The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - This was no April Fools joke. The numbers at the pumps are no laughing matter.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:09.720 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Caworthalikes Brock with new content

00:00:13.500 for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. On today's show, we are talking about the

00:00:19.760 carbon tax. It went up yesterday, so you're probably waking up to more effects of prices

00:00:25.540 going up and life getting harder and harder. Please like, comment, subscribe, and share this

00:00:30.300 program. A very important message. Tell your friends they can download it on platforms like

00:00:34.180 iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out there. Greg McClain, thanks for coming on the

00:00:38.960 show, Member of Parliament for Calgary Centre. You're going to talk carbon tax here today.

00:00:42.560 Thanks, Jamie. Happy to be here. My goodness, it's up again. We're up to $80 a ton. It went from $65

00:00:47.960 up to $80 on April 1st. Let's recognize in the last election it was $50, which it was supposed to be

00:00:54.100 capped at. Then it went $15 a year after that. So $65 last year. Just right up to $80 today. A 23%

00:01:00.700 increase on April 1st. Congratulations, everyone. So most people will be feeling it almost immediately

00:01:06.580 at the pumps, but there are other things that will take time to implement. It's just groceries. As new

00:01:11.900 groceries come in, the new price takes effect. Prices will gradually start to increase. So even though

00:01:17.600 some people may not have seen it outside the price of the pump, there will be effects coming for the

00:01:22.060 weeks ahead. All kinds of effects. Number one, let's take a look at how opaque this carbon tax is.

00:01:27.860 So it's going up 23% as a direct cost. So on your fuel bill, it goes up, the tax goes up by 23%,

00:01:33.920 the carbon tax. But in the grand scheme of things, you take a look at how much tax we actually pay

00:01:38.500 on fuel. There's a whole bunch of mitigating effects that have to go into that. So the provinces,

00:01:42.460 many provinces are actually lowering the tax they charge on fuel because of that. So that means

00:01:46.980 lower, less revenue for provinces. More money for the feds, less money for the provinces. But you're

00:01:52.620 right. The indirect effects of this are astounding. And the parliamentary budget officer has said that

00:01:57.860 very clearly. The government cannot just measure the direct effects because it affects our economy.

00:02:03.580 Like we always say in the House of Commons, the trucker that trucks the food, the grocers that sell

00:02:07.800 the food, the producer that produces the food. These are all cumulative effects that are happening

00:02:12.440 within our tax system. And people are bearing that in inflation. It's absolutely incredible

00:02:17.340 that even the NDP Premier of Manitoba took away the provincial tax on fuel or reduced it.

00:02:25.300 That sends a message that this is not just on partisan lines. It goes across partisan lines.

00:02:31.320 Even the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, territorial premiers, they're all calling

00:02:37.020 for either a pause or a reduction because life has got so unaffordable because of this federal government.

00:02:44.360 All the metrics are there. You take a look at what housing costs Canadians now, it's gone up significantly.

00:02:48.860 40% over the last handful of years. This is astronomical. 10% year over year across Canada for rent.

00:02:56.240 These are numbers that you can't keep up with if you're a consumer. So how do you actually abate this?

00:03:01.400 Well, one of the ways to abate this, of course, is to stop escalating the taxes. And the taxes are a direct

00:03:07.060 impact on the cost of living for all Canadians. So the provinces are doing that because they're

00:03:11.900 recognizing that all their citizens are saying, everything's costing me too much now. Help me out

00:03:16.420 here. And they're all going to face the ballot. The ballot question is going to be like, what have you

00:03:21.160 done for me? And the provinces are all running up higher deficits as a result. So again, recognize what

00:03:25.940 we're doing. We're taking money from the provinces and we're giving it to the federal government.

00:03:29.600 It's a push-pull. Somebody's got to deal with it at some point in time.

00:03:32.880 And it kind of got out of control because the federal government was supposed to be the level that you

00:03:36.680 most times least interacted with, right? They had defense and trade and a few other things that

00:03:42.380 most Canadians have no idea what's going on. They would mostly deal with either the province or

00:03:46.720 municipality. But the federal government has gotten so, so large under this liberal government.

