00:01:18.900I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:01:22.180I'm joined by Alex Zoltan and Isaac Lamoureux from True North.
00:01:26.640Fellas, there's lots to talk about here and I wanted to get going because we have a pretty packed show.
00:01:31.340First up, I don't know if I had this on my bingo card.
00:01:35.160U.S. President Donald Trump went on Fox News, and I think it was on Ingram, and said that he would prefer that the selected Prime Minister, Mark Carney of Canada, he'd prefer that he stay on the job.
00:03:07.200And I've never quite understood that until right now, where I roll over in bed in the morning around 5, and I check my Twitter or my ex to find out what the hell is happening now all the time.
00:03:19.800And so, even if I, you know, like the idea of lower taxes in the States and that sort of stuff, man, this is really shaking things up.
00:03:32.000I mean, I really don't like to engage in the game of trying to read Donald Trump's mind because I just don't think it's really a good use of our time.
00:03:40.040Because it's really impossible and it's unfalsifiable anyway.
00:03:43.320What I will say about Donald Trump, somebody else had said this and it really struck me.
00:03:47.320When he says stuff, the spirit is always right, but the details are all wrong.
00:03:52.660And so when he says 60 billion or 200 billion, it doesn't really matter.
00:04:06.580Yeah, I don't know what to think of the things Trump has done, especially for the Conservatives' campaign and what that means for the next federal election in Canada.
00:04:17.300Because some people I've spoken with have thought that Trump's proposed tariffs, for example, have hurt the Conservatives in their campaign against the Liberals.
00:04:28.360And we've seen the Liberals gain ground in the polls.
00:04:31.280But the most interesting thing, Chris, I want to talk about, which is a completely different story that I wrote about, was the OECD report, which went into a proposed tariff scenario.
00:04:39.860And who would be the big winners and losers nationwide, or no, sorry, not nationwide, worldwide, worldwide.
00:05:19.920So I keep getting phone calls from people and emails about tariffs because they can feel really complicated.
00:05:26.020But ultimately, tariffs are just trade taxes.
00:05:29.940So, and this is one of the things where when people are saying here in Canada of, hey, man, his whole 51st state talk is really ticking me off.
00:06:12.900It's one of those things where you're like, really?
00:06:15.660Like, because this is now, what's frustrating here is that regardless of your politics, if you're like a Polyev guy or a carny person or a Trump person, whatever, it isn't the rulers who feel this stuff.
00:06:30.260When these sorts of people start getting into a big trade tariff war, it is only normal working people who feel this stuff.
00:06:38.900It's the person at the grocery store who's suddenly paying double for peanut butter.
00:06:43.080It's the person who is in the aluminum plant who is worried about losing his job, which is devastating.
00:06:49.680Like, you lose your house, you lose your car.
00:06:51.860Like, that is not something people just shake off.
00:06:54.340And so this is where whenever sort of these kind of statements and eruptions happen from the media and the states, it's just like, okay, again, how do we deal with this?
00:11:06.600You know, it just changes at the flip of a switch when the people they look up to in politics, let's say, tell them what they need to hate.
00:11:15.660But perhaps what they're lacking is the reasoning behind it all and the critical thinking that actually lets us know why we believe what we believe.
00:11:24.460I will say I spent 25 years, most of it, as a mainstream journalist.
00:13:10.040And he's on the record many times saying no second carbon tax, which was a weird carbon tax that was buried in fuel regulations, especially there in BC, Alex.
00:13:56.600It's just harder for you to see the pain as a carbon taxpayer.
00:14:00.560And second, and this is key, by obliterating the industrial carbon tax, it removes the ability for politicians to hide the consumer carbon tax the way that Carney is saying he's going to.
00:14:14.640Alex, I'll let you take the first run at this.
00:14:16.460What was your thoughts when you saw this announcement?
00:14:18.160Well, I actually have more of a question because I'm kind of on the crime beat right now.
00:14:22.280So I'm a little bit outside of this area.
00:14:29.920So if Paul Yev were to get rid of the carbon tax, what would happen in provinces where they've instituted their own carbon tax proactively, like in BC, for instance?
00:15:19.520Carney has said he is going to shift the carbon tax costs that we can all see because it annoys him that we can see the carbon tax costs because the peasants get uppity.
