 the sort of stay at home class, work from home class. And it seems like there is this kind of

00:16:01.700 growing divide. I want to bring you back to the summer of 2021. There's sort of a culture war that

00:16:06.820 was starting to brew. There was an article published in a piece called, what was it called? The

00:16:12.020 passage that said this, it's time to ban the sale of pickup trucks. Pretty stark language there.

00:16:18.500 It was followed by a piece by Marcus G over in the Globe and Mail who said,

00:16:22.100 pickup trucks are a plague on Canadian streets. Now this really got under the skin of a whole bunch

00:16:27.460 of people in Canada, including Premier Jason Kenney in Alberta, who had his own response. He said the

00:16:34.100 Globe and Mail is having a temper tantrum about pickup trucks. Happy to say that 40% of the vehicles on the

00:16:38.500 road in Alberta are pickup trucks. Maybe Toronto columnists should try getting around the province

00:16:44.420 during a prairie blizzard in a smart car. Likewise, Lorraine Harper, former Prime Minister Stephen

00:16:50.420 Harper's wife, said this piece reads of snobbishness. Minus 40 stranded on the side of the highway with a

00:16:56.500 flat. Car wouldn't move. Cars are zipping by. The only person who stopped was a guy in a pickup truck.

00:17:01.460 Scott Moe said something similar. Come to Saskatchewan, where we all use our pickup trucks to build and grow

00:17:07.140 our province. It really does feel like a divide. And we saw this play out during COVID as well.

00:17:13.060 We saw it play out during the trucker convoy, where there's a pretty big difference between

00:17:16.900 Canadians who go out every day to work for a living, who drive trucks, who use their hands,

00:17:22.660 who build things, versus the sort of, you know, everyone stay at home and flatten the curve and

00:17:28.580 they make it seem so easy, like everyone can do it. What do you make of this sort of broader

00:17:35.460 cultural issue and how can we sort of mend this divide? I see it too, and I feel it too,

00:17:43.140 and I've experienced it too. So, like I said, I was raised in the Fraser Canyon. My, you know,

00:17:49.140 family all drive pickup trucks, all blue collar, working with their hands. I've got three cousins.

00:17:54.660 One's a boilermaker, the other's a drywaller, and the other's a mechanic. Like, it's just where it

00:17:59.380 comes from. My father-in-law is a heavy duty mechanic on trucks. And so, I lived that. I grew

00:18:05.380 up with it. We own a pickup truck ourselves. Not a fancy new one, but we own a pickup truck. And so,

00:18:10.740 we get that they're tools. They're just standard. It's so much so that you don't even really mention

00:18:14.900 them, that they're so common. And I've also worked in hyper-urban centers. I lived in the Glebe in Ottawa

00:18:22.100 for 13 years. I didn't have a car. I rode my bike and I walked everywhere. I did the latte thing. I'm

00:18:28.580 working on a laptop with you right now. And I'm very lucky to be sitting in an office on a laptop.

00:18:34.100 And so, I see both worlds. And I think it's sad that if you're in one of those other worlds, that

00:18:41.620 you can't empathize with the other person. And I think that's a big problem. And I think it's one of

00:18:48.420 the reasons why we're seeing the kind of nasty, vehement, almost personal, almost personal reaction

00:18:55.540 coming from folks like Minister Guibo towards me, towards the Taxpayers Federation, towards the Toronto

00:19:00.820 Sun. Because we're losing that ability to bridge that gap. And so, I would recommend anyone who's

00:19:09.300 lived the laptop life for a long, long time in downtown urban course, get out. Go out. Like,

00:19:16.260 honestly, go out of your urban core. Rent a car if you have to. Go hang out in a small town. Not a

00:19:23.460 little tourist trap. An actual small working town for a week. Get to understand what those folks are

00:19:28.980 like. Same thing for my family who has always lived rural or always had, you know, that kind of working

00:19:36.100 class lifestyle. Go downtown. Take transit. Go to really nice museums. Get to understand how those folks

00:19:44.420 live. And I think that would help a lot. I think sometimes that the folks who are in the laptop

00:19:50.580 class, so to speak, can forget where, you know, the milk for their latte in the morning or their ice

