The Candice Malcolm Show - Proposed ‘pick-up truck tax’ the latest in Trudeau’s war against the working class

00:00:00.000 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau loathes the working class. The latest example his government is

00:00:04.540 cooking up is a new tax on pickup trucks. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is the Candace Malcolm

00:00:09.200 Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So you might have seen this article over

00:00:25.420 at the Toronto Sun. The headline is Trudeau is planning a tax on trucks. Well, I have the author

00:00:31.720 of that piece with me today. Her name is Chris Sims. She's a BC director over at the Canadian

00:00:36.580 Taxpayers Federation. Chris spent time in Ottawa working both as a political staffer and a

00:00:41.100 communications director. She was also a print and radio journalist. Her first role in the news

00:00:46.280 was at 580 CFRA News Talk Ottawa. She became an anchor over there, then became a reporter at the

00:00:52.300 CTV Parliamentary Bureau. She was also a founding reporter over at the Sun News Network, where I

00:00:58.060 had the pleasure and the honour of working with her. She covered the big important issues of the day,

00:01:02.620 including the growing big government, personal liberty, and rural Canada. So Chris, thank you

00:01:07.940 so much for joining the show. It is so great to see you. Thank you. Yeah, so tell us about your report.

00:01:14.280 Tell us about this new pickup truck tax the Trudeau government is trying to, I don't know, sneak by

00:01:19.700 or sneak in or what his plans he's scheming about introducing this tax.

00:01:25.340 For sure. So I first saw an inkling of this in Blacklock's reporter, and it was around a month

00:01:31.820 ago or so. And they mentioned it was a very brief posting that they had on their website. They said,

00:01:36.760 hey, there's this advisory panel to the prime minister that is recommending, among other things,

00:01:42.580 a levy on pickup trucks. I'm like, that's kind of interesting. And so because of my experience on

00:01:49.460 Parliament Hill, I know that these so-called advisory boards often have a lot of clout in

00:01:55.300 Ottawa. So I started digging around on the Environment Canada webpage. Sure enough, right

00:02:01.480 there in the official report, I'm talking the 2030 Emissions Reductions Plan published by the

00:02:08.280 Ministry of Environment with a foreword from Minister Guibo, calling it a roadmap, was right

00:02:14.880 there. Recommendation. It was on page 192. And word for word, it included the recommendation to

00:02:21.120 remove the exemption for the green levy so that it also affects vehicles like pickup trucks.

00:02:28.560 So what that means in normal people talk is that right now we have the so-called green levy,

00:02:34.260 but it only hits really big SUVs. So I'm talking like the Toyota Sequoia, the Nissan Armada,

00:02:41.100 those really big SUVs. It was put through by the Harper government in 2007. But pickup trucks are

00:02:48.460 expressly exempt. It's right there in the regulations. It does not touch pickup trucks for obvious

00:02:54.760 reasons. They're the most popular vehicles in Canada. If you step outside any downtown urban core,

00:03:00.900 they are the workhorses on all of our roadways. And so that is why they, of course, exempted them

00:03:06.220 because they didn't want to nail that many people with such a big tax. This recommendation says in

00:03:11.180 black and white, they should remove that exemption. More importantly, I went and checked to see where

00:03:17.760 the regulations kick in. You know, how much fuel do you have to use in order to be nailed with this

00:03:22.440 tax? And the answer is more than 13 liters per hundred kilometers. So I went and checked all of the,

00:03:31.060 you know, fuel usage of the most popular vehicles. And sure enough, the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado

00:03:37.400 1500, the Dodge Ram pickups, 1500s, the light duty trucks would all be nailed with about a thousand

00:03:44.380 dollars tax. The bigger ones, if you need to get say a 3500, if you're towing a trailer, if you've got

00:03:51.680 construction equipment and you need a pickup truck with more snort to it, you're going to be hit with

00:03:56.880 either $3,000 or $4,000 on the sale of a new pickup if they enacted this tax. And so that's why I wrote

00:04:03.980 the piece for the Toronto Sun and sounded the alarm. It's so interesting that they would try to sneak

00:04:09.660 that by. So the minister puts it out by on his own. It's part of his report. And yet the minister

00:04:15.520 responded to your piece over in the Toronto Sun, Environment Minister Stephen Glebeau. He responded.

