SOG48： ＂Trudeau's a Joke on the Global Stage＂. Former Ag Minister Demolishes #Trudeau ｜Stand on Guard Ep 48
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Summary
Former Agriculture Minister Jerry Ritz joins me today to talk about the government's new plan to reduce the amount of fertilizer farmers use by 30% by 2030, and why this is bad news for farmers. He also talks about the carbon tax and why he thinks it's a bad idea.
Transcript
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Welcome back to another Stand on Guard episode. I'm your host, David Creighton.
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Nice to see you all back again today. It's been a busy week already with votes on the carbon tax,
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and we might have another one today that's affecting farmers. And that's part of the reason
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I have my guest today is former Agriculture Minister and Saskatchewan MP, Jerry Ritz,
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who was a good friend during the Harper years and a damn good Ag Minister. Unfortunately,
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I don't think we can say that about many of his successors. But Jerry, thank you for joining me
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today. Well, my pleasure, David, and thank you for that kind introduction. Well, it's very true. You
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were an Ag Minister who actually understood agriculture, and we've had a series of Ag
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ministers who really didn't have a clue. Even though the current Ag Minister does have a clue,
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he doesn't seem to be functioning as he used to. But we'll get into that in a bit. I just wanted to
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touch on an article that I did last week for the Post Millennial, where I'm doing most of my writing
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these days. And it's really a great publication because it's cross-border. So you can talk about
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American or Canadian issues. And Americans are reading about Canadian news. Canadians are reading
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on American news. And I think that's good because we're certainly in the same news cycle. And we
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cannot isolate in terms. But I wrote an article last week about Trudeau's war on farmers. And
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when I wrote that headline, I thought about you. Because the last time we spoke, when I was doing
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an interview for the Western Standard, you called what Trudeau was doing to farmers, a war on farmers.
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And specifically, there's been an announcement recently about this 30% reduction in fertilizer. I just
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want to look at this slide here. Because it talks about reduction of fertilizer use by 2030 to 2020
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levels. Now previously, I'll get that in a minute. But previously, the Ag Department has talked about
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fertilizer emissions, not use. And this doesn't appear to be a typo or an error, because people have
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been asking the minister about this. And this does seem to be an accurate depiction of what the
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government wants. Do you think the government's actually expecting farmers to reduce fertilizer use
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by 30% by 2030? Well, yes, I do. Because the first way they were measuring it didn't give them
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anything they could cheer about. Farmers are already stewards of the environment and their land.
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Of course, the four R's come into play the right type, the right place, the right time and the right
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amount. And that gives farmers the best results. Fertilizer is an expensive commodity, you just don't go out
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there and spread on hundreds of pounds that you don't need. A lot of times you'll wait till the crop
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up is up. And then you'll top dress at certain areas to give that little zing to it. But it's now
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about micronutrients to the copper and manganese and sulfurs and so on that drive the protein level
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up the sulfur. And that's what farmers are gravitating towards. So for some reason, this government has got
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agriculture under its lens, not unlike what they've done to other resource sectors. And if they would
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stop and realize that this is all part of a supply chain, that when they make these types of changes
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to the base, the agricultural growers themselves, it affects the full supply chain, which ends up on
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the grocery store shelves. And that's where our high prices are coming from in these arcane regulations
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that they plan on bringing in to hit a target that doesn't matter. You know, they've got a solution
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looking for a problem. Well, it concerns me when they went from emissions to use. But what really
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concerns me is the idea that they keep saying this is going to be voluntary participation by farmers.
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I find that difficult to believe because nothing during our COVID experience, during that whole
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pandemic, nothing was voluntary. It was mandated. They forced us to wear masks. They forced us to
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take the vaccine if we wanted to work or travel or to live like ordinary human beings. And in the
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environment, excuse me, the environment and climate change minister, Stephen Gilbeau, who seems to be
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really in control of the Ag Department these days, he has gone around saying, if we want to divorce
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ourselves from fossil fuels, I'm just going to turn off the pumps, I'm going to shut off the natural gas,
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I'm going to turn off the electricity. And I don't care if people are freezing or can't read or can't do
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anything normal, because it's all about fulfilling the agenda of climate change. And do you really
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believe for a minute that farmers are going to be this is this is going to be a voluntary program for
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farmers? No, not at all. I think the same as we had a voluntary gun registry, you know, after a while,
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it became mandatory under these liberals. And that's what they do best. I mean, Trudeau with his
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little buddy Jagmeet Singh, who's also a closet anti agricultural, you know, from downtown Toronto,
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he doesn't understand where the bread on his table comes from, and how it gets there and why it costs what
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it costs. And that's the problem with these guys. They're disconnected from any type of rural
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roots. They've had a couple of ag ministers. I mean, Lawrence McCauley actually did run a dairy at
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one point. Not not a large one by any stretch, but but he actually was hands on. But that's some 40
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years ago already. And Bebo, who came in, sat on the board of something that might have been or could
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have been ag related. And we all saw what a disaster she was. Now Lawrence is getting a do over coming back
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in for his second stint at this. And he's the one whose loose lips started talking about a mandatory
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30% reduction in fertilizer use. I think he got out ahead of the comms team led by Katie Telford,
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of course. And he's actually spilled the beans, quite literally. And farmers are starting to be
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concerned. And what that does as a trading nation, it sends those ripples out across the world that
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Canadian agriculture is going to shrink, not grow to feed that hungry world.