00:19:56.820 cream in the afternoon comes from. It comes from a dairy cow. The dairy cow was hauled to its dairy farm,

00:20:02.580 probably as a calf, using a truck. The dairy cow eats alfalfa. That hay was hauled to that barn

00:20:08.900 using a truck. Everything you eat and use was brought to you on a truck, quite often including

00:20:16.180 a pickup truck by somebody within 100 kilometres of where you're sitting. And so I think it's important,

00:20:22.900 especially when a government is talking about imposing a big new tax like this, to turn around

00:20:28.100 and understand how that would affect average people, including those who are trying to help bring you

00:20:33.700 stuff that you need. Well, certainly politicians and journalists like Erin Weary, who claim to

00:20:39.780 speak for and represent a broad swath of the country, I think would be very wise to follow

00:20:46.900 that advice. And I have a feeling that's something that they don't do often enough. And I think you're

00:20:52.020 absolutely right. I did want to ask you about the carbon tax, because I know that's something that

00:20:57.380 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has been very vocal about. Now, we know that the parliamentary

00:21:02.340 budget office in Ottawa recently rebuked a Trudeau government claim, which was that everyone was

00:21:09.140 going to be better off from the carbon tax, that it was actually going to help put more money in

00:21:14.340 the pockets of Canadian families. That turned out to be entirely nonsense, despite the fact that I'm 0.58

00:21:19.940 sure Erin Weary and plenty of the fact checkers over at the CBC and legacy media were quick to call

00:21:26.100 conservatives disinformation by claiming that the carbon tax was a tax that would take money out of your

00:21:31.860 pocket, not put money in your pocket. But I'm wondering if you could walk us through what the

00:21:37.540 what that report said. And what's your position on the carbon tax? What do you think needs to be done

00:21:42.500 with it at this point? Ash heap of history, as Margaret Thatcher put it, it needs to be completely 0.87

00:21:49.060 gone. Both of them, the one that we have right now federally, and the second one that Prime Minister

00:21:54.420 Trudeau is planning for the rest of Canada outside of BC, just in time for Christmas, which is also going to

00:22:00.100 increase the cost of diesel and gas at the gas pumps. So that needs to be gone, like lickety split.

00:22:06.100 I found it really interesting that the parliamentary budget officer went through and did this work,

00:22:11.460 and kudos to them. And yeah, turns out, it actually, you don't get more back than you pay in.

00:22:17.780 And let's just stop for a second and think about what a silly statement that is. You'll get more back in

00:22:23.300 tax than you pay in. Well, government does not have a magical money appreciation tree in its courtyard.

00:22:32.340 When you put money into government, it does not magically earn wealth and give you more back. The

00:22:38.580 very idea that you would get more back than you pay in is silly, because the only money that government

00:22:43.860 uses is your money. It's tax dollars. So on the very surface of it, that didn't make any sense. But okay,

00:22:50.660 let's just go along with this magical thinking. Turns out, yeah, the average family in Canada is not

00:22:57.220 going to get more back than they pay in the carbon tax. And folks in Alberta are going to get kicked

00:23:02.980 the hardest. I think last I checked, it was something like $1,000, $1,200 a year, you know, net that they

00:23:09.380 would be out. Further to that, there is so much expense connected to the carbon tax that it's

00:23:15.780 almost impossible to perfectly quantify. Because if you think about it, like we said, look around

00:23:21.300 wherever you are right now, everything you eat and use was brought to you on a truck, most likely that

00:23:27.220 was using gas and then diesel. And if it was trained to you on a railroad, that's also using diesel,

00:23:35.060 if it was shipped to you that is using oil and gas. So it really trickles down that way. So that

00:23:41.300 everything you use that has a carbon tax attached to it to bring it to you is going to be more

00:23:46.100 expensive because of the carbon tax. Further, farmers actually have to pay the carbon tax in one way.