00:04:21.980 He said that the proposed tax doesn't exist. In fact, he called your piece disinformation,

00:04:28.360 divisive, and fear mongering. This is, of course, because conservative politicians like Pierre

00:04:33.800 Polyev, Jason Kenney, Scott Moe have all been sharing your piece with their base and with their

00:04:39.200 email list, rightly so, to say, look, this is what the Trudeau government has planned. So what do you make

00:04:46.000 of the minister's dismissiveness of your piece and how do you respond to that?

00:04:52.540 Well, it's pretty concerning. And so what they could have done, if they really wanted to dump

00:04:57.000 water on this, if they were truly panicked, they could have said, you know what, this is a small

00:05:01.560 mistake. We actually should have put a dissenting opinion by the minister right underneath the

00:05:06.520 recommendation, or we shouldn't have included the recommendation at all in our piece. There's lots

00:05:11.980 of options when you're sitting around the minister's table on how to handle this sort of a situation.

00:05:18.360 But instead, he went on the attack against the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We are more than 30

00:05:24.620 years old. We are a grassroots organization. We have a ton of supporters, as you know. So they went after

00:05:30.940 us, calling us disinformation. They went after the Toronto Sun, calling them disinformation. They've

00:05:36.760 been putting out newspapers since the early 70s. So very standard, respected media. And what I actually

00:05:44.780 find very concerning about this is that the minister responsible for calling that disinformation is also

00:05:53.040 the minister who spearheaded Bill C-10, which is now called Bill C-11. And that, of course, is the

00:05:59.640 proposed internet gag law, which would put bureaucrats in charge of what you can see, hear, and share on the

00:06:06.120 internet. So to have that minister of the crown calling this piece, which is fact-based disinformation,

00:06:14.920 is really concerning. And also, it's annoying because anyone who's ever worked on Parliament Hill

00:06:22.500 knows how this works. This is how baby taxes are born. You know, mommy report walks down the aisle with 1.00

00:06:30.180 daddy proposal, and then the bureaucrats write it up, and then they present it in the House, and then they

00:06:35.300 debated a committee, and voila, new bill, new taxes are born. That's how that works. And so anybody knows

00:06:43.160 this. And now it's the playing dumb that's pretty annoying. 0.99

00:06:48.040 Well, not just playing dumb, but pearl clutching and going on the attack by calling you disinformation, 0.99

00:06:52.460 the exact same buzzword, that's like the latest buzzword on the left, that they use to describe 0.97

00:06:56.840 information that is true, but they just don't like it. And it isn't just the minister. I mean,

00:07:01.640 I've been in the same situation, Chris. I had an opinion piece once in the Toronto Sun saying that

00:07:07.120 the carbon tax was a tax. And the environment minister at the time, Catherine McKenna, tweeted

00:07:12.260 out, this is fake news. It's not a tax. It's a rebate, right? And we all know how that ended.

00:07:18.920 But this idea that you have really powerful people, ministers of the crown, attacking journalists,

00:07:25.220 reporters, researchers like yourself, and using these buzzwords like disinformation or fake news,

00:07:30.760 and then turning around saying, we're going to ban disinformation and fake news. It's like,

00:07:34.220 what you're really doing is banning views that you don't like, opinions that you don't like,

00:07:38.180 or things that are going to be politically problematic for you. Because I know that your

00:07:42.160 piece is getting shared left, right and center, that it is a big rallying issue for conservatives,

00:07:46.760 because it's a culture war issue as well. Before we get into some of those culture war questions,

00:07:52.500 I have to note that Aaron Weary, a reporter over at the CBC, has also jumped into the fray. And he said

00:08:00.040 that basically, everyone's getting worked up about a tax that doesn't exist. I find it really

00:08:04.960 interesting, because his piece sort of repeats what you said, that this was an annex, that the

00:08:10.240 government released a report, and this was annexed to it. And it was part of recommendations. It wasn't

00:08:15.840 government proposal, it wasn't legislation. So he kind of just repeated what you said. But his headline

00:08:20.200 was very snarky. Some conservatives are condemning a truck tax that doesn't exist. And, you know,

00:08:27.000 and so he walks us through exactly what your report says. And then he spends like the rest of

00:08:31.800 the article talking about how, well, we probably should have a truck tax because climate change and

00:08:37.160 blah, blah, blah. So what do you make of the fact that the CBC has come swinging into Justin Trudeau's

00:08:42.900 rescue, and trying to pour water on this whole issue for them?

