00:16:39.700yesterday the big carbon tax demonstrations took place across the country.
00:16:44.300Chris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:16:47.820She joins us every Monday, but we bumped it back with yesterday being a holiday at True North.
00:16:53.520And Chris, always good to talk to you.
00:16:55.200you've been very good at not letting the Alberta government off the hook here because just as the
00:16:59.700federal carbon tax went up yesterday, so too did the reinstated Alberta fuel tax. And I've got to
00:17:06.840say, I mean, I've got a lot of time for Danielle Smith. You and I have both crossed paths with her
00:17:10.900many times over the years. I've yet to hear a compelling reason for why all of the things
00:17:16.120she's saying about the federal government don't apply to her government and the gas tax.
00:17:20.940Yeah, same here. In fact, I was almost tempted to phone you about it just offline because I'm stumped. It's one of those weird situations where she's such a rock star when she's taking on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. She went right into the lion's den there in Ottawa and did a great presentation at committee. And so she's absolutely right to take the Trudeau government to task and say, scrap this carbon tax altogether. It's a huge waste of money.
00:17:46.420But then, like, puzzlingly, in Edmonton, here at home in Alberta, we got our fuel tax, our provincial fuel tax, increased all the way back up to its full strength of 13 cents per litre of gasoline and diesel.
00:18:00.540And to your point exactly, like, this is nothing personal. Big fan of a lot of what Premier Smith is doing. But policy-wise, I can't square this circle.
00:18:10.840This does not make any sense, both from a fiscal standpoint or from a communication standpoint.
00:18:18.040Fiscally, they did the right thing when they fully suspended the fuel tax here in Alberta for a year, Andrew.
00:18:24.000It saved Albertans around a billion dollars, having it at zero for an entire year.
00:18:28.940Then they brought it back up to nine cents per litre just at the new year, the start of 2024.
00:18:34.720But then they went all the way just yesterday and brought it all the way back up to 13.
00:18:39.120And so this is strange that they're doing this considering the fact that they have a balanced budget and there's still places for them to cut.
00:18:47.040Like, why are they handing mega millions of dollars to an NHL team to help them build their hockey rink in Calgary while you're nailing drivers of everyday, you know, jobs here in Alberta for filling up their vehicles?
00:19:01.220And just communications wise, I don't get this part.
00:19:05.140Why would they Bigfoot their own victory party?
00:19:08.560Why would they overlap their provincial fuel tax increase with big bad Justin Trudeau's
00:19:16.240Just comms wise, I don't even understand this play.
00:19:19.520Why not leave it at nine cents per liter and kick the can ahead to June or July?
00:19:25.360There's this old line that you hear that there is just one taxpayer and that federal spending,
00:19:31.380provincial spending, municipal spending.
00:19:32.940At the end of the day, when you have one pocket and when that $1 you've earned comes out of
00:19:37.560your pocket and goes to government in the abstracts and in the grand sense, it really doesn't matter
00:19:42.740which one. I mean, I used to like Jack Astor's back in the day before the HST in Ontario,
00:19:47.860they used to have the line items on the receipt that you'd get. It was like Kretzian's tax
00:19:53.720and Dalton's tax. And then it was like Harper's tax and Wynn's tax. And I liked it actually,
00:19:59.440because I told you, yeah, okay, they both have a role to play. But at the end of the day,
00:20:02.540The HST was a transparent policy because a tax is a tax is a tax. And this is the thing. I mean,
00:20:08.160to try to distinguish between these two is just from a messaging perspective alone flawed. But
00:20:13.780also it means that any criticism she's making to the federal government, criticisms with which I
00:20:18.780agree, can also be pointed back at her government. And I just don't get that. I mean, she's been
00:20:25.300asked about it somewhat. Have you gotten a sense of how she rationalizes it at least?
00:20:29.980I haven't heard her direct response many times, to be fair. And I'd like to hear it, frankly. Again, it was her birthday yesterday. I like so much of what she is doing. To be totally fair, they've balanced the budget here, Andrew.