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Well, they've already placed a 30% tariff on fertilizer from Russia, which is a large part
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of what farmers were getting their fertilizer from. So a 30% reduction. This, to me, smells of
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something that is just disastrous, catastrophic for farmers. Could this not only lead to Canada not
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being an exporter nation of foodstuffs, but in fact, could it lead to some degree of famine in
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this country? Well, certainly. I mean, we eat on average about 50% of what we produce, some
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commodities higher than others, but then we export the balance. And if there isn't that amount to
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export, of course, we'll look after our own first. They'll come in with programs that say you have to
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sell cheap to the domestic supply, you know, the two price system we used to have under the wheat board.
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But at the end of the day, I mean, it still comes down to our credibility and our capacity
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to be a global player. And we're losing that face out there on the world stage. Every time I see
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Trudeau or Jolie or Freeland or anybody go outside of Canada, I just shake in my boots because
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every time they do, there's a major faux pas created.
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And we mentioned Lawrence McCauley. He does seem to have some roots in agriculture. As you say, 40,
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I didn't realize it was 40 years ago, though. He ran a small dairy farm. He does seem to have a
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better cognizance of agriculture than, say, a Bebo, who had absolutely no clue what she was doing or what
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agriculture was all about when she was there. But McCauley worries me because I remember McCauley
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when you were in the House and he had fairly substantial
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ministerial responsibilities. And he was pretty good in question period. He handled himself
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Well, he had one issue that he brought up every spring, and that was ferry service to some
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island off of PEI. Other than that, Lawrence was quiet.
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Yeah. But I've watched him lately in question period, which I try to do live just about every
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day if I'm not doing something else. And it's worrisome because he reminds me of Joe Biden
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because he doesn't seem to have a sense of what he's even talking. It's like he's being given a
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script every day because every time there's an ag question, he seems to reach for a piece of paper
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and start talking about forest fires. And I wish I had a clip of this, but he's done this repeatedly.
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And he's reading from a prepared script about how climate change is responsible for all the forest
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fires we had last summer, which, of course, I believe is absolute nonsense. There's no correlation
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there. There's no correlation has been proven, certainly by the liberals. They just put that out
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there as a given. And it certainly is not a given. It's not a fact. But McCauley just seems to want
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to talk about forest fires. Do you think the environment minister has just taken on the
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ag department as an appendage now? Because he seems to be a spokesman for Gilbo.
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Well, I think there's only two or three major players sitting around the cabinet table. And
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certainly the ag minister of the day under the liberals is not one. We were very much
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noticed by Prime Minister Harper the amount that agriculture drove the Canadian economy,
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the third largest contributor to our GDP, the largest manufacturing sector. Now, I guess it's
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going to be EV batteries that nobody's going to buy. But at the end of the day, these guys sitting
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around that cabinet table in Ottawa, including the handpicked people they put into the ministries and
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so on, do not have a clue about what's happening out here on the actual ground.
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So it does concern you that ag issues are not going to be seriously considered then?
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Well, absolutely. I mean, you look at our trade corridors, we've got free trade agreements and
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they keep talking about adding to and changing the title to be progressive as opposed to just
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free trade agreements. I mean, that's what they're all about is virtue and there's no value in what
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they're talking about. Yeah. I'm also concerned about, you know, Trudeau's crackpot scheme to somehow
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magically lower grocery prices. And all he has said is just do it, make it happen. And when he first
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said that, my mind went back to his father's wage and price controls of 1974, an issue he actually
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flip-flopped on. He ran in the 74 election against Bob Stanfield, the progressive conservative leader at
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the time saying he would never institute wage and price controls and famously or infamously upon
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winning reelection, he went from, he was in a minority position. He went to a huge majority.
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He immediately instituted wage and price controls and they were catastrophic as they were everywhere.