00:08:47.120 Well, I'm not surprised. I sure don't like paying $1.4 billion to that corp for them to come to

00:08:54.540 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's defence. I find it rather silly that the same people who will say

00:09:01.560 we shouldn't have these, quote unquote, gas guzzlers on the road, that pickup trucks are bad for the

00:09:06.920 environment, etc, etc. That's a legitimate position to have. I completely disagree with it. But at least

00:09:12.920 it's a consistent position. But then they turn around and as you put it, pearl clutch to say,

00:09:18.700 how dare you suggest they would ever impose such a fee on these pickup trucks that we despise? Like,

00:09:25.000 it's so weird. It's, you know, pick a lane, pick a lane. Do you want to tax these things so that

00:09:32.220 people might not be able to afford to buy them anymore? And ergo, in your mind, they're not putting

00:09:37.180 out as much fuel or emissions or whatever? Or do you not want to do this? Just decide what you want

00:09:43.800 to do. And to the point of saying it's in the annex, that was one of the silliest arguments I've ever

00:09:50.280 heard coming out of government. And it was pure spin. Annex means in addition to. It's in the report. 0.83

00:09:58.060 The report cover calls it emission reduction plan. It's called the road ahead, the roadmap. You take a

00:10:06.540 look and you read it. It's right in there. And frankly, a lot of times when you're reading

00:10:10.440 government documents, the most important information is in the annex. If you look at a

00:10:15.900 federal budget, everybody who's ever covered a budget well knows to flip to the back, get past

00:10:21.460 all the fluffy stuff of why they're doing this to save women and children and whatever. Then you get

00:10:25.520 to the hard numbers, which are in the back. So saying it's in the annex is super silly. It's right 0.79

00:10:31.800 there. And what also concerns me here is that if I was still a reporter and I always put the shoe on

00:10:39.420 the other foot, I ask myself, what if a conservative prime minister did or the purple monkey party prime 0.91

00:10:45.740 minister did? I don't care what party it is. We don't want a tax on pickup trucks because we're the

00:10:50.480 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. So I ask myself, if another prime minister of some other colored Jersey

00:10:55.980 party was promoting a pickup truck tax, would I chase them down and say, hey, this is in your

00:11:01.640 report? Are you going to denounce this completely and swear you're never going to do this? Darn tootin'

00:11:06.760 I would. Of course I would. That's just standard W5 journalism. And so this is where I'm a little 0.99

00:11:12.820 bit scratching my head saying, OK, then why don't you ask the minister to say we will never, ever,

00:11:18.020 ever do this? And it was just a recommendation and we're not doing this ever. They haven't done that.

00:11:24.320 It's one of the strange things with the media in Canada, Chris, where rather than hold the

00:11:29.020 politicians and the people with power accountable and to account for the things that they're doing,

00:11:34.400 they turn around and they hold the public or reporters or independent researchers or the Canadian

00:11:39.880 Taxpayers Federation accountable for their opinions or their positions against the government. It happens

00:11:45.660 time and time again. And every time it's like we're living in this weird, bizarro world where

00:11:50.860 Aaron Weary, rather than, like you said, chasing down these politicians and saying, well, wait a minute,

00:11:55.480 is this coming? Is this something that you're planning to do? He instinctively and immediately

00:11:59.060 turns around and writes a piece that could have been written by Stéphane Galbault. It could have

00:12:03.680 been, I would say it could have been written by Justin Trudeau, but we all know that Justin Trudeau

00:12:06.580 doesn't write his own stuff. So it could have been written by one of Justin Trudeau's own,