00:03:54.740 It's like a big beast that they've allowed to get out of control.

00:03:58.060 It's a push-pull of confederation. What are the provinces responsible for? The stuff on the

00:04:02.540 ground to deliver to Canadian citizens. But what the federal government responsible for?

00:04:06.740 Primarily taxation. The bigger chunk of taxation on your income tax goes to the federal government

00:04:12.100 by far. And what they've done here is they've moved back into provincial jurisdiction about how

00:04:16.300 they get indirect taxes as well. They already had the GST slash HST, but now they're coming in

00:04:22.160 there and they're trimming where the provinces used to collect revenues for things like roads.

00:04:26.400 Now they're taking that away from the provinces and going, we're collecting that at the federal

00:04:29.940 level. And we're telling people that we're giving it back to them. Well, not so, says the

00:04:34.340 parliamentary budget officer. You're only giving them a little bit of it back. You're not giving

00:04:38.080 them any of the indirect parts of that back that they have to pay and increase groceries, 0.91

00:04:42.420 increase shipping, increase goods across the line.

00:04:44.840 And instead of the liberals just raising taxes, which they have on a number of things, including

00:04:50.060 beer and other liquor, which they all of a sudden said, well, we're going to put a stop to that

00:04:54.320 because it just automatically happened. And, and, and, you know, the no fun government.

00:04:59.620 But this, this, they're doing it behind the scenes, right? When they printed all that money out of

00:05:05.080 thin air, when they borrowed, they, they're, they're doing it under the radar, right? Because it's,

00:05:11.540 it's that tax, that, that pressure on life's essentials that are, that are happening. And people,

00:05:17.080 some people can't put their finger on it, but it's a result of, of policies by this federal

00:05:21.860 government. It could be rules and regulations, stuff that you don't see, stuff that isn't voted

00:05:25.680 on in the House of Commons. Exactly right. So let's, let's break that down. Six years from now,

00:05:30.040 2030, what is the carbon tax supposed to be? $170 a tonne. That'll translate to about 37 cents a

00:05:36.880 liter of gasoline. And that also means the second tax on that, of course, is the clean fuels

00:05:41.160 regulation tax, which would be another 17 cents a liter. So 54 cents a liter in gasoline. All

00:05:47.880 things being equal, that, that equates to about 45% of the value of your gasoline is going to be

00:05:53.620 in taxes at that point in time. But add on to that, the GST, HST, and the PST as well, and you've

00:06:00.560 got tax on tax happening. Government's collecting a lot of money through this process. And government

00:06:05.300 really, those at the top level, they're not affected by this, right? They are, they are just,

00:06:09.720 the planners are planning, but they don't actually take part in the plan.

00:06:14.440 They get to talk out two sides of their mind, right? We're dealing with inflation,

00:06:17.420 but we're adding more costs into everyday Canadians. Now, the Bank of Canada governor

00:06:21.120 appeared before our finance committee and actually admitted that, yes, this is causing

00:06:25.780 inflation. Now, he says it's about 0.15% of the inflation rate. If you think about the

00:06:30.520 inflation rate in Canada right now, just around 4%, 0.15%, that is a carbon tax. It adds up though.

00:06:37.000 And the actual, he actually got that number, I think, from the International Chamber of Commerce,

00:06:41.080 which looks at every $10 added in carbon tax equates to about 10, 0.1% of an actual increase

00:06:50.120 in inflation. So you think about $15, 0.15%, the translation is pretty clear. So that's where

00:06:56.920 he gets it. But you think about it, if you're actually facing an inflationary spiral, why do you

00:07:01.700 keep adding to it? And not just the carbon tax itself, but the clean fuels regulation,

00:07:06.340 which is about 50% more on top of the carbon tax. This is just adding to the burden. The trouble

00:07:12.580 with it is, it's also very opaque. Do people actually see when they're paying this? Do they