00:20:45.340They wrote it into law that they must keep spending increases or strained below the rate of inflation plus population growth.
00:20:53.020They're paying down the debt. They're putting money away for a rainy day.
00:20:58.760But it just pains me when they turn around and do nonsensical things like jacking up the fuel tax back up to full strength.
00:21:05.680And I can hear some people right now within the UCP saying, well, technically, you know, a barrel of oil is getting up there in price.
00:21:11.880Okay, fair enough. When former Premier Jason Kenney first announced this policy, yes, it was tied to the price of a barrel of oil. Once the price of a barrel of oil got up to, I think it's $90 per ton, $90 per barrel rather, they would then drop the fuel tax back down.
00:21:28.160But it was not getting to that range when Premier Smith, new Premier Smith, fully dropped it down to zero for a year.
00:21:36.360She did so for affordability reasons and also to take some of the sting out of the federal carbon tax.
00:21:43.280And this is where I think, you know what, this is my hunch.
00:21:47.860I think what's happened is what's often called dome disease in Alberta.
00:21:52.020And that's where a politician who's elected really grassrootsy, very connected to the average person, gets put into office there in Edmonton.
00:22:00.660And then the bureaucrats who work in the Department of the Treasury Board, they get in there.
00:22:05.740And those types who don't run for election, they don't need to talk to average voters, they love trying to find new taxes.
00:22:12.340It's those sorts of pointy heads that keep suggesting a PST here in Alberta, for example, or new fees on all sorts of stuff so they can take in more money.
00:22:20.800because those folks are always looking at that revenue column, how much money government's taking
00:22:24.960in. Fair enough. But politicians need to stand up to these people and say, you know what? No,
00:22:30.440read the room. We're not going to increase taxes. And when you combine it, Andrew, with just, I think
00:22:35.580it's just this morning where NDP Premier of Manitoba, Wob Canu, came out and said, yeah,
00:22:41.340I'm extending my fuel tax holiday. So folks in Manitoba are saving 14 cents per liter of gasoline
00:22:47.780the diesel. Zero. They're paying zero provincial fuel taxes in Manitoba. We got full freight 13.
00:22:53.560I don't understand. There's a great quote from Milton Friedman, which is, to be honest, I don't
00:23:00.400love the, I like my version of the quote better because his is like more clinical in nature. But
00:23:05.700the effective meaning of it is that you shouldn't try to elect the right people. You should try to
00:23:10.040create the circumstances where even the wrong people do the right things, which naturally
00:23:14.240leads us to manitoba which has an ndp government an ndp government which has not been great on the
00:23:19.200carbon tax they've not been terrible they've been very wishy-washy but even in manitoba their
00:23:24.080government is extending this fuel tax holiday that's right and i've always loved that modified
00:23:30.800quote you use because it actually gives people a lot of hope even outside of taxes so everything
00:23:36.160that's gone on the past four or five years or whatever it can get people down pretty fast and
00:23:40.960I really like that method and that way of looking at it. I remember you telling me that years ago and
00:23:45.120it cheered me right up because then that means that we can fix stuff. We can create the conditions
00:23:51.200where even politicians who are, you know, lukewarm still nonetheless do the right thing.
00:23:57.120And in this case in Manitoba, again, no knock on Wab Canoe, he seems like a very personable person
00:24:02.080actually. They've, I guess, created the conditions where they're doing the right thing and so we're
00:24:08.640really happy to see that and strangely this is where things are a little bit twilight zone
00:24:13.280here in alberta we're even seeing some of the ndp candidates for the provincial party because
00:24:18.880former premier rachel notley is stepping down they're having an ndp leadership race
00:24:22.960some of the ndp candidates have come out and said yeah we need to scrap the federal carbon tax
00:24:28.160now there's a lot of asterisks around there so i don't know how they feel about a provincial one i
00:24:33.520don't know what kind of terminology they're going to use but even to have them saying out loud with
00:24:38.080their face. We're opposed to the carbon tax is huge. So this is a big game changer. And so again,
00:24:44.580it would be really nice to be able to just full throat approve of what the Alberta government is
00:24:50.220doing when they're rallying cry against the federal carbon tax. But it's really tough to do
00:24:55.300so when just cost wise, straight up math, we are now paying higher taxes at the fuel pump.