00:12:10.200 you know, assistants or someone in the PMO. But instead, you know, it's put out as legitimate

00:12:15.740 news by the CBC. It's really wild. I want to pick up on this idea. You know, pickup trucks are the

00:12:22.640 most popular vehicles in Canada. I have a stat right in front of me. Four of the five best-selling

00:12:26.860 vehicles in Canada in 2020 were trucks. The number one spot was a Ford F-150. 28,000 were sold in

00:12:32.700 Canada. And that was a bad year because of COVID. That's according to the CBC. So when we're talking

00:12:39.140 about a proposed tax, it's significant. You're talking about $1,000 to $4,000. That's a huge chunk

00:12:45.060 out of someone's pocket. You know, you can't help but feel like this really, you know, it's an

00:12:51.080 attack, not just on people who drive a certain vehicle, but on a certain way of life. Because

00:12:56.480 in certain parts of the country, having a pickup truck is absolutely necessary. I mean, we saw even

00:13:03.640 just anecdotally during the trucker convoy, the CBC at one point, one of their vans fell into a ditch.

00:13:10.180 I don't know if you saw this. And one of the truckers with the pickup truck pulled them out,

00:13:15.000 right, without any hesitation. And, you know, despite all of the name calling that CBC had been

00:13:19.240 waging against these truckers. So, you know, it's become kind of like a cultural symbol. And I just

00:13:27.340 can't help but think that this proposed tax is sort of punishment towards the working class. What do you

00:13:31.760 think about the culture war element here? That's definitely an element. I was raised in rural blue

00:13:37.300 color, working class, British Columbia, same as my husband. And if you just turn your head,

00:13:42.840 you can usually see eight to 12 of them downtown whenever we go down to pick up the mail or whatever.

00:13:48.120 They're just standard. Like they're just so common. The idea of taxing them with this big thing is

00:13:53.460 pretty concerning, which is why I was so concerned about it, which is why I read the entire report that

00:13:58.700 they put out and I wrote the story. And for folks who say, oh, well, you don't need it. No,

00:14:03.480 you don't understand then. Those folks probably haven't packed a bunch of poultry feed into the

00:14:09.520 back of a Prius. They haven't tried to shove a bunch of gyprock into the back of some, you know, 1.00

00:14:14.780 tiny little hatchback if they're a drywaller. There are tradespeople who rely on pickup trucks 1.00

00:14:21.180 every single day to bring their tools around. And even if they're not like directly employed in the

00:14:27.760 trades, there are rural working people who use them every day, like I just said, for bringing their

00:14:32.980 feet around, towing some cattle, you're not going to tow one of those horse trailers or a cattle

00:14:39.080 trailer with a little hatchback. You just can't. It doesn't have the power. And maybe one day we will

00:14:47.280 all eventually have an electric vehicle that runs on, I don't know, like dilithium crystals or a magic

00:14:52.760 battery that's really easily rechargeable or affordable. Who knows? That's not our beef. Our beef is

00:14:59.540 here and now. These vehicles are the most popular selling vehicles in Canada. People across Canada

00:15:05.640 rely on them. The government of Canada is including a recommendation in their official report to tax

00:15:12.320 them big time. And as you well know, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we're the watchdogs. It's my job

00:15:20.040 to start barking the moment I see that burglar in your backyard. It's a failure if I wait to start

00:15:27.300 barking when he's already running down the street with your TV. OK, so this is the entire point. We

00:15:33.020 see things like this coming. We bark really loud and we make sure that they never actually come to

00:15:37.800 fruition. Well, I think you've done your job because it looks like they're scared away so much that

00:15:42.400 they're now saying, no, no, not only are we not going to introduce this plan, we never even planned

00:15:47.160 on introducing this tax. So bravo on that. You wrote your piece. I thought this was really good.