00:15:33.340However, the first carbon tax that you guys pay visibly, like the one that shows up on your Fortis B.C. natural gas bills, your premier, David Eby, has promised to get rid of that B.C. carbon tax if the federal backstop is removed.
00:15:50.740And Carney has said he's reducing the federal one to zero.
00:15:54.380That's when he signed that weird piece of paper.
00:15:56.280And he said immediately, but the paperwork says April 1st, so a bit of a discrepancy there.
00:16:01.940But he does say he's going to reduce it to zero.
00:16:04.380And if he does do that legit, that is saving you $13 per minivan.
00:16:09.340It's saving you $20 per pickup fill-up.
00:16:11.720And that's saving the average Canadian family about $400 per year on their home winter heating.
00:16:18.180That's the first carbon tax, the one that Carney promises he's reducing to zero.
00:16:37.860No, Chris, this goes back to what you were saying about watching the whole clip, because I remember, and how I came to know of this, was Paul Yefra pulled up the carbon tax law at a press conference and said, hey, guys, Carney said he's removing the carbon tax.
00:17:09.860And he actually broke it down for a normal person to understand who was just listening to that press conference, which I think is really key when we're talking about those complex issues.
00:17:18.400As we saw with Alex, even, a reporter, he had to ask you a question right away.
00:18:29.240It's just stuff that they're reposting for information.
00:18:31.160But there's language on there that is basically counselling politicians who have to deal with us uppity peasants who don't like a visible carbon tax.
00:18:40.500It's counselling them to do things like a cap-and-trade carbon tax, which is still a carbon tax, but you just can't see it.
00:19:26.320You don't have an option of whether or not you can drive to work or not, or else you lose your job, and you can't pay your heating, and you freeze to death.
00:19:32.080It's like putting a tax on insulin for diabetics, right?
00:19:35.280There's something incredibly immoral and unjust about that.
00:19:37.980So I find the language divisive to be almost, yeah, it's a strange use of the word.
00:20:59.260This is not an environmental solution.
00:21:01.720Because when British Columbia first hatched the carbon tax in 2008, they promised that the carbon tax would reduce emissions by 33% below 2007 levels by 2020.
00:21:27.700This is not dug up from his book from two years ago.
00:21:30.400It's what he said out loud with his face.
00:21:32.780He says he wants to crank up the industrial carbon tax and create carbon tax tariffs.
00:21:39.020So stuff coming into Canada for the first time ever will have a carbon tax punishment coming from a country that doesn't have one, i.e. the United States.
00:21:59.020Two, there's a guy named Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who's ringing a dinner bell right now, trying to get industry to come to America.
00:22:14.720They're just going to get up and move.
00:22:17.260Yeah, I'm going to be a bit of a jerk to all sides of the political spectrum and say that 25% tariffs on Canadian goods to solve the fentanyl crisis is just as dim-witted as thinking you can change the weather with taxes.
00:24:12.600Again, if you're trying to violate our jurisdiction, yeah, not going to happen.
00:24:17.820So they basically updated their act to take it to the next level where Ottawa can't even get Alberta's data.
00:24:24.340So all these impact assessment acts, whatever, they're based on emissions data, they won't even have the data.
00:24:30.640So how are they going to know what's happening in Alberta?
00:24:33.780Yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, I certainly don't blame Alberta.
00:24:37.700Like I said, they're actually trying to not only empower industry, but reduce their emissions.
00:24:41.960Unlike Ottawa, who, who, who are just trying to tax people and do nothing about emissions, though they virtue signal and say, oh, this will reduce emissions.
00:24:49.080We know from the data itself, by the way, from the data that in these taxes do nothing to reduce emissions.
00:24:56.600Whereas Alberta is actually trying to empower industry and implement best practices and technologies that will and are reducing emissions.
00:25:06.040And another report I read recently, I forgot which one it was.
00:25:09.240But anyways, yeah, look, Canada can actually be a global player in energy because we have clean energy and the alternative is getting very, very dirty energy from coal producing plants in China.
00:25:21.540So, yeah, if we actually boost up our energy and get it worldwide, we can actually do something in global emissions, not just our little country of 40 odd million people.
00:25:32.460Yeah, to your point, again, Canada is responsible for about 1.4% of global emissions.
