Juno News - Saskatchewan drops carbon tax on home heating

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 we'll talk about what saskatchewan is doing here i also want to talk about the

00:00:12.180 fuel tax issue in alberta chris sims is our regular monday correspondent but obviously we

00:00:17.820 don't have a monday show this week but it had been too long since we had heard from her so we

00:00:21.360 wanted to bring her on for a rare tuesday appearance the alberta director for the canadian

00:00:25.920 taxpayers federation uh chris always a pleasure thanks for coming on and happy new year happy

00:00:30.900 new year thanks for having us again so let's talk here about what saskatchewan is doing i just laid

00:00:36.800 the groundwork here but effectively are they in legally iffy territory here or are they pretty

00:00:43.640 soundly protected that's a great question i think we're in kind of newer territory we've got an

00:00:49.820 actual you know we often hear people at the taxpayers federation email us and say something

00:00:53.540 like i'm not gonna pay my taxes this year damn this government which you know we appreciate 0.79

00:00:58.280 that passion oh you got my email good yeah thanks so much for responding to our survey so so what we 0.92

00:01:04.740 find interesting here is that we've got the premier saying it so now there's a heck of a lot more on the

00:01:11.580 table and what's really neat to see is that uh premier scott moe has really kind of got this confidence

00:01:18.260 about him now and i like to think that it's often due to the fact that we have daniel smith as the

00:01:25.140 alberta premier right next door and so the two of them i think are kind of in a bit of competition with

00:01:30.440 each other on who can stand up to the true to government faster and more and so what's interesting

00:01:36.600 with saskatchewan is that they have a crown corp when it comes to their power regulated regulation and

00:01:42.660 power delivery now quite often we don't like crown corporations because they can wind up being

00:01:48.180 monopolistic you don't have any competition and it can go sideways but with the fight with ottawa

00:01:54.660 it's been very useful for him to be able to do that so much so that we've got daniel smith kind of going

00:02:00.400 hmm maybe we should create a temporary form of an alberta crown corporation just as a mechanism

00:02:06.500 to fight trudeau's attack on our energy sector and so i think we're in pretty new territory here

00:02:13.800 i'd have to think long and hard about when the last time was that a provincial leader stood up with this

00:02:19.680 kind of force saying i'm refusing to collect your federal tax within my jurisdiction we know that

00:02:26.640 quebec must have said something like this sometime in the past but this is uh definitely something

00:02:32.360 big and bold coming from the west yeah i would agree and and i think that in the context of

00:02:38.780 what saskatchewan's doing here they're really doing an end run and a very creative end run around the

00:02:43.520 federal government i'd say something analogous would be when alberta said we are not going to devote police

00:02:48.680 resources to enforcing the gun grab it was really a move the federal government hadn't anticipated and kind

00:02:55.160 of what was a bit checkmated on this i'll ask you then in the context of how this competition

00:03:01.420 benefits people because i agree i mean this one upsmanship between alberta and saskatchewan is

00:03:05.460 great i was in i want to say it was pigeon forge or gatlinburg it was one of these like tourist trap

00:03:10.640 towns in tennessee once and they had a dollar store and then you got drive a little bit down the street

00:03:15.780 there was a 99 cent store and across from that there was a 98 cent store and i was like this is

00:03:21.660 fantastic i mean they're probably all owned by the same company but like i was like this is great i mean

00:03:25.180 what better way to be a consumer than be in the midst of three businesses that are all buying for

00:03:30.800 your uh consumerism here and if you're uh i think you and i were joking in the past if you live in

00:03:36.040 lloydminster which is that uh city that straddles saskatchewan and alberta you're getting the best of

00:03:41.080 both worlds here but canadians benefit when you have provinces that are wanting to really provide

00:03:47.280 a better value for their residents and for citizens here but the flip side of this is that alberta is not

00:03:54.360 doing everything perfect uh the alberta government this year reinstated uh as of yesterday the fuel

00:04:00.160 tax and i know you were uh really just desperately hoping and pleading with the government on my show

00:04:06.200 a couple of weeks ago that they would walk this back they didn't so first off how much is this for

00:04:12.000 albertans yeah this is really frustrating and so just to focus on the positive again for a second it's

00:04:18.360 it's the reason why we're really happy that premier daniel smith and premier scott moe are standing up

00:04:24.420 to trudeau is because it usually saves people money and it provides more accountability because