00:25:02.240I have to take a bit of an indulgence here, Chris. Did you listen to the song I sent you?
00:25:06.180i haven't had a chance to yet okay okay we're gonna do this now so i admittedly i sent it and
00:25:12.000chris thought i was like some like my chris thought i had been hacked and was like fishing
00:25:15.780her or something i did i totally thought you'd been hacked i'm like and then i looked because
00:25:19.620i was like she always responds to me within like five seconds then i went and looked at the email
00:25:22.620like oh yeah this looks like a spam email it's like hey check out this ai generated song anyway
00:25:27.140so last week i discovered this ai song machine and i was like and i was just having some fun with it
00:25:32.500And Chris has just been such a wonderful fixture on the show.
00:25:35.660We thought she needed her own theme song for the show.
00:31:42.400So I think that it's a, you hear everything is racist, as you said, the education system
00:31:46.680is racist, the employment system is racist, on and on and on.
00:31:50.400So they make a specific claim that the housing market is racist.
00:31:53.520They don't really back it up with any data.
00:31:56.380And as a matter of fact, Statistics Canada has been spending a lot of time since the Trudeau government came to power looking at race and a variety of issues.
00:32:07.960They have quite a few studies on housing and race.
00:32:12.740And if you read the essay I wrote, there's no apparent white supremacy going on in the housing market.
00:32:22.400Yes, housing outcomes do seem to vary by racial background.
00:32:27.700You get a very distinct sort of racial leaderboard, but by no means are whites at the top.
00:32:33.240If the housing market was somehow controlled by white supremacists or there was this evil racist plot behind renting and selling homes, then you would expect the whites to be at the top.
00:33:07.100So that, you know, on the surface, that does suggest to me that the housing market is racist.
00:33:13.660Its outcomes do vary, but that doesn't mean racism is behind it.
00:33:17.600Well, and I would suspect that a lot of this is reflecting other divides that exist in other areas that have nothing to do with housing. One would be just general income divides. And again, I think we want to have a discussion about racial divides on income. I think that's an important discussion.
00:33:32.940I also suspect geography probably plays a big role. I mean, if you look at the communities that have the most highly concentrated ethnic communities, they are generally speaking in urban centers, which happen to be the most expensive places in Canada to live, which is also a great contributor, I would assume. So again, where does she say the white supremacy is in all of this?
00:33:54.020Well, the disappointing thing about her argument is that the federal housing advocate says a lot, says it very loudly and convincingly, but they don't provide very much evidence.
00:34:08.680Okay. I'm glad it's not just because I read through your piece a number of times and I looked up elsewhere and I couldn't even find the point that you were, I knew you were refuting a valid point that was, or a point that was legitimately made, but I couldn't actually find like what was there to attack really. That was the problem because there was such a thin or non-existent basis for it.
00:34:30.240Another report they put out claims there should be reparations for past housing injustices.
00:34:35.140But to tackle the bigger question, perhaps, since the Trudeau government set up StatsCan
00:34:43.140to look at racial statistics and gender statistics, there's a whole sort of subunit at StatsCan
00:34:50.600now that's supposed to be sort of investigating these sorts of things.
00:34:54.120And sure enough, when they look at employment, when they look at education, when they look at poverty figures, when they look at housing, you do see a very distinct, as I called it, a racial leaderboard.
00:35:07.520You tend to see Chinese, Japanese, Asian, Canadians at the top of whatever it is you're studying.
00:35:15.220Whites tend to be in the middle and Blacks and Latin Americans tend to be towards the bottom, whether, as I said, all these different categories.
00:35:25.580So it does require some sort of explanation, as you say.
00:35:30.600The one that's sort of off the cuff these days is that it's all to do with racism.
00:35:35.360But I think as you look a little closer, you discover that there's other factors going on.