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But Trudeau doesn't even seem to have that much of a plan. He just, he's telling grocery stores,
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okay, go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan for me that is going to lower
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grocery store prices. Now, my concern, first of all, is that when you artificially lower prices like
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that, you end up with scarcity in the grocery stores. We already saw that during COVID. I don't
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know how many times I walked into a local grocery store or Walmart and the shelves were empty. I think
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we could see that times a hundred. If we start artificially lowering the grocery store prices, we could have
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another Venezuela here. But what concerns me even more than that is the grocery stores, if they're forced
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to reduce their profit levels, they'll pass that on to the farmers and they'll say, okay, can't afford to
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pay you that anymore. We're going to cut the price in half. Do you think that could happen?
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Oh, absolutely. And as I said earlier on, we import 50% of what we consume. And do you think he's going
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to put price controls in on all the countries we import from? He can't. It's not unlike his single
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use plastics orders. As soon as that actually comes into play, then, you know, everything that comes
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in from California and Florida and so on that comes in a plastic bag can't come in anymore. So all of a
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sudden, we're going to have less product on the shelves because the Americans are not going to change
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their way of doing things for one little country that's a minor part of their market share. So it's going to
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shrink. There's no doubt about it. Our shelves are going to be empty and the prices have to go up
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because the overhead costs of those stores, all that handling, all that transportation is still
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there. In fact, it's gone up because there's carbon tax and regulations at every level that add to that
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final price. So this is really a vicious cycle for farmers. They're going to be producing less with
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less fertilizer and getting less money for the crop they produce. With higher inputs.
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With higher inputs. Exactly. I just want to refer to a slide here from the Canadian Federation of
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Agriculture, where it actually says that farmers, that the price of doing business, put it in those
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terms, for farmers has increased by 21% in 2022. And that's the largest increase since 1974.
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I mean, how is that possible sustained? Well, it's not. And then you add on top of that,
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all of the equipment and repairs and a lot of the inputs come from offshore. And with a 72 cent Canadian
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dollar, farmers are paying that dollar value and eating the difference. It's astronomical,
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the extra that's being applied. Then you start looking at the downloading that's going on from the feds to the
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provinces, the provinces to the municipalities or counties. And you start to realize farmers are
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captive on their ground. And I know that the feds are eyeballing the asset value out there in land. It's gone up
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exponentially over the last 10 or 15 years, especially in Western Canada, when you've had the right to market
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our own products. And, you know, they're looking at that and saying, hey, how do we scoop that?
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Yeah. Well, and of course, the carbon tax is a huge factor in the cost of living for farmers. And
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as much as the Trudeau government likes to pretend it's not a factor, anybody with a little common
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sense, I think, can fathom that, yeah, it's a huge factor. Now, there's Bill C-234 in front of the
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Senate. I think today, at least this week, it's been in the news, not as much as it should be,
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because originally this bill was supposed to exempt farmers, all farmers, from the carbon tax.
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It's gone through committee. It's been gagged and distorted, strangled, and completely remade.
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So now, basically, it's not all farmers. It's pot growers. Pot growers get the exemption and virtually
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nobody else. Now, what is going on with this? Why is the Trudeau government insisting? And
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apparently, do you think he's working with the Senate? Is the Trudeau government working with
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the Senate to try to get this bill passed as the committee refocused it? Well, how can that be?
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All those senators are independent. I'm sure they think for themselves until they get that envelope
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in the morning to do this. You know, what I can understand is agriculture in Canada is literally
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the goose that lays the golden egg. As I said, the third largest contributor to our GDP. A lot of the
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stability that we've seen through these tough economic times, and we haven't hit bottom yet.
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That's coming in 2024. Even TIF is starting to realize that at the Bank of Canada. So it's
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agriculture that is going to be the stable force that's going to hold us and bring us through this.
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But we're seeing them being eroded and chipped away at by an unknowing, uncaring federal government
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in Ottawa with the help of Jaggi and his little band of Mary NDP. At the end of the day, no farmer can
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continue to take this type of onslaught and survive. And that's all going to affect everybody. I mean,
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we all like to eat several times a day. Well, mentioning Jagmut and his Mary band of socialists,
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surprising to some degree that the NDP supported the conservative motion yesterday to exempt all home
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heating fuel, including propane and natural gas from the carbon tax for this three-year pause,
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you know, which is, of course, not a solution, but it might be a temporary band-aid for a lot of
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people. Does it worry you, though, that Trudeau has apparently concocted a deal with the separatist
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block to make this? I mean, it didn't have any meaning if it had a past, but it was certainly
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symbolic. Does that worry you? He's aligned himself with separatists?
