Fighting Trudeau’s Carbon Tax Cover-Up
Episode Stats
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164.00842
Summary
Pierre Polyev, the Shadow Minister of Finance, and John Broussard, MP for Barrie-Innisfil, join me as we discuss the Liberals' carbon tax cover-up. The government released the calculations without numbers, but they were blacked out in the documents.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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On the show today will be Pierre Polyev, the Shadow Minister of Finance,
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and also the MP for Barry Innisfil, John Broussard,
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You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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Is the Prime Minister actually saying that taxpayers should be on the hook
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What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect
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for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
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All these deficits leading to nothing but burying Canadians in taxes.
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Welcome to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
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I'm your host, Tony Clement, the Member of Parliament for Paris-San Muskoka.
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And with me today are two fellow Conservative MPs,
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the Member of Parliament for Carleton and the Shadow Minister of Finance.
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And also joining us is John Broussard, the Member of Parliament for Barry Innisfil.
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We're talking about the Liberals' carbon tax cover-up today.
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And we know that this started with the budget that was released earlier this year
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and has continued and has been an ongoing issue.
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Pierre, walk us through, starting with the budget,
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so we can better represent the Canadian people and the results of that?
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Tony, the government introduced a budget bill in the spring
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which empowered Ottawa to collect a carbon tax in any province that does not have its own.
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This carbon tax, according to the Finance Department,
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will raise the price of gasoline by at least 11 cents a liter,
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will raise the cost of home heating for the average family by at least $200 to $250.
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We know it will raise the price of almost everything else,
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everything that has to be transported to your home or to where you work
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because a carbon tax raises the price of energy.
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It raises the price of anything that requires energy for the production and transport of the good.
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certainly with respect to goods and many services as well.
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Now, as Parliament, we have to authorize any tax governments impose.
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There, it's the old principle of no taxation without representation.
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and goes back to our British parliamentary roots.
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I even trace it right back to our 800-year-old Magna Carta
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where the landed taxpayer demanded that they approve any increases in taxes
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And that principle has been part of our parliamentary system ever since.
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So, we, government cannot tax what Parliament does not approve.
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But Parliament cannot approve what it does not know.
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And right now, we don't know what the carbon tax will cost the average Canadian family.
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I've obtained documents in which they have calculated the estimated cost
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to families at various income levels of this carbon tax,
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how much it will increase their groceries, their gas, their home heating, etc.,
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and how it will be the total cost to each of those families.
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Unfortunately, the documents I obtained had no numbers.
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And the government released them, but released the calculations without numbers.
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How much is it going to cost the average individual
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or every individual in the country for this tax to be imposed?
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You seek the documentation, and the answer is blacked out.
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So, I have documents in my possession back at my office
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which show that the government has calculated what the cost will be to the average family,
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but that the numbers are blacked out in those same documents.
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look, if you want Parliament to authorize you to raise this tax,
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the very least you can do is tell us what it will cost taxpayers.
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and there must be no taxation without information.
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and tell Canadians what this tax will cost the average family.
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I'm going to bring John Broussard into the conversation as well,
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the member of Parliament for Barrie-Innisville.
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John, well, all three of us are MPs from Ontario.
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This carbon tax was an issue in the election too, wasn't it?
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And, you know, before I start, I just want to, you know, compliment Pierre
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and the work that he's done to expose the fact that this is a carbon tax cover-up.
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We've asked hundreds, literally hundreds of questions in the House of Commons and that committee,
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and still we get no answer from Catherine McKenna or the Prime Minister
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on just how much the carbon tax is going to cost the average Canadian family,
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But I think they fear what that number is, and Canadians aren't going to buy into it,
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certainly not to the degree that it exposes it to costs.
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But in Ontario, for sure, and, you know, just before the election, Tony,
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there was an Ipsos poll that showed that 72% of Ontarians see a carbon tax as a tax grab.
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In fact, 68% saw it as simply a symbolic gesture.
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It's a way for government to pick your pocket one more way.
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Just to extract money out of your pocket for their own purposes
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So they weren't buying that it was actually going to have a positive impact on the environment, rather?
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I think in the only poll that mattered, and that was last Thursday,
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Ontarians sent a clear message to Justin Trudeau
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and to his environment and carbon tax champion, Catherine McKenna,
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Because Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
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campaigned on the fact that they weren't going to impose
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and that they were going to fight it every step of the way.
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And so we saw that mandate being given last week,
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and I think it should, again, send a clear message to Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna.
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Pierre Polyev, despite your worthy efforts to try to find this information,
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Well, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has calculated that the carbon tax
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Now, that's not the amount of money the government will collect.
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because the impact of the carbon tax on the economy will be so devastating.
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Now, he did say that if the government were to use all of the proceeds of the carbon tax
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to reduce income and business taxes, the damage might not be as severe.
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But based on the design that he has discerned from the Liberal plans,
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he said it's a $10 billion cost to our economy.
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Because it's not as if the Liberals are saying,
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well, we'll raise this tax here or create this new tax and we'll be reducing taxes there.
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They've raised income taxes on 81% of middle-class families.
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They brought in changes that will effectively raise taxes on small businesses.
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So, you know, we've always been told that these carbon taxes are going to be revenue neutral.
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That is, that the government would lower other taxes as much as it raises carbon taxes.
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But the government has been very clear they're not going to do that.
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They are going to raise the money and spend the money.