00:35:41.000And a lot of these factors, quite frankly, aren't within the control of government.
00:35:45.640These are family and individual choice decisions that, you know, are going to be cultural norm issues as well that really require much more a broader sort of social response.
00:35:59.680So explain to me the dangers of this, because it's easy to look at this sort of and roll your
00:36:05.840eyes and say, oh, well, but this is not just some wacky professor. This is not just some
00:36:11.160campus activist. This is someone who has a role that is designed to have a fair bit of influence
00:36:16.160in federal housing policy. Right. I mean, she's set up to give the federal government advice on
00:36:22.800housing. And if the government is listening to the kind of advice that the federal housing
00:36:28.900advocate is providing, we're doomed. There's no question, because the goal here is to eliminate
00:36:36.320or reduce as much as possible the private sector from the provision of housing in Canada. And
00:36:43.120there's simply no way that that can survive. The racism report that I mentioned, one of its
00:36:52.340suggestions is that banks and pension funds be banned from lending money to anyone that makes
00:36:59.260a profit in the housing market. Now, just roll that around in your head for a little while.
00:37:05.560Beyond eliminating the mortgages for anyone who wants to rent out a house, it would completely
00:37:14.760destroy the bridge financing and short-term financing requirements for building large
00:37:21.320apartment buildings and complexes and all sorts of things it would bring the entire construction
00:37:27.000industry to a complete halt and and the their goal is to have non-profits and co-ops fill the
00:37:34.740fill the gap here it's just um it's completely illogical and there's no there's no evidence
00:37:41.460that you can point to anywhere that the the the billions if not trillions of dollars of capital
00:37:47.600that you would require for getting to Canada,
00:38:15.260developers have a profit motive, but it is that motive that gets them building houses. And
00:38:20.640without that, you have to basically bureaucratize this process. And I don't think anyone who's ever
00:38:26.200relied on government for anything says that it can be known for running things efficiently or
00:38:30.760swiftly. So this idea that we need to take the capitalism out of the housing market would just
00:38:37.420be economically catastrophic. True. And also, for me, it doesn't logically flow that someone who's
00:38:44.600interested in making a profit is going to be discriminatory uh you know the opposite really
00:38:50.200it's like yeah i know let's you know i don't care if you want to pay for my house here you go
00:38:54.200and and and the bigger the company the more um routine eyes and the more processes they're
00:39:01.660going to have i mean if there was racism in the housing industry you'd expect it to be someone
00:39:06.560whose personal prejudices can influence the room they rent in the basement for instance
00:39:12.040You're a big apartment building owner, REITs. I mean, another thing that is to go off on a side note that the federal housing advocate is really worked up about are REITs and the fact that they get a particular kind of tax concession in Canada.
00:39:30.680Anyways, these big corporate entities that have thousands, if not tens of thousands of rental units to offer, they've got, you know, online forms and all sorts of processes and, you know, checking your bank records, etc.
00:39:46.640But they don't care what your race is.
00:39:48.600It's not even a category to check off on their application forms.
00:39:52.640These are the least racist organizations you could imagine.
00:39:56.060They just want to fill their apartments.
00:39:58.220So, yeah, the underlying premise is crazy, and the outcomes that would result from the federal housing advocates' suggestions would be devastating.
00:40:10.040And it's also, again, unfair to claim that Canada is riven by racism without providing any proof.
00:40:17.840You know, just to get back to my my piece that all these stats can studies that come up and they keep showing this very particular racial leaderboard rather than racism.
00:40:32.080A much more believable and credible reason for this is actually the rate of single-parent households.
00:40:41.260And this can be a difficult topic to discuss, but Chinese Canadians have very low rates of single-parenthood.
00:40:52.120Whites tend to have a medium sort of rate, and Blacks, quite frankly, have a very high rate of lone parent,
00:41:27.940Well, if you're going to read two, if you're going to read two pieces on this, you can look at the housing minister's comments or the housing advocate's comments on this.
00:41:36.200But you'll need a palate cleanser immediately after that.