00:07:16.740 see the effects when it comes onto the grocery bill? Look, my food's going up. Well, let's blame

00:07:20.500 the grocers on this, as this government does. Exactly. Okay, we need a grocer, you know,

00:07:24.980 code of conduct. Well, how about stop the tax on them that they have to pay, and it accumulates

00:07:29.860 along the way. Yeah, life was not this unaffordable before Justin Trudeau, and as our leader always

00:07:34.500 says, life will be more affordable after he's gone. It's that old saying, right? Government will give you,

00:07:40.980 with the open hand, so it was the rebates. But they have that clenched fist behind their back, 0.97

00:07:47.220 right? It's the carbon tax, or more regulation, or more rules, and making it harder for business,

00:07:52.660 and increasing the cost, and making life unaffordable, so that they'll say, hey, look at this over here,

00:07:57.140 it's the rebate. But if you just don't take it from people in the first place, and allow costs to come

00:08:02.660 down, they will actually have more money in the long run. And you know, you think about that messaging

00:08:06.500 that they're giving here now, the Liberals are desperate for some messaging on this, because it

00:08:09.940 actually has landed. People have actually figured out that this is costing them money. They're feeling it

00:08:15.220 every day, but they're also, the data's there as well. And the government's trying to ignore that,

00:08:19.620 and pretend it isn't happening. They're saying, well, this is why you get a rebate. So, okay, well,

00:08:23.220 the rebate and the tax are supposed to be neutral, according to you, according to the parliamentary

00:08:27.140 budget officer. They're far from neutral. They're causing Canadians a lot. But what's the point of

00:08:32.340 setting up a tax where you give back all the money? It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

00:08:36.900 It doesn't. So, the rich and the well-connected, they're not affected by this whatsoever,

00:08:41.860 right? The price of gasoline goes, it really doesn't affect where they go on vacation.

00:08:46.260 At the same time, you have an NDP party that claims they're for the working person, but they

00:08:51.860 are far from it. They're actually supporting all of these increases. They are actually saying more.

00:08:58.340 I don't understand how people in Northern Ontario, where there are NDP seats, actually are okay with

00:09:04.100 what's going on, because they are feeling the pinch the most being in those Northern and rural communities.

00:09:09.700 You know me, I'm the member partner for Calgary Centre. So, Calgary is the heart and soul of

00:09:14.420 Canada's oil and gas industry. Now, every time I get up and speak in the House of Commons,

00:09:18.980 somebody from one of the other parties will go, well, you belong to oil and gas. I don't belong to

00:09:22.500 anybody. And if you actually talk to people in oil and gas, they know I'm critical of some of the

00:09:26.260 ways they do things as well, including some of the ways they participate in the clean fuels regulation

00:09:30.580 standards, which isn't doing anything for the environment. We actually need to better at the end of the day.

00:09:35.060 But you know, when I ask those questions from the NDP, well, what do you think about oil and gas?

00:09:39.780 We have to end this as quickly as possible. But they provide no pathway for that that actually

00:09:45.620 means anything to the common person. How does this affect your driving habits? How does this affect

00:09:50.820 you heating your home? The basics of life are intertwined with what we consume and pay for with

00:09:57.460 this carbon tax. We have said many times in this show, we have oil and gas that we should be proud

00:10:03.940 of. We do it as ethically as possible in many cases. We have labor, strong labor standards,

00:10:09.940 environmental standards, the list goes on. We should be promoting this industry. We should be providing

00:10:16.980 low cost energy, which then makes life affordable for people. And developing nations too, right? One of their

00:10:24.740 biggest hurdles is affordable energy. We have it. We have the ability. We've just been hampered by this

00:10:30.740 government. There's a lot of narrative around how Canadian oil and gas is bad and everybody wants to

00:10:36.580 end it as soon as possible because it's causing climate effects. It is causing climate effects.