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Well, I think there's two things there. Of course, it worries me that the, you know,
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the Quebec tail can wag the rest of Canada's dog. You know, I mean, we've always faced that. At the end
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of the day, they're the wild card, and Trudeau will play that every chance he gets. But I really think
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Jag was driven by the provincial arms of his party. He's the leader of everything, provincially as
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well. And there were a lot of provincial NDP governments and provincial NDP oppositions that
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were speaking out in support of the conservative motion. So he was trapped between a rock and a hard
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place, and he decided to go with the hard place. But he'll be there right away back in Trudeau's
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corner, whatever happens today. So it was a temporary lull. I think the premiers, you know, they stood
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together in Halifax the same day the vote came down and said, we all agree this carbon tax is
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killing our economies. And, you know, I didn't see that covered in a big way in any media operation.
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So it's been a while since the premiers have stood up to a federal leader. I think the last one was
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also named Trudeau. I was just about to say that because you let us right into the next slide,
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which, of course, yeah, the premiers are united on this issue. And it, as you said, the last
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prime minister to get the premiers this angry and this focus and this united was Pierre Trudeau.
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And it really amazes me how much of Trudeau, of the elder Trudeau's experience, the younger Trudeau
00:19:00.080
is going through, from this sort of experience with uniting premiers to inflationary times, to high
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interest rates, to invoking the emergencies. It's scary at times how much his time as prime minister
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has mirrored the worst moments of his father. But this certainly is significant. The premiers are
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united on this issue. And I think this could well be a real crisis for Trudeau because the dominoes are
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falling. Once he admitted that you can take the carbon tax off for three years, apparently, and there
00:19:40.200
won't be a catastrophe, I think he admitted it's a farce. Can you imagine the forest fires in
00:19:45.860
Canada next year now? Unbelievable. Yeah. Well, you know, in truth, David, the old adage, the apple
00:19:54.400
doesn't fall far from the tree applies here. We just have a carbon tax in that apple. Now, other than that,
00:19:59.800
Mini-Me Trudeau is doing exactly what his father did. He's leading this country into a socialist,
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almost fascist state, if I dare go that far. I mean, he's become a tyrant. He's answerable to no one.
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He knows it. He's getting a free ride by his paid-for media, and that's what's kept him alive. He's
00:20:17.440
actually got absolutely zero status on the world stage unless he's handing out checks anymore.
00:20:24.600
Yeah, man. God forbid he should go on the world stage because we know what happens. He goes to
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India, makes an absolute ass of himself, makes ridiculous accusations, or he goes to the WEF and
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makes promises and says, God help us if he does fail. But it's interesting to me that Canada produces
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1.4% to 1.8% of global gas emissions. That's around there.
00:20:53.480
And, you know, and that's virtually nothing in terms of our global carbon footprint. But this
00:21:00.820
government continues to pretend that even if Canadians freeze, don't have any fuel, can't drive,
00:21:09.300
can't fly, it's somehow going to fight climate change. And of course, even if our global gas
00:21:15.560
emissions were reduced to 0%, it would have no impact on the world stage.
00:21:20.540
Well, it would actually have a negative impact because we would no longer be the carbon sequestration
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capital of the world. The way we grow our crops, the amount of forestry, forested land that we have,
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we are sequestering carbon, unbelievable amounts of carbon every day, and we get no credit for that.
00:21:37.360
So that's what a government that's thinking without their head up their ass would come to realize and
00:21:46.380
Yeah. I just want to play a brief clip here from your premier in Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, who I have a
00:21:54.160
lot of time for. I think he's doing an excellent job. I just want your comment on this.
00:21:59.600
You said that if the federal government doesn't bend on carve-outs for natural gas or other heating
00:22:05.120
sources, basically beyond heating oil, that you and your government as of January will stop
00:22:10.000
collecting it. I just want to play for you the federal finance minister's response late last
00:22:15.140
week to that threat, and then I'll get your reaction to it. Let's have a listen to Minister Freeland.
00:22:21.160
It is entirely appropriate, and I think an expectation shared by all Canadians, that everyone
00:22:27.980
in the country should follow the law. That's our expectation, and it's our job to ensure that the
00:22:36.900
Premier, does the minister have a point? Does doing something illegal here really solve anything?
00:22:42.160
I would say that we're going to follow the law. Very shortly, there's going to be a law in
00:22:46.780
Saskatchewan that will state that we won't be submitting the carbon tax on how we heat our
00:22:52.020
homes with natural gas to the federal government. And I would say we're also following the law of
00:22:57.540
thermodynamics, as heat pumps simply don't work in the climate across the prairie provinces. And so
00:23:02.820
there are multiple laws in this space. Very shortly, there will be another law in place in
00:23:07.980
Saskatchewan, and that's the law that we are going to follow.
