Liberals in Free Fall
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.59204
Summary
The Prime Minister announces a three year pause on the carbon tax for the Atlantic Canadian provinces, allowing them to save money on heating and electricity bills. Conservative MP Damien Keurig joins the show to talk about the implications of this announcement.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your
00:00:12.100
host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps, the Lakes Brock, with new
00:00:15.580
content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. We ask that you like, comment,
00:00:20.440
subscribe and share this program. If you want Pierre Polyev to be the next Prime Minister,
00:00:25.620
we need to get eyes and ears on this program and this message because it's probably something
00:00:29.640
you're not getting in the mainstream media. Don't forget, you can download it, tell your
00:00:32.700
friends on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify, you name it, it is out there.
00:00:37.620
On today's show, a carbon tax break for Atlantic Canada. The rest of the country, not so much.
00:00:43.540
Well, to hear talk about this, it's going to be a wild show. To talk about this, we have Damien
00:00:46.840
Keurig, the Member of Parliament for Battle River Cofred in a beautiful province of Alberta.
00:00:51.320
Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much, Jamie. It's good to be here with you and wow,
00:00:57.140
what a weekend. What a weekend. I cannot believe we even have to talk about this. It is just mind
00:01:04.140
boggling what the Prime Minister announced on Thursday of last week. The Atlantic Canadians
00:01:09.860
are getting a break on the carbon tax. They're also getting money for heat pumps.
00:01:14.940
Heat pumps. Heat pumps. So, you know, we had a very interesting couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so,
00:01:22.480
where the Prime Minister was seeing poll numbers drop. And quite substantially, especially in Atlantic
00:01:27.680
Canada, because it gets cold there. And people heat with propane and oil and that kind of thing,
00:01:32.660
which is all subject now to the carbon tax and the clean fuel standard. So, a massive rise in the price
00:01:39.480
of fuel. And it was the poll numbers that actually got Justin Trudeau to react.
00:01:44.720
That's quite something because for, conservatives have been talking about how simple things like
00:01:50.580
being able to heat our homes has become unaffordable with Justin Trudeau's carbon tax. And now,
00:01:55.840
all of a sudden, after being lectured, and Canadians being lectured for a number of years about how good
00:02:02.580
they supposedly have it, finally the Prime Minister, it's like this little crack in the facade,
00:02:08.380
this fake facade of the carbon tax, that shows that they're acknowledging, basically, that all
00:02:14.600
of a sudden, life has become unaffordable. But instead of giving Canadians a break, instead of
00:02:19.120
giving all Canadians a break, and as Jamie, I don't know about you here in Ontario, but I know back in
00:02:25.080
Alberta, it gets cold in the winter, the maritime's cold as the snow comes. But instead of giving all
00:02:30.200
Canadians a break, 3% of Canadians will get a break with this announcement. And what was interesting
00:02:36.880
about this announcement is he made a big deal out of it. It's simply a pause. So he's not saying
00:02:41.660
Canadians will be able to have a break in the long term. They're simply pausing the pain for
00:02:46.440
three years, and then they'll make sure that Canadians still suffer later on. And the carbon tax
00:02:50.980
goes up every single year. So in that three-year period, well, after the next election, then the
00:02:57.480
Atlantic Canadian provinces will be hit with a massive sticker shock. Yeah, yeah. And they're saying
00:03:03.340
that everybody, it's like Oprah, free things, free things here, free things there, that everybody
00:03:09.920
will get these heat pumps, which, fine, and a lot of people may choose to put a heat pump in their
00:03:13.820
home. But for the Prime Minister to come and say that this is free, well, I'm sorry, government
00:03:19.900
doesn't give anything out for free. It's taxpayers that are ultimately paying for this, they're paying
00:03:25.500
for it at the carbon tax, they're paying for it. And what's worse is we're deficit financing these
00:03:29.380
things. So we're paying higher interest rates on the things that the Prime Minister is supposedly
00:03:34.100
giving out for free. Exactly. Government doesn't have anything until it takes it first, either
00:03:39.660
taxing, borrowing, or printing, combination thereof, and that's exactly what's happening here.
00:03:44.340
Let's queue up cut one, Super Producer Nick. We're going to listen to the Prime Minister
00:03:48.240
say this announcement, and try not to laugh on your way through it, but let's listen to the
00:03:53.560
Prime Minister play cut one. Today, we are announcing a three-year pause
00:03:59.120
on the federal pollution price on heating oil, so that we can give everyone the time and ability
00:04:10.580
So the time and the ability. So people aren't doing it on their own, so the government must
00:04:15.460
force you into moving in the direction the government wants you to go.