00:10:42.420 Everything we burn in the world is causing a climate effect, whether it's natural gas, oil, coal, wood,

00:10:49.700 garbage, anything else you're burning up in the air is causing effects in the environment. What we have

00:10:55.540 to do is make those emissions as clean as possible so they're having as little negative effect as

00:11:00.580 possible while continuing to build the advantages that clean energy, clean affordable energy has given to

00:11:07.060 the world. So even with the carbon tax emissions haven't gone down. In British Columbia you see it,

00:11:12.420 they've had the carbon tax the longest. Emissions keep going up. It stopped being revenue neutral and

00:11:17.620 became actually a cash cow for the provincial government and now the federal government is

00:11:22.020 getting their cut of that. At the same time, when you say life, Canadians say to the prime minister,

00:11:28.740 life is getting harder and harder. I can't pay my bills. I'm having trouble eating. My mortgage has

00:11:33.380 gone through the roof. Justin Trudeau's answer is always, I just need more time, more resources,

00:11:40.420 and at some point I'll get it right. I'll fix this problem eventually. In my mind, leadership

00:11:46.660 isn't kind of navigating through the crisis. It's preventing the crisis in the first place.

00:11:52.340 I'm not sure that the prime minister actually does have a plan here. It's kind of like throwing

00:11:56.660 darts at a wall and playing whack-a-mole with all the problems that come out. This is going to cause

00:12:01.140 significant problems across the country. There's no way it's not going to be inflationary and we've had

00:12:05.300 a bit of a dip down in inflation in Canada in the last little while. This will cause an inflationary

00:12:09.940 bump. Take a look at our trading partners. Our main trading partner in the United States does not have

00:12:14.340 a carbon tax. So how many of the industries that you and I meet with when they come and lobby us

00:12:18.260 here say you need to subsidize us because we pay this carbon tax that doesn't make us a trading

00:12:23.620 competitor with the United States? Our main trading partner doesn't have the same tax regime we have,

00:12:28.580 making everything we produce here more expensive. And I don't think our role is to tax them and then

00:12:33.620 subsidize them at the end of the day. Let's make sure we've got a very transparent board,

00:12:37.540 of which the free trade agreements that we've signed with the United States and other countries

00:12:41.060 were meant to solve. Make sure we have things going on in Canada where Canada adds value and

00:12:45.940 things going on we import from the states where they add value. And that should lead to prosperity

00:12:50.500 for everybody as long as it's done fairly. And that's what we need to achieve again.

00:12:54.020 Up until it seems eight years ago or so when the Liberals took power, it was always government who

00:13:02.020 laid out a target for industry to hit. When you're talking about automobiles, right? They want

00:13:06.420 emissions to be capped at this level, fuel efficiency to be this. And it was up to the industry to figure

00:13:12.180 it out whether it's using lighter materials such as aluminum on their vehicles or whatever, or a

00:13:19.220 four-cylinder engine that did the same work as a six-cylinder. There was always differences and then the

00:13:24.260 market chose accordingly which worked best for them. This government seems to say we're going to subsidize who

00:13:30.900 we, the industry that we believe is going to give us the future we want, right? And I say we as the

00:13:37.860 government. So it's government innovation not actually market individual innovation or even

00:13:42.660 individual innovation. That's right. The government's putting their thumb on the scale about which

00:13:46.340 industries it thinks it should sponsor here going forward. Think about the number of battery plants

00:13:52.260 we're subsidizing in Canada right now and the one, the ones in Ontario and Quebec combined are about

00:13:57.300 four million dollars we're subsidizing per job. You tell me how many years those people are going to

00:14:02.420 have to pay taxes in order to make up that subsidy of four million dollars. This is a boondoggle for

00:14:07.540 the companies involved with it. Is there actually any net value added economic activity happening as a

00:14:13.780 result? And you think about the companies involved, some of those companies are facing still international

00:14:18.180 charges from nine years ago going back to how they broke environmental laws. And now the Canadian

00:14:24.660 government's giving them billions of dollars. It's obscene what we're going through here in this

00:14:28.820 practice and yet you know I always I always call a minister, the Minister of Industry, I always say

00:14:34.740 he's the Minister of Writing Checks because he actually doesn't know how to analyze exactly a business