00:23:10.480
But with all due respect, I take your point on the piece of legislation that you're going to pass,
00:23:15.800
but there is a way in which this country works, right? That you collect a tax on behalf of the
00:23:21.060
federal government, or vice versa, that the federal government collects some of their taxes on behalf
00:23:24.900
of the provincial government. I mean, is this the most responsible thing to do to start off? And I
00:23:29.920
get your concerns. I certainly just put them to the federal minister. But to start off on this foot
00:23:33.700
where, you know, what kind of slippery slope are we starting here?
00:23:37.340
Well, I would say we're making exactly the same decision as the federal government did. The federal
00:23:41.620
government did it, made the decision to hold the carbon tax payments for heating fuel, which impacts
00:23:48.380
largely Atlantic Canada. What we're saying is we're going to have, make a similar decision that is
00:23:53.040
going to have an impact on Saskatchewan residents. I don't think anybody can agree with the most
00:23:57.500
recent carve-out that the federal government is applying their carbon taxation policy fairer.
00:24:03.020
Most certainly, it's not fair to all Canadian families.
00:24:12.300
Well, he's being pushed into that corner. There's a new movement, Saskatchewan, that's bringing him back
00:24:16.460
on track, and he's starting to find his conservative roots. That's a good thing. But at the end of the
00:24:20.720
day, the federal government can and will pass any legislation that creates a law, and they have the
00:24:25.480
right to do that. Supreme Court rulings have set that precedent. But at the end of the day,
00:24:32.520
it's agreements between a federal government and a provincial government as to what will be collected.
00:24:37.780
And you do not have to honor up. There's no law that says you are forced to collect their tax.
00:24:43.680
It's an agreement where you get a certain amount to do that handling. And what Mr. Moe is saying is
00:24:50.700
he's just not going to collect it. You can apply that tax, but you've got to come and collect it
00:24:55.420
yourself. So he's not saying the tax can't be applied in Saskatchewan. He's just saying he won't
00:25:00.340
do it. Which I think is certainly a great beginning because he might be starting something here that is
00:25:08.320
going to be very significant. But he mentions heat pumps as well in this. I find this fascinating
00:25:14.720
because when I first saw Trudeau talk about free heat pumps, I said, uh-huh, uh-huh. Free for whom?
00:25:22.140
Nothing, of course, is free, and especially our health care is not free either. But the fact that
00:25:28.700
he's talking about free heat pumps for people below the poverty line. So if you're below the
00:25:34.460
poverty line, I don't think you're probably going to be wanting a heat pump because you don't own a
00:25:38.700
home. Well, yeah. Well, the point is there are some details that have been glossed over. It's a
00:25:45.080
$600 assessment you have to have done to see that you even apply or could apply for one. It only
00:25:51.860
applies to family incomes of less than $75,000. That's above the poverty line. And you have to have
00:25:58.700
a home that's assessed at less than $300,000. So, you know, it's a pretty fine point on actually
00:26:04.680
who's going to qualify for this at the end of the day to begin with. But then to say that these heat
00:26:10.200
pumps are efficient is ridiculous. Anything below, you know, they're saying 20 degrees and so on.
00:26:16.560
You know, I've been in places where they've had them and it's 10 degrees and they can't keep up.
00:26:20.340
But at the end of the day, they're just not that effective. You still need a backup heat source.
00:26:25.440
And what will that be? You know, you got to have a wood fireplace or, you know, a stove or something
00:26:31.220
like that, or keep your old oil furnace and run the heat pump as well. The problem that they have
00:26:37.260
is the same thing as trying to charge all these EVs is they do not have the electrical grid or the
00:26:43.640
capacity, especially in Atlantic Canada, to do this. They're power poor. So where is that energy going
00:26:50.400
to come from to run all of these? Well, that's, that's an excellent point. And in addition,
00:26:56.240
of course, the Trudeau government's not even admitting these are not carbon neutral. They're
00:27:01.000
not talking about the fact they have to plug them in. And this is just the usual, you know,
00:27:08.120
and yes, you have to make them and you, but you have to have a power source. And that's nothing
00:27:13.860
is being discussed from the liberal government from that standpoint. It's just like there's a magic
00:27:19.440
power source for these things. You just, they're going to make magic heat for you. And they run on
00:27:25.080
uniform parts. And it's the same thing when I hear people talk about electric cars being this panacea.