00:04:30.160 typically the more local smaller government is going to be more accountable and usually cheaper

00:04:37.240 to operate than this big conglomerate amorphous thing that is called ottawa and so that is why we're

00:04:43.520 cheering them on when it comes to that sort of thing unfortunately you're right it's a big head

00:04:48.780 scratcher so one year ago premier daniel smith did the right thing she fully suspended the alberta fuel

00:04:56.480 tax which saved us 13 cents per liter of gasoline and diesel and it was big savings it was like 10

00:05:03.040 dollars a minivan 15 dollars a pickup truck about 130 dollars for a trucker to fill up his big rigs

00:05:08.520 when you add it all up province wide it was saving around 100 million dollars a month so big time

00:05:15.120 savings now technically yes it was tied to the price of a barrel of oil and when they announced

00:05:22.320 the fuel tax suspension they said hey if the price of oil drops below a certain threshold we're going to

00:05:28.460 partially uh reimpose this tax so that's the math part but the politics part a year ago is when the

00:05:36.040 premier announced why she was doing this and the why matters here she said she was doing this because 0.97

00:05:42.080 people were struggling to afford the basics because inflation was still a huge problem and because

00:05:47.280 prime minister trudeau is obsessed with increasing his federal carbon tax so she saw this as kind of a

00:05:53.880 shield against ottawa none of that stuff has changed in fact it's getting worse trudeau is going to jack up

00:06:00.280 the carbon tax in just a few weeks time but inexplicably the treasury bureaucrats in edmonton

00:06:07.440 have gotten a hold of nate horner the finance minister and whispered something into his ear and

00:06:13.780 they've now increased it it's up to nine cents per liter so for the first time in a year albertans are

00:06:20.360 not paying the lowest fuel taxes in all of canada that title is actually now in manitoba with the ndp

00:06:27.440 premier wab canoe yeah and look i i think what you're saying there is valid and it's why temporary

00:06:35.580 in terms of the government lexicon is never something anyone should take to the bank but i'll

00:06:41.360 ask you about the why here because this would be an easy win for taxpayers to make this permanent is it

00:06:47.460 just that the government in alberta can't afford it is that their only rationale have they really

00:06:51.800 defended the allowing this to go back on that's what they're trying to say but the problem here

00:06:58.200 is that the math is staring at us in the face so great question if this if they were teetering on

00:07:05.000 the brink of a deficit of not balancing the budget the taxpayers federation and people like us uh would

00:07:11.660 not be clamoring for them to extend this fuel tax relief we don't want to see deficits we want to see

00:07:17.660 them running surpluses so they can pay down the debt okay because the debt is a major problem we're

00:07:22.840 spending billions of dollars on interest payments per year that isn't the case in alberta we have a

00:07:28.440 5.5 billion dollar surplus right now on the books they have a 5.5 billion dollar surplus after a year

00:07:37.820 of not collecting this tax so mathematically it's a big head scratcher as well so even if and they should

00:07:46.960 even if they kept their promise to put 50 percent of their cash surplus down on the debt which they've

00:07:53.380 agreed to do fine andrew they could still extend this by another six months and still have a more

00:08:00.520 than a billion dollar surplus at budget time so this is again like politically mathematically we don't get

00:08:08.260 it this doesn't make any sense my only my my spidey sense is telling me that i think in edmonton i call

00:08:15.300 it auto washed at the federal level i think in alberta you did you do a lot of talk radio here

00:08:20.500 do they call it dome disease up in edmonton yeah they get under this dome and these bureaucrats at

00:08:27.060 treasury start these are the same people by the way who want a pst like they are not our friends you

00:08:32.580 should not be listening to these people um my hunch is uh that the politicians the premier the minister

00:08:38.960 are catching a bit of dome disease and they're listening to the bureaucrats at treasury

00:08:43.340 and who love higher taxes well maybe we're overdue for another red lobster accord which uh if you

00:08:50.160 don't get the inside joke i'll explain it again later i have explained we have explained it in the

00:08:53.560 past i don't know if we've shown the uh the famous picture but uh the invitation we need another

00:08:58.540 conference yeah we have the red lobster accord uh all right chris sims we will talk to you next

00:09:03.220 monday thank you so much as always for your time happy new year thanks for listening to the andrew

00:09:08.080 lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:09:14.660 you

Juno News - January 03, 2024

Saskatchewan drops carbon tax on home heating

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