00:14:38.900 case that makes sense for this country going forward. There's all kinds of great economic activity that

00:14:43.940 could happen in this country but we are not getting that foreign investment into this country because

00:14:48.660 the rules are so opaque. You know government gets to choose we're going to go here. If this project

00:14:53.700 goes ahead in Canada it's only because the government's going to put a whole bunch of money in it. Otherwise

00:14:58.660 it's going to get stuck in all kinds of regulatory delays, all kinds of other delays, all kinds of cost

00:15:04.660 add-ons that this government is imposing on certain industries versus others. What does government actually

00:15:09.940 innovate? Does it do well in innovation? Absolutely not. That's the problem. It is the problem. I mean the government

00:15:16.660 sits there and it can participate in some of the funding for these mechanisms and there's no purity

00:15:22.500 around the world about the way governments actually participate in aiding innovation and development

00:15:29.140 and research. We're a very poor country of that in Canada. We don't spend nearly as you know a significant

00:15:34.820 amount of our GDP as we should on that research and development. Fixing that is what we have to do

00:15:40.500 through a tax system that actually rewards innovation as opposed to the government just shoveling money

00:15:46.500 on chosen projects. And some of those projects within a year they go well it didn't work.

00:15:52.820 So that's Canadian taxpayer money that's gone out the door that we're not going to get back.

00:15:57.460 Well and at that point that year is gone. Those Canadians who are finding it tough they have to suffer

00:16:03.780 and then they have to keep suffering because again the government will say just we just need more time

00:16:08.180 and more money and we'll get there. We swear we'll get there. We promise. Trust us. Yeah trust us.

00:16:13.860 Because we know super smart in Ottawa we can figure this out. We can innovate faster than industry can.

00:16:20.260 We can hire more people. We can hire more consultants. We can keep spinning our wheels at this but they're

00:16:24.820 not getting a job done. There's so many aspects and I have to explain this to my constituents all the time.

00:16:29.140 Show me something that's going well with this government because I'm not sure they have anybody in their

00:16:34.420 cabinet that actually says here's what we need to do in order to move these files forward.

00:16:38.660 Now there are exceptions. I'm not going to cover everybody with the same blanket here.

00:16:41.860 But the fact is is every recognizable file in the economy they fail that miserably.

00:16:46.740 Carbon tax is I think the egregious outlier of that because it is more tax more tax more tax

00:16:53.620 going forward here to 2030 without an environmental outcome at the end of the day. You take a look at

00:16:59.620 the countries around the world. The two extreme outliers are Canada and the United Kingdom as far

00:17:04.980 as offshoring our manufacturing capacity to other countries. Now what does that do for carbon

00:17:11.220 abatement around the world? All they're doing is producing what we used to produce here elsewhere

00:17:15.620 because there's no regulations where they're producing it now. That's not accomplishing environmental

00:17:20.980 advancement whatsoever. Matter of fact you take a look at the actual carbon emissions around the world

00:17:25.620 they've gone up significantly since we introduced a carbon tax in Canada. We've lost industry.

00:17:31.060 Carbon emissions are going up around the world. We need to find a better path forward that actually

00:17:35.220 reduces worldwide emissions because we're all in the same atmosphere and how we participate in that

00:17:40.020 economically and environmentally. I think one way to look at it, if you're looking at how government

00:17:45.140 controls innovation and how the market controls innovation, a good way to look at it, I just kind of was

00:17:50.340 was kind of searching some examples, but the beer industry, right? Every town has a craft brewery.

00:17:57.860 Maybe more. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. And aside from some of the regulatory issues we have

00:18:02.340 provincial bodies, I know you're in Alberta, it's different, different in Quebec, I get that,

00:18:05.620 I'm from Ontario, but at the same time there are people innovating, making different brews, right?

00:18:12.820 Different, they're experimenting and they're able to keep afloat based on the fact that they have a unique

00:18:17.940 product, but the government has very little to do with that and it's a thriving industry.