00:27:32.700
Well, you have to plug those in too. They have to come from a power source. And of course, the batteries,
00:27:37.520
we're never going to have enough of them and we won't be able to replace them. And that is another
00:27:42.120
catastrophic end for this, you know, and it, and it, it strikes me as a cruel joke though, that you
00:27:51.380
would tell people in Edmonton or Saskatoon or places where it goes to minus 30 and some minus 40 at
00:28:01.900
times that a heat pump is going to help you in the winter. Well, I think you're going to be very cold
00:28:05.980
because the research I've done indicates they really don't work under minus 15, minus 16 degrees
00:28:12.100
Celsius. And the cost of these things is, is absolutely enormous. But we saw that clip of,
00:28:20.360
of Freeland, of course, saying that we expect Saskatchewan to abide by the law. Thank you very
00:28:25.280
much. It, uh, I've noticed in the, in the question period lately, uh, Jonathan Wilkinson, who was an
00:28:32.260
minister of natural resources, could have been Chrystia Freeland's half brother. They both have the same
00:28:38.140
condescending attitude towards everybody in the house and they both tend to shake their hand.
00:28:44.400
And it, it amazes me how they continue to read from a script that is so divorced from reality,
00:28:53.040
that is so far from everybody else's real truth. And they just are oblivious to it. And
00:29:02.320
do you see any hope of ending this regime in the next two years with a parliamentary vote of any
00:29:11.080
kind? Well, not with Jagmeet, uh, bought and paid for and the bloc standing by as a default mechanism.
00:29:17.120
I don't, uh, I think there's going to be a lot more pressure on Trudeau to remove himself. He's not
00:29:23.080
going to do that. Uh, he hasn't even got to fly in his new airplanes that he's ordered. So he's going
00:29:27.540
to hang around for a while. I mean, there's talk of him taking another big fancy Christmas vacation
00:29:32.480
and making his decision at that time. I just don't see it unless he's offered a big spot at the UN or
00:29:38.280
something that he can go in and continue to spend money that isn't his. So I think we're stuck with
00:29:43.160
this clown and the clown car full of the other clowns, uh, for as long as they decide they want
00:29:47.920
to run. I would, I would concur because I see people every week saying it's over, it's over for
00:29:55.320
Justin Trudeau because some Senator or one of his caucus members decides to criticize him.
00:30:01.640
But we all saw Glenn or Ken McDonald from Newfoundland who stood up, spoke out against
00:30:07.360
the carbon tax. And when he's up voting in favor of the, the, uh, fiasco that they just put on
00:30:13.140
Atlantic Canada, he gives a finger to the opposition. I mean, uh, there you go. He's just a liberal.
00:30:19.880
Well, you know, I thought the same thing because yes, he voted twice in favor of conservative
00:30:26.000
motions to axe the carbon tax yesterday. He rejected that proposal, but of course he's taken
00:30:33.160
care of, you know, and when he first came forth and started doing interviews about why he supported
00:30:39.160
the last carbon tax motion by the conservatives, I said at the time, this is everything to do
00:30:46.560
with Kent getting reelected and getting Atlantic MPs reelected because he didn't say we have to get
00:30:54.680
rid of this tax in the longterm because it doesn't make any sense. It is a punitive tax. It punishes
00:31:01.800
people for doing things they have to do. He just said, let's put a pause on it for a couple of years,
00:31:08.940
meaning until the next election and I can get reelected and we can just do as we please again.
00:31:14.400
So this is all cynical. It's going to be interesting to see whether the carbon tax rebates continue to
00:31:20.920
flow to Atlantic Canada, because there's a lot of issues. They're still paying carbon tax on
00:31:24.720
barring their, the heat for their homes. So, you know, any businesses, any fuel you buy,
00:31:29.980
any groceries you buy, everything you touch has got a carbon tax on many, many levels in it.
00:31:35.460
So will they continue to get the carbon tax rebate while they've got that carbon tax carve out on their
00:31:41.340
home heating? Yes. And a lot of folks are suggesting today that Quebec is backing Trudeau's carbon tax
00:31:50.640
and conceivably the government for the next two years, because Quebec, of course, has a cap and
00:31:56.260
trade program in place and they really don't need their exemption. Well, that's smoke and mirrors.
00:32:01.260
That's like using monopoly money to, to change up into Canadian dollars. They're worth about the same
00:32:06.280
right now. But at the end of the day, their cap and trade system, no one's continuing on with that.