00:04:19.100
I think this highlights the real basis of what the carbon tax is about. It is about forcing
00:04:24.460
Canadians, forcing people to change. And the Liberals have talked from the beginning about
00:04:30.320
how the carbon tax is about the environment. Well, we've seen over the last eight years
00:04:34.880
that it hasn't actually worked. Every metric to which they said that it would help, it has
00:04:39.940
not. So definitively, the carbon tax is not an environmental policy. But then what they
00:04:45.080
fail to talk about, and it's truly misleading, when they talk about affordability, when the
00:04:51.460
carbon tax, by nature of how it is designed, is meant to make your and my and every Canadian's
00:04:57.800
life more expensive. And so they're succeeding in doing that, yet now all of a sudden, because
00:05:03.300
there's a drop in poll numbers, they are now having to address this on the other side of
00:05:09.260
it. It truly is just chaos when it comes to public policy. And ultimately, Canadians are the
00:05:14.840
ones that are having to pay the price, whether it's for the supposedly free heat pumps, or
00:05:20.540
for the fact that 97% of Canadians are not getting this break on the carbon tax when it
00:05:25.600
comes to the cold winter that's, well, it's snowing outside in Ottawa today, Jamie. So people
00:05:31.220
are going to be turning on their heat, and they're paying the carbon tax.
00:05:33.600
And they will pay the carbon tax. And it's quite just amazing. I got to give Prime Minister Trudeau
00:05:42.800
credit. You know, I don't give it often. But the ability to have, you know, no emotional
00:05:48.680
discomfort on what he is saying. Like, the government created the problem. Now he wants
00:05:56.780
people to carry him on their shoulders because he solved the problem, which is horrible government
00:06:04.220
policy that will kick in in three years' time. And this is, as you said, this is about raising
00:06:10.040
the cost of living on things the government considers bad. This is having the exact effect
00:06:15.300
they wanted. Now that it becomes politically unpopular, they have to gear down a bit. It doesn't
00:06:20.420
mean they don't want this at the end of the day.
00:06:22.020
It is nonsensical. And it comes down to bad public policy. It's making Canadians' lives
00:06:27.920
more expensive. And it is breaking the ability for Canadians to do the most basic of things
00:06:32.700
like buy groceries, eat their homes. And that's by design what they have done. And yet now they're
00:06:38.580
backtracking from that. After, I might mention, and I know you've heard this in the House of
00:06:42.540
Commons on a weekly basis for the last, since I got elected in 2019, I have heard the Liberals
00:06:50.000
lecture us about how great their carbon tax is, and now they're backing down on it.
00:06:54.300
And there was a motion, Conservative motion, to remove the carbon tax. And every single
00:07:00.080
Atlantic Canadian MP, Liberal, voted against it.
00:07:03.680
Several times. And this isn't just about politics, but this is about making sure that
00:07:09.020
life is affordable for all Canadians. Canadian winters are cold. Why don't we give them a break?
00:07:13.820
And I think that, you know, it shows that we have a Prime Minister who is desperate right
00:07:18.860
now. He's seeing his poll numbers drop. He's seeing frustration from coast to coast to coast.
00:07:24.100
And now all of a sudden, he is desperate to try and change the channel. But I don't know
00:07:28.740
about you, Jamie, but when I speak to my constituents, they are worried about being able to afford their
00:07:35.860
next meal. They're terrified about the price of fuel at the pump, the bills that they have
00:07:40.280
to pay. It's becoming unaffordable. That's by design what the Liberals have inflicted.
00:07:45.100
Absolutely. Let's cue up cut number three, because it even gets better here. Play cut three.
00:07:51.280
The price signal on heating oil is not resulting in enough people being able to switch to electric
00:07:58.380
heat pumps, despite people wanting to move to these cleaner home heating options.
00:08:04.160
I think that clip is very telling. Yes. That clip is extremely. So the price that the home
00:08:12.440
heating oil has got to has got so unaffordable for people, it's hard for them to look for
00:08:17.340
alternatives at the point. So the government caused people to suffer. The suffering was too much that
00:08:23.640
they cannot look for alternatives. So now we have to take money from other parts of the country,
00:08:28.780
taxed, borrowed, or printed, combination thereof, to help get these people in a better position using
00:08:35.020
a government-chosen option, which is heat pumps, which not necessarily works for everybody.