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We've seen in the Ontario election campaign, John Broussard,
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and also what's been happening around the country.
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British Columbia is a case in point where British Columbians are paying more for their gas
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than pretty well anywhere else, and yet emissions, carbon emissions,
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They are high, and that can be attributed to government action.
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So what's the feeling on the street about this?
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They're going to start seeing if the government does decide to impose this carbon tax.
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For example, in British Columbia, the price of fuel went up.
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Emissions went down initially, but then emissions are back up.
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So it hasn't changed people's habits the way the government wants to change their habits.
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And in Ontario, as Pierre said, we could see the potential of 11 cent per litre increases
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in the price of gasoline, the cost of home heating going up.
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But the ancillary effect or the cascading effect of that, Tony, on the entire economy
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because as people ship goods, those goods become more expensive to ship
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And so in Ontario, again, last week, thankfully, we elected a government
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And I think what's important here is we're starting to fire warning shots
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across Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna's bow to say,
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like, the people of Canada aren't going to stand for this.
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We've certainly got, in Saskatchewan, we've got a pushback there with Scott Moe,
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Jason Kenney, the potential of a Quebec Conservative government.
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So that pushback is important to make sure that Canadians don't suffer
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the consequences of a very regressive, very costly carbon tax on them.
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Let's talk a little bit about how we're making this case, Pierre Polyev.
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That is to say, something we want to debate in Parliament that's coming up.
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Talk a little bit about that and how we're trying to put this issue
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in front of Canadians as well as in front of the government.
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We have another vote before Parliament, before the summer recess,
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asking the government to end the carbon tax cover-up and reveal all of the censored information
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in its previous briefing notes that I mentioned.
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Tell us what the carbon tax will cost the average Canadian family
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so that Canadians know what they're going to have to pay.
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You know, this is a government that uses the verbiage of being open and transparent.
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It's one of the first things that they promised in their party platform,
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and then they definitely ratcheted up the rhetoric on it about being open and transparent.
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But here's yet another case where they're doing exactly the opposite.
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It is indeed, and this is unlike other taxes, which are itemized one way or another.
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If you pay sales tax, you see it on your receipt when you make a purchase.
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When you pay income tax, you know what total you've committed to the government,
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But when you pay a carbon tax, you have no idea what it costs you
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because its costs are embedded in consumer goods.
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So the price of fruit and vegetables will go up,
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but you might just assume that your grocer has gotten greedy
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The price of furniture might go up because that furniture was transported by truck.
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You might just assume that the local furniture store is making more profit.
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And in fact, all of those costs are due to the government imposing this tax,
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and it's designed to take money out of people's pockets without them even knowing it.
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This is one of our recurrent themes as Canadian Conservatives about affordability
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and how Liberal governments have chipped away in some cases much more than chipped away.
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They've made a substantive difference in the affordability to live, to work, to get to work,
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This is a theme that I've heard time and again from us.
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Well, look, governments, plural, compose about 42% of the Canadian economy.
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So when the cost of government goes up, the cost of everything goes up.
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If you're raising small businesses' taxes, those businesses have to raise their prices for consumers.
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If you're raising gas taxes, then everything that is moved by fuel must become necessarily more expensive.
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And so, again, the biggest cost driver right now in Canada is government.
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It has been growing at three times, at least federally.
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Government has been growing at three times the combined rate of inflation and population growth.
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In other words, we're increasing spending three times faster than we need to to maintain services at the present level.
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But all the extra costs of those increases have to be paid by someone.
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Justin Trudeau is borrowing a lot of the money to pay for it.
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But, of course, whatever you borrow today, you have to pay interest on tomorrow.
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And that's one of the reasons your taxes are going up.
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The other thing that it's doing, by the way, and this is underreported, the more governments borrow, the more they compete with Canadian mortgage borrowers for credit.
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So government deficits can have the effect, and there's a lot of economic research to show this, of driving up the cost of borrowing and making mortgage payments higher.
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I've been told that 47% of Canadian mortgages are up for renewal next year.
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So this is something where there's a real risk for people and their homes, as well as the Canadian economy, and jobs, really, that's all tied together.
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The other issue that's been underreported on this is the fact that not only are they going to impose a carbon tax or try to impose a carbon tax on the provinces,
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but they're also going to be charging GST on top of the carbon tax.
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So what that means is they're actually going to be collecting even more revenue from people.
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And, you know, Pierre talks about the fact that the average Canadian family is paying over $800 more a year in taxes.
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Like my family, for example, the income splitting opportunity with my wife, the fitness and child tax credit, the transit tax, all of those things have been taken away.
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And so these are real costs on real Canadian families, and they're feeling impacted by it.
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I'm here with John Broussard, Member of Parliament for Barrie-Innisville, MP Pierre Polyev, our shadow finance critic.
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What should Canadians do if they are concerned about this?
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How should they contact the Conservative Party, contact you?
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Well, I'm publicizing the carbon tax cover-up on my Facebook page, and I encourage people to go to that page and that of other Conservatives.
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Share all of our posts so that more Canadians are aware of the cover-up.
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Let's mount pressure on the government to end the carbon tax cover-up and tell people what this new tax will cost them.
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Pierre Polyev, John Broussard, thank you for joining us on The Blueprint.
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So good luck with your continued protests against the Liberal carbon tax cover-up.
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Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative podcast.
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To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada, search for The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.