00:23:53.140 And that is when they dry their product. A lot of folks don't know this, but with they've got their

00:23:57.620 grain or their seeds or whatever they're using, they usually use natural gas and sometimes propane to

00:24:04.420 dry it. That actually is nailed with the carbon tax. And I didn't even know that before I started at

00:24:10.020 the CTF. And that adds a lot of cost because of course everything uses grain. Even if you're a

00:24:15.700 carnivore like Dr. Jordan Peterson, the cow that you're eating did eat grain. And so that cost is

00:24:22.740 up there. So basically the carbon tax punishes people for driving to work, moving around the country

00:24:29.060 and heating your home. Those demands, like getting to work and heating your home are inelastic,

00:24:36.420 meaning people just can't opt out. It's not like picking paper or plastic bags at the grocery store.

00:24:41.220 You can't opt out. You don't want to freeze to death. You don't want your pipes to burst and you

00:24:44.900 got to get to work to buy food. So the carbon tax is just a punishment for people's everyday existence

00:24:50.580 in Canada. And so it was good to see the parliamentary budget officer back up what we'd been saying all this

00:24:56.420 time that, yeah, sorry guys, you're not going to get more than you pay in. And I just wanted to put

00:25:01.140 out a word of warning because I'm here in British Columbia and we've always been the canary in the

00:25:06.340 coal mine, so to speak, for the carbon tax. We have the highest carbon taxes in all of North America.

00:25:12.580 Right now in British Columbia, it's about 28 cents a liter for gasoline just in our two carbon taxes.

00:25:21.300 And what's interesting is our so-called rebate absolutely cuts off by the time a two-person

00:25:27.700 working family hits $58,000 a year. The average two-person working family, so your average working

00:25:34.820 people that politicians love to embrace, is $84,000 a year. So it helps absolutely no average working

00:25:43.540 people in British Columbia. The rebate does not exist. And when we were first sold this bill of goods in 2008,

00:25:50.580 the BC Liberals told us all sorts of stuff. It was just a bunch of magic beans. They said it was

00:25:55.140 going to be revenue neutral, that it would create a whole bunch of alternative energies that would

00:25:59.860 be affordable, and that it would reduce emissions. Today, none of those things is true. Our emissions

00:26:05.540 keep on going up in BC, even though we have the highest carbon tax in Canada. So it's a huge failure,

00:26:10.580 and it's really expensive, and average people pay through the nose for it. So we really need to see

00:26:14.900 this thing gone.

00:26:15.620 Right. And again, where is Erin Weary to report on that? Because Canada's emissions have also gone

00:26:20.500 up since 2015. I think they're up 10 percent, and we don't see that. It's interesting to hear you go

00:26:25.620 through all the various ways that these taxes hurt working people, hurt middle class people. I remember

00:26:31.540 Dustin Trudeau came in, and his whole platform was helping the middle class and those hoping to join it.

00:26:36.900 That seems to be completely out the window. When I was researching for this interview, Chris,

00:26:41.140 I found it kind of amusing. Here you have your report. Pickup trucks are going to get taxed an

00:26:46.260 additional $1,000 to $4,000 based on the truck, in addition to the carbon tax, which you just went

00:26:50.660 through how punitive and expensive it is, and all the other taxes that are aimed at middle class

00:26:54.980 people. At the same time, the government continues to subsidize electric vehicles like Tesla's.

00:27:00.980 Tesla's are an incredibly expensive luxury vehicle, and yet here we have federally up to a $5,000

00:27:07.860 rebate for a long-range battery. In Ontario, they offer $1,000 for the purchase of a fully electric

00:27:15.060 car, $1,000 for a plug-in. In Quebec, up to $8,000 for an electric vehicle, under $60,000.

00:27:22.660 It's this bizarre scenario where you have the government subsidizing rich people. Rich people

00:27:28.340 drive Tesla's. Tesla's are incredibly nice, incredibly expensive. So the government's incentivizing

00:27:34.100 and subsidizing rich people and increasing taxes on the working poor, working class, middle class

00:27:39.700 people. What kind of bizarre world do we live in? It is bizarre. That's the right term. And again,

00:27:45.460 a reminder, this is not free government money that is coming to these folks. Every nickel of that came

00:27:50.980 from themselves or their neighbors or their entire neighborhood, depending on how much of a rebate

00:27:55.540 they're getting back. So it isn't just some magic thing that the government can write off. That is not