00:32:11.260
Ontario had one for a little while. California was the one that started it. And even they're
00:32:15.460
realizing now that there's nothing left to trade. They capped everything and they're in trouble. I
00:32:20.940
mean, industry is moving out of California as fast as they can get a U-Haul. So, you know, it's going to
00:32:26.060
backfire at some point on Quebec. The biggest thing that Quebec's got going for them is they don't
00:32:31.480
include their electricity product production in the equalization formula. So that means they continue
00:32:38.080
to get the lion's share of the money, most of it coming from Western Canada, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
00:32:43.340
Ontario's on a, on a pause economically as they try to struggle back from whatever fiscal policies
00:32:49.180
they're working with at the time. And, you know, it's, it's just unconscionable to people in Western
00:32:55.460
Canada, the amount of money that goes into Quebec to create the utopia that they can't afford without our
00:33:00.940
dollars. Yes. They, and yet they continue to talk about an independent Quebec, which would,
00:33:07.400
which would not be getting those dollars. And it's broken three years. Yeah. It, it, it is an
00:33:13.400
illusion. And it's unfortunately part of the daily narrative that comes out of Ottawa. This
00:33:19.520
somehow this can continue without any, any repercussions. Do you think though, is the carbon
00:33:26.760
tax destined to fail before the, before the liberals are out in two years? I'd like to say
00:33:32.920
it would. I'm, I'm anxious to see how stalwart Premier Moe is and how, whoever else he can get
00:33:40.140
to stand with him to push back on the feds at all levels. I mean, if you're going to rip that bandaid
00:33:46.180
off, you might as well take all the carbon tax. You're not going to collect any of it in the province
00:33:50.420
of record, whatever that province would be. I think that's the route that needs to be done. I mean,
00:33:55.120
if you're going to drop the gauntlet, make sure it hits the ground hard. Well, and, and that's it.
00:34:01.120
I guess we can only hope the, what drives me craziest with the Conservative Party right now is
00:34:07.260
to continue to say he's not worth the cost talking about Justin Trudeau. And that, that, that to me
00:34:12.540
is a completely ineffective electioneer, election slogan or anything else, because it's not just that
00:34:19.440
Justin Trudeau is not worth the cost. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of them are. It's a cut. Well,
00:34:23.920
the fact is he's, he's catastrophic for this country, but you've got to expand that to Trudeau
00:34:29.380
and crew, the whole clown car, not just the driver. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, that's, that's true.
00:34:37.920
But if it was just a matter of, of him not being worth the cost, I don't think we would be in the,
00:34:43.720
in the condition we are. I, I can, I'm concerned not only about where we're going economically,
00:34:49.520
but Trudeau continues to bring censorship down upon Canadians. He brings the latest bill that's
00:34:57.640
coming in the fall or early winter is going to be the Online Safety Act, which is going to make
00:35:03.740
disinformation, misinformation, and something called malinformation illegal. Now, whether or not
00:35:10.200
that's going to be criminal or civil or whatever they decide, the point of this bill, because I've read
00:35:16.980
what the study groups have told the liberals to do with this, disinformation and the, and the like
00:35:22.560
will not be defined in this bill because it will be that much harder to enforce if they define it.
00:35:28.980
So it will be up to this liberal government to decide what disinformation is. This broadcast could
00:35:34.220
be disinformation. The post-millennial rebel news, the daily caller, anything that it's new media or
00:35:42.140
is not mainstream media could be disinformation. And I think what the legacy media is not getting
00:35:46.500
because they're not covering this story at all is that they could be deemed disinformation because
00:35:51.960
they'll come for you eventually. And this Trudeau government is catastrophic for Canada. And I,
00:35:57.640
and I hope we can find a means, a democratic parliamentary means to end this parliamentary session sooner
00:36:04.260
rather than later, because I think the sake, for the sake of this country and for the soul of this
00:36:09.400
country, I think something, a change is needed. Well, the world is watching. I mean, he's a joke
00:36:15.960
on the, on the global stage. They're all starting to point fingers as well as to what's happening in
00:36:19.920
Canada. Case in point, the Israel-Palestine conflict going on and how we're handling that
00:36:25.460
as compared to other countries around the world, we're having the same results in our streets and so
00:36:30.940
on. And, uh, our, our cops are standing by waiting to see what they should do. Now you compare that to
00:36:36.240
what happened with the convoy in Ottawa and you start to realize we've got a, a, a, a two-tier
00:36:41.500
justice system at best. Um, both tiers are politically driven and everybody's just wringing
00:36:47.500
their hands and saying, what can we do? What can we do? We've got four gentlemen in Alberta,
00:36:52.120
the Coutts Four, they call them, that were part of that blockade at the Coutts border. Now there
00:36:56.500