00:08:42.700
Like, this is, it is absolutely incredible. And he says it with a straight face. Like,
00:08:48.060
that's what boggles my mind. Like, you really have to shove this shovel in pretty deep to listen to
00:08:52.860
what's going on right now. You know, I grew up farming, and there's, uh, shoveling manure is a good
00:08:58.000
comparison. Well, that's what I was getting to. Exactly what the Prime Minister is doing. But,
00:09:01.120
but exactly what he just shared there, Jamie, is, is an admission that their entire carbon tax scheme
00:09:08.160
is an abject failure. That's right. It is a failure from, from front to back. And while they carve out
00:09:14.460
a small exemption, a pause, it's not even an exemption. It's a pause, that's right. A pause for, for three
00:09:18.660
percent of, of, of Canadians. 97% of Canadians are still hurting. And meanwhile, they've, they've
00:09:25.740
implicitly acknowledged that the whole plan is simply a failure. British Columbia has had the
00:09:31.140
carbon tax in the longest. The provincial carbon tax emissions ever since it's come into effect have
00:09:35.860
continued to rise. And it's no longer revenue neutral as it started out to be. So then it becomes
00:09:41.500
a cash grab for the government. It's not about saving the planet. It becomes about padding the
00:09:47.040
government's bottom line. Yeah. When it started in, in 2015, they said it would never go above
00:09:52.780
50. That's right. Yeah. Well, that was a lie. And then, then they lied about it and, and, and waited
00:09:57.400
till after the next election. And then it, well, all of a sudden was $170 a tonne. Well, there, there
00:10:02.340
are, are, are those that suggest that it should be much higher than that, including some within
00:10:06.660
the Liberal Party. So where does it end? It, it's driving Canadians to, to, into poverty and certainly
00:10:12.420
into energy poverty at a time. And, and certainly from being from Alberta, we, and I'm proud to
00:10:18.180
represent an energy producing region to think that there are Canadians facing energy
00:10:23.100
poverty. It is, and it shows how truly, uh, uh, things have deteriorated over the last eight
00:10:29.800
years. Uh, it's become unaffordable and, and, uh, and yet we have all of these resources that
00:10:35.660
should be available and affordable for Canadians and produced in a, in a clean and ethical way.
00:10:41.580
Like the Shamwell spokesperson. There is more. The icing on the cake, Damien. Cue up cut number
00:10:48.280
four. This says it all. They said the quiet part out loud. Play cut four. Is your government
00:10:54.140
open to, uh, because of the affordability crisis right across this country, looking at other
00:10:58.620
carve outs for other types of home heating in the future? That's a discussion that we'll
00:11:02.720
have down the road when we know that this one is working, but I can tell you Atlantic Caucus
00:11:07.040
was vocal with what they've heard from their constituents. And, uh, perhaps they need to
00:11:12.660
elect more liberals on the prairies that we can have that conversation as well.
00:11:22.200
What do you think, Jamie? Tell us what you really think.
00:11:27.420
So clearly Albertans are not electing enough liberals. That, that seems to be the sum of it.
00:11:34.060
There's, there's two things here. For the last number of months, the environment minister,
00:11:40.060
Stephen Guibault, has been picking fights with prairie provinces, saying that there will not
00:11:45.880
be exceptions. There will not be exemptions. It is national standards the whole way through.
00:11:51.620
And then this comes along, throws all of that out the window, showing that there are double standards
00:11:56.220
that exist within the Liberal Party. And then for that minister to come out and say, well,
00:12:01.740
the solution is elect more people that you disagree with, that don't want to do what's best for you
00:12:07.460
in order to do the things that you've promised not to do. Like, like it's political comedy, Jamie.
00:12:14.620
Yes. Putting it simply, yes. And, and I think increasingly, uh, Canadians are seeing through this.
00:12:22.220
It is, it is, it is absurd to think that a minister of the crown would suggest that a, uh, that they
00:12:30.320
should only listen to people that vote for them. Right. Yeah. As a leader, and, and you and I know
00:12:36.500
this, we may not agree with everybody, but it's our job to listen. A hundred percent.
00:12:41.280
Yet you have that minister saying that they only care about liberals. They only care about people
00:12:45.580
that support the carbon. And they're going to punish those that don't. They're going to punish those.
00:12:49.020
It's truly despicable. And it is despicable. I just can't believe she said the quiet part out loud.
00:12:54.300
I'm sure she got flack for that immediately after she was done. But it, again, it's, it's about the
00:13:00.780
seat count, right? 32 seats in Atlantic Canada, right? They were at risk of losing a ton of those
00:13:06.560
seats because, because you can say, what about those MPs, Liberal MPs in Northern Ontario? It gets
00:13:11.580
very cold in Northern Ontario. There was no carve out. Yeah. They have a few, not many, hopefully less.