00:25:38.820We're really fighting on the wrong end of that arithmetic problem.
00:25:42.120If we're really concerned about global emissions.
00:25:44.880I will quickly point out, I did, I think I saw language such as if the feds try to get into these offices to get this data, it will be like a trespassing situation.
00:25:59.680I will also point out that the parliamentary budget officer, the PDO, okay, the nonpartisan watchdog of the federal budget has came out with a report very recently.
00:26:11.200I did a stand up in front of a pumper there, a pump jack, and it would cost.
00:26:16.220So, the production cap, they call it an emissions cap, but it's a production cap, coming from Ottawa, imposed on Alberta's oil and gas sector.
00:27:20.880Because I guess my concern, and I'm just playing devil's advocate, so forgive me.
00:27:25.480As we all know, the federal government is so bloated as it is, and they already can't afford to basically run operations with a balanced budget.
00:27:34.360Can they afford to lose the carbon tax?
00:27:37.260Yes, because they need to cut spending.
00:27:40.180Right, no, no, no, I agree with that, of course.
00:27:42.000I absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, out of principle.
00:27:44.160I mean, obviously we're all right of center, and we're all, you know, would rather have a smaller government.
00:27:49.080But just theoretically speaking, if Carney wants to keep the existing federal government intact as it currently is,
00:27:55.320can he even afford to get rid of the carbon tax?
00:28:00.560He would straight up add on to the debt, which, by the way, is $1.2 trillion.
00:28:04.480And as we all famously know, our deficit, which is a little baby debt, deficit is a yearly debt that is piled on to the big honking mama debt.
00:28:13.400OK, the baby debt for this fiscal year went from the $40 billion mark to around the $60 billion mark.
00:28:20.680And that is when famously Christopher Freeland said, you know what, I'm out of here.
00:28:55.180He'll say something like, we're going to make big polluters pay, which translation, use your universal translator from Star Trek, means businesses, industries, job creators, all of that.
00:29:06.060Remember that steel plant that he was standing in with his earplugs in and his eye protection and his hard hat?
00:29:13.120And they couldn't get apparently the word on the street is I don't know if this is true.
00:29:17.440The word on the street is, is they couldn't get workers to stand behind him.
00:29:20.500So they made all of the cabinet ministers put on these outfits and just saying, I don't know if many of those cabinet ministers have worn steel toes before in their lives because they looked a little awkward.
00:29:32.080Alex, just to take it to your neck of the woods there, I saw a few articles come up recently on if EB were to remove the carbon tax, I think it would leave like a $1.5 billion hole in their budget.
00:29:43.760And we already know BC is continuously running record deficits and their credit rating, I think, has decreased like three times or something.
00:29:50.980So I don't know how they're going to deal with losing the carbon tax, the revenue from the carbon tax, because it's revenue neutral.
00:29:57.500No, it's not. You need that money. You need to tax your citizens because you're spending in other areas is very irresponsible.
00:30:04.020Speaking of spending in other areas, do we want to get into the stuff that Premier EB spends money on there, Alex?
00:31:05.400And this is what blew my mind. Two things.
00:31:07.500One, there was the hall they rented cost like $14,000 or something.
00:31:13.580And it was just like a couple blocks from, you know, the enormous building that we already pay for in Victoria called the legislature, which has ballrooms and stuff in it.
00:31:22.780And then also, this is what I can't understand.
00:31:25.880And I'm going to throw it to you guys, Alex and Isaac.
00:31:28.300They spent $57 on sandwiches per sandwich.
00:31:33.780And this is not, before you ask, this is not with a catering fee baked in.
00:31:38.320The catering fee was a different line item on this damn receipt.
00:34:45.540And for folks keeping along with home at home, over $4 billion this year on interest, you could build almost four brand new hospitals for that.
00:34:54.280So it's a good way of picturing a billion, because a billion is $1,000 million.
00:34:58.300It can get kind of, like, overwhelming to understand how big that is.
00:35:01.540The next time you walk past a reasonably sized new shiny hospital, that's about a billion dollars.
00:36:52.760See, that's a perfect example of even the most ridiculous moments where you're trapped in a certain area and, like, that's all you can pay, like, at a concert or something.