00:28:00.340 how this works. It's money in, money out. That's how this functions. And they're increasing the deficit

00:28:06.980 hand over fist. And it's one of the reasons why our inflation is so crazy right now. Yes, there are

00:28:12.820 other global factors that can affect inflation. But as our federal director, Franco Terrazzano,

00:28:17.620 has explained very well, one of the big bolsters of our deficit is, or our inflation, is our deficit

00:28:24.740 spending. Because they'll go into deficit, and then the Bank of Canada, on the other hand,

00:28:28.740 prints more money in order to cover the deficit. And so that causes extra inflation. And so if folks

00:28:34.580 are worried about butter going up, and pork going up, and chicken going up, and all of that, one of

00:28:41.140 the reasons for that is because of the freewheeling spending of this government. And so it's really

00:28:47.060 important right now. I know it's tough out there. I get calls every week. I got a call a few weeks ago

00:28:52.740 from a lady who was beside herself, her adult son, who just got his life back on track after he broke up

00:28:58.340 with his wife as a tradesperson. They lived together in a basement suite in Chilliwack. And he couldn't

00:29:03.380 afford to drive his truck from Chilliwack up and over to Maple Ridge, which is a pretty long commute,

00:29:09.380 because it's two bucks a litre right now. In the Vancouver area, it's $2 a litre. It's just these are

00:29:16.020 real people really suffering. And it's high time for government to pay attention. And one of the big factors in

00:29:22.340 that is one, the overspending, right, by the Trudeau government, and two, carbon taxes. And I don't like

00:29:28.340 to be the bearer of bad news, but the carbon tax element is going to get way worse. They're cranking

00:29:33.860 this thing up to $170 a ton within the next eight years. What that means is it's going to cost you

00:29:41.060 about $40 extra just in that one carbon tax to fill up a minivan. Like every single time. You know,

00:29:50.420 that is a full turkey dinner with all the fixings for a family, every time they're filling up. And

00:29:56.180 it's not helping. Emissions keep on going up. So this is real money we're talking about. And it's

00:30:01.540 causing hardship for working people. Well, absolutely. And the inflation tax, I mean,

00:30:06.180 it's directly related to government policy, because they're the ones printing money. And sure,

00:30:09.620 it's happening all over the world, because governments all over the world are printing money

00:30:12.500 like madmen because of COVID. So thanks for making that point, because it is it's hard if you're on a fixed

00:30:18.340 income, if you are on a limited budget, and all of a sudden, you know, everything's 10% more

00:30:22.340 expensive than it was last year. Plus, you have all these taxes plus $2 a liter gasoline out west.

00:30:27.300 It's it's it's tough. And Canadians really need to stand up to this Trudeau government. Our media is

00:30:33.060 not going to do it. We know that. So I just wanted to quickly point out, there was a stat,

00:30:37.540 sorry to interrupt. There's a stat that I check every now and then. And I think it's for the first time

00:30:41.860 ever. MNP puts out a report basically asking how are you financially. And for the first time ever

00:30:47.620 that I noticed might have been different before more than more than half more than half of Canadians

00:30:52.660 say they're within 200 bucks of insolvency, which means every month, they're within 200 bucks of not

00:30:58.980 being able to cover their basic bills. And usually it's a scary amount, it's hovering between 35 and

00:31:05.060 maybe even 40% when I would check it now with I think it's 52%. So we're in some serious trouble here.

00:31:12.180 Yeah, this is the economy that Justin Trudeau creates, you know, he said that he wants to

00:31:16.020 grow the economy from the heart out or whatever he said that budgets will balance themselves. Well,

00:31:20.100 this is the reality. And it's scary. I know True North reports on those kind of stories and how close

00:31:25.140 so many families are. It's it's so tough. So Chris, we really appreciate all you do to bring these

00:31:30.340 important stories to light. All of the research you do out west. Thank you so much for joining the show.

00:31:36.340 Hopefully we'll have you on more often. You bet. Thanks for having us.

00:31:38.980 All right. That's Chris Sims. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - April 21, 2022

Proposed ‘pick-up truck tax’ the latest in Trudeau’s war against the working class

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