00:13:17.220
Alberta Liberal MPs. Did they do a terrible job of advocating for their province? British Columbia
00:13:25.340
too. It's up over $2 a litre for, for gasoline. Yeah. Are they doing a pretty terrible job? I'd say
00:13:31.320
overall, yes, the Liberals are, but it's about seats. It's not about this, the saving the planet or,
00:13:39.460
or, you know, helping people get to heat pumps. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And I think
00:13:45.320
that the fact that, that on national television, they admitted just that, that it has nothing to
00:13:51.160
do about helping Canadians. It has nothing to do about the environment. It has everything to do with
00:13:55.920
that cruel political calculation. And, and unless it benefits the prime minister and, and his party
00:14:03.900
politically, they're not interested in helping. And I think that that's, that's where there's a clear
00:14:09.600
contrast that exists in the Canadian political scene. You, you have one party that cares about
00:14:14.700
Canadians making life affordable for all Canadians, or you have the Liberals that care nothing for,
00:14:20.200
for nothing other than their own, their own political futures. And, and right now, as we're seeing,
00:14:26.440
the fact that they are admitting such failure shows that their political future might be a risk,
00:14:33.340
which I think is, is where as conservatives, we have the chance to make the case to say, look at
00:14:38.460
better as possible. We have a plan that will make life more affordable for Canadians, that we can axe
00:14:45.780
the carbon tax, that we can have environmental policy that actually works, that we can inspire
00:14:50.580
people to, to build things again in this country, not punish them for not voting the, what, what,
00:14:56.900
what a Liberal cabinet minister thinks is the right way. Yeah. That is absolutely awful. What,
00:15:03.240
what, what has just said, I have no doubt Atlantic Canadians will see through this. Yeah. Because,
00:15:07.760
again, as pointed out, it's, it's not an end to the carbon tax. Their, their misery will not
00:15:13.360
end, because in three years, it will come back, and it will come back with a vengeance, because you'll
00:15:18.860
get the higher price three years down the road. That's true. So, Damien, we're pretty much out of
00:15:23.560
time. I, I wanted to play that last clip one more time, just to, just to send it out, but I don't think
00:15:29.260
we have time. Well, it's, I think it's almost queued up. All right, play cut four again. We'll
00:15:32.960
close it out, get your final thoughts, play cut four. Is your government open to, because of the
00:15:37.180
affordability crisis right across this country, looking at other carve-outs for other types of
00:15:41.020
home heating in the future? That's a discussion that we'll have down the road when we know that
00:15:45.080
this one is working. But I can tell you, Atlantic caucus was vocal with what they've heard from
00:15:50.400
their constituents, and perhaps they need to elect more Liberals on the prairies so that we can have
00:15:55.600
that conversation as well. All right, Damien Keurig, final thoughts are yours. The floor.
00:16:01.100
Wow. Please take it away. Thanks, Jamie, for this opportunity. You know, it's, it's, it's been
00:16:06.060
quite a weekend, as we've seen the Liberals admit that their carbon tax is a failure. They admit that
00:16:12.680
they are making life unaffordable for Canadians, and while they, they certainly have not presented this
00:16:18.340
small little carve-out for a few people, delaying the misery by three years while pouring what, what will,
00:16:25.160
I'm sure, be millions of tax dollars into a government-funded program, like you said, that,
00:16:30.340
that, that will, will, is, is manipulating markets. It just shows truly what the Liberals are,
00:16:38.220
that, that after eight years, the pain and suffering the Canadians are feeling is real.
00:16:42.720
But that there is an alternative, where there is hope, there is a chance that we can do better,
00:16:47.860
we can axe the carbon tax, we can bring back affordability on so many levels, and make sure
00:16:52.200
that Canada once, once again becomes the freest nation on earth. And, uh, I can tell you, it will
00:16:58.580
be, uh, uh, dramatically different than what we've seen from these Liberals over the last few days,
00:17:04.980
but more importantly, from what we've seen over these Liberals in, over the last eight years.
00:17:09.820
Better is possible, and I'm proud to be a part of the team that's going to make that happen.
00:17:15.540
Thank you so much, Damian Keurig, Member of Parliament for Battle River Crowfoot.
00:17:19.620
We appreciate his time, we appreciate yours as well. New content for you every single Tuesday,
00:17:24.580
1.30pm Eastern Time. Great content here on this program. Please like, comment, subscribe,
00:17:29.440
and share it. Also, you can download it, listen to our platforms like CastBox, iTunes,
00:17:33.740
Google Play, and Spotify. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government,