wasn't a blockade. I mean, there was traffic still moving through, but at the end of the day,
00:36:59.980
they've now spent more time in incarceration without bail than our two Michaels did in
00:37:05.040
China. And we're a democracy, uh, where that's so true, Jerry. And I, I've been covering the
00:37:13.040
freedom trial convoy here in Ottawa on a daily basis. It's been recessed for three years with
00:37:18.440
Tamara Leach and Chris Barber. And of course you've watched, you watch and you say, what is the defense
00:37:24.080
up to? Because they, they provide no evidence at all for the allegations, for the charges and
00:37:30.160
everything they provide reinforces what Tamara Leach and Chris Barber have been saying all along
00:37:35.160
is that we told people to protest peacefully. We told them to cooperate with the police to disturb
00:37:41.560
residents. Yeah. Well, you look at the graffiti that went onto a CBC studio in Montreal. None of that
00:37:47.300
happened in downtown Ottawa. In fact, there's more businesses speaking up and saying it was great to
00:37:52.240
have the crowd there. Uh, I know the, the Tim Hortons owner on bank said they'd come in and mopped
00:37:57.620
the floors because they knew they were the ones that tracked in the dirt. So, I mean, these guys
00:38:01.360
left a tremendous impression for the vast majority of people. Now, Paul Champ, the lawyer that's trying
00:38:06.760
to put together this huge lawsuit, 300 and some million dollars, his main witness, that government
00:38:13.160
employee that was complaining about the noise and so on, she lives blocks away and probably couldn't
00:38:19.320
even hear it. But that doesn't enter into any of the things on the stand at this point. But at the
00:38:25.060
end of the day, I mean, we all see this for what it is. Trudeau was scared spitless of all the Canadians
00:38:31.440
that lined up as that convoy went through, all the Canadians that came to visit in Ottawa to be a part
00:38:36.840
of that. That's what scares him. Yes, I think so. And I wrote the other day in the Epoch Times that
00:38:44.980
the Tamara Leach, Chris Barber trial might not be technically a show trial in the Soviet Union sense,
00:38:52.960
in the Stalinist sense. But it certainly is a show trial because they're trying to bankrupt these
00:38:58.840
people. And they're trying to make anybody who wants to protest think twice about protesting.
00:39:06.720
And I think that is why this is a show trial. It's to put a chill into protests in this country. So
00:39:12.520
if you want to oppose the Trudeau government, you want to oppose liberal policies, watch out,
00:39:17.580
you're going to have your life unended, upended, and you're going to have to go through a lot of
00:39:22.500
legal and judicial problems. Yeah. Well, he stacked the courts. You know, we saw, what was it,
00:39:28.420
five relatives of Dominic LeBlanc that have been named as judges. You know, I mean, these guys are just
00:39:33.600
so overt in the way they're putting together their own show. It's going to take a long time to wind it
00:39:39.960
down. You know, I feel for Pierre Poliver when he finally gets into power, and he will, you know,
00:39:45.780
at some point it's going to happen. But trying to rebuild a federal civil service, and so on, right
00:39:51.920
through to the grassroots that have been so politicized, and to think for themselves, you know,
00:39:58.180
they spent $700,000 hiring consultants to tell them how to get away from hiring consultants. I mean,
00:40:05.120
it's just insult to injury day after day with these clowns. They're using your dollars to reinforce
00:40:11.020
their own ideology, and that is no longer a democracy, folks. Well, it might not be a technically
00:40:19.480
Soviet-style show trial, but I hope we don't have a Soviet-style famine in this country as a result of
00:40:26.380
these catastrophic agriculture policies. And Jerry, I want to thank you for joining me today. We miss you
00:40:34.280
in Ottawa, believe me. And we miss the Harper government, because there was a sense of somebody
00:40:41.380
being in control, leading the way with a hand on the ship. Right now, there's a sense that nobody
00:40:48.440
is in control, that there's a group of insiders telling Justin Trudeau what to do, because he doesn't
00:40:55.160
seem to have a grip on himself, on his caucus, on his cabinet, and certainly not on the government.
00:41:01.620
So we miss you, Jerry. Well, thank you so much for that. You know, my days in Ottawa were
00:41:07.560
packed-filled. You know, third-party people coming in to see, we had roundtables that gave me advice on
00:41:14.280
every industry group that moved in the country. All of that's been lost. That's unfortunate,
00:41:18.940
because that's where your strength is, is at the grassroots.
00:41:21.720
That's very, very true. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jerry. This has been a pleasure
00:41:29.020
talking to you. And like I say, thank you for your years of service as a member of parliament and as
00:41:35.060
the Minister of Agriculture. You have been sorely missed. I think farmers would say the same thing.
00:41:40.900
So let's do it again at your convenience, and let's hope and pray for this country, because Justin Trudeau
00:41:50.340
has never been good news. Well said, David. Thank you for your time today. I look forward to the next
00:41:57.140
steps. Okay, bye for now. Thank you for watching another episode of Stand on Guard.
00:42:02.180
I'm your host, David Creighton, and we'll be back.