00:18:23.300 You look at where government is tamping down, you actually get slower innovation, you get less choice,

00:18:29.940 less price comparisons, right? There is just a stark difference in my mind when you look at where

00:18:38.660 the government regulates and gets their hand in things and where the market and the brilliant minds

00:18:43.940 of our entrepreneurs are allowed to flourish. I love that example. The beer example is a great one.

00:18:47.860 Because you think about all the craft brewers, you've got a lot of craft brewers in downtown

00:18:51.700 Calgary and they've written me many times about these escalator taxes the government keeps pushing

00:18:56.900 onto the alcohol industry. Now the issue of course is Canadians are consuming less beer per capita

00:19:02.500 and yet this industry is doing well despite the fact the government keeps trying to tax them more

00:19:07.700 and more. But think of all the brew pubs, about all the social activity that goes around brew pubs. Even

00:19:12.820 though we're drinking less, which is probably good for our health, we're actually participating more.

00:19:17.860 We'll pay a little more for a nicer product at the end of the day. I remember when you're in

00:19:21.620 university of course you probably bought some inexpensive beer. It was the budget beer at that

00:19:25.860 point, right? That's right, but now it's kind of okay, you know I've got some good taste there,

00:19:28.500 you know, and let's go try out some... Let's try something different. Some saisons or some IPAs or whatever,

00:19:34.260 whatever the local flavor is. It's a great example. But that's how government, if it gets out of the way,

00:19:38.580 the market could provide a whole slew of choices in pretty much every field. But unfortunately we

00:19:45.460 regulated ourselves to death. Carbon tax unfortunately went up yesterday to $80 a ton,

00:19:50.500 a 23% increase from just a couple days ago. Unbelievable. We're almost out of time.

00:19:56.420 As you know, guests always get the last word. The floor is yours. Well Jamie, keep doing what you're

00:20:00.100 doing because it's important Canadians see that there are alternatives to this tax and spend government.

00:20:06.260 We have to make sure that we're actually delivering good government for Canadians at the end of the day.

00:20:10.420 We're also wildly in debt in Canada. Take a look at the budget numbers that come out here at the end of

00:20:15.140 at the end of the estimates period. Projected $37 billion, pardon me, $47 billion deficit this year.

00:20:24.580 This is runaway spending that is just out of control and that's on the future generation. Interest is going up.

00:20:31.460 10% of our budget now is towards debt servicing costs. This has to be addressed. This is runaway debt,

00:20:38.740 runaway interest payments, runaway money disappearing from the pockets of taxpayers.

00:20:44.660 We have to get ahead of that. You know I'm a budget conservative through and through. We've got

00:20:49.300 to stop excessive spending across Canada. I just think the government doesn't know how to get out of

00:20:54.580 it other than more spending. They just can't figure it out. It's got its playbook. We need to spend more

00:21:00.180 money. Well spending more money is what got you here in the first place and spending more money is

00:21:04.580 probably what you need to stop doing right now. And the Bank of Canada Governor has as much as said

00:21:08.900 that. The effects of inflation are largely a result now of the fiscal policy of this government.

00:21:14.740 And as Margaret Thatcher said, eventually you're running out a few other people's money, right?

00:21:18.340 That's exactly right. Yeah. Greg McLean, Member of Parliament, Congress and Senator. Thank you very

00:21:22.340 much for your time. Thank you. It's always a pleasure having you on the show.

00:21:24.500 Yeah. Long time no see. Absolutely. You're welcome back anytime. Thank you for yours as well. Don't

00:21:29.220 forget new content every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Like, comment, subscribe and share

00:21:34.580 this program. I know everybody is dealing with the effects of the carbon tax. Let's get this message out.

00:21:40.100 Let's make sure people are aware of why this is happening and it's because of Justin Trudeau

00:21:44.740 and his horrible policies. You can also download the program on platforms like CastBox, iTunes,

00:21:49.220 Google Play, and Spotify. Until next week, remember low taxes,

00:21:52.260 less government, more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - April 02, 2024

This was no April Fools joke. The numbers at the pumps are no laughing matter.

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