00:15:52.260 But taxing someone's truck is kind of like taxing someone's laptop or someone's Zoom account for the

00:15:58.060 sort of stay at home class, work from home class. And it seems like there is this kind of growing

00:16:02.120 divide. I want to bring you back to the summer of 2021. There's sort of a culture war that was

00:16:07.180 starting to brew. There was an article published in a piece called, what was it called? The Passage

00:16:12.700 that said this. It's time to ban the sale of pickup trucks. Pretty stark language there. It was

00:16:18.880 followed by a piece by Marcus G over in the Globe and Mail who said pickup trucks are a plague on

00:16:24.240 Canadian streets. Now this really got under the skin of a whole bunch of people in Canada, including

00:16:29.340 Premier Jason Kenney in Alberta, who had his own response. He said the Globe and Mail is having a

00:16:35.060 temper tantrum about pickup trucks. Happy to say that 40% of the vehicles on the road in Alberta are

00:16:39.440 pickup trucks. Maybe Toronto Columbus should try getting around the province during a prairie

00:16:45.380 blizzard in a smart car. Likewise, Lorraine Harper, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's

00:16:51.020 wife, said this piece reads of snobbishness. Minus 40 stranded on the side of the highway with a flat

00:16:56.960 car wouldn't move. Cars were zipping by. The only person who stopped was a guy in a pickup truck.

00:17:01.620 Scott Moe said something similar. Come to Saskatchewan where we all use our pickup trucks to build and grow

00:17:06.820 our province. It really does feel like a divide. And we saw this play out during COVID as well. We saw it

00:17:13.560 play out during the trucker convoy where there's a pretty big difference between Canadians who go out

00:17:18.140 every day to work for a living, who drive trucks, who use their hands, who build things, versus the

00:17:25.020 sort of, you know, everyone stay at home and flatten the curve and they make it seem so easy, like

00:17:30.320 everyone can do it. What do you make of this sort of broader cultural issue and how can we sort of

00:17:37.620 mend this divide? I see it too and I feel it too and I've experienced it too. So like I said, I was

00:17:46.880 raised in the Fraser Canyon. My, you know, family all drive pickup trucks, all blue collar, working

00:17:52.280 with their hands. I've got three cousins. One's a boilermaker, the other's a drywaller, and the

00:17:57.100 other's a mechanic. Like it's just where it comes from. My father-in-law is a heavy duty mechanic on

00:18:02.320 trucks. And so I lived that. I grew up with it. We own a pickup truck ourselves. Not a fancy new one,

00:18:08.600 but we own a pickup truck. And so we get that they're tools. They're just standard. It's so much

00:18:13.700 so that you don't even really mention them, that they're so common. And I've also worked in hyper

00:18:19.680 urban centers. I lived in the Glebe in Ottawa for 13 years. I didn't have a car. I rode my bike and I

00:18:25.720 walked everywhere. I did the latte thing. I'm working on a laptop with you right now. And I'm very lucky

00:18:31.360 to be sitting in an office on a laptop. And so I see both worlds. And I think it's sad that if you're

00:18:39.480 in one of those other worlds, that you can't empathize with the other person. And I think

00:18:45.740 that's a big problem. And I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing the kind of nasty,

00:18:51.980 vehement, almost personal, almost personal reaction coming from folks like Minister Guibo towards me,

00:18:58.680 towards the Taxpayers Federation, towards the Toronto Sun, because we're losing that ability

00:19:03.860 to bridge that gap. And so I would recommend anyone who's lived the laptop life for a long,

00:19:11.380 long time in downtown urban course, get out. Go out. Like, honestly, go out of your urban core.

00:19:19.160 Rent a car if you have to. Go hang out in a small town, not a little tourist trap, an actual small

00:19:25.460 working town for a week. Get to understand what those folks are like. Same thing for my family who

00:19:32.900 has always lived rural or always had, you know, that kind of working class lifestyle. Go downtown,

00:19:39.020 take transit, go to really nice museums, get to understand how those folks live. And I think that

00:19:46.080 would help a lot. I think sometimes that the folks who are in the laptop class, so to speak,

00:19:51.540 can forget where, you know, the milk for their latte in the morning or their ice cream in the

00:19:57.380 afternoon comes from. It comes from a dairy cow. The dairy cow was hauled to its dairy farm, probably

00:20:02.940 as a calf, using a truck. The dairy cow eats alfalfa. That hay was hauled to that barn using a truck.

00:20:10.560 Everything you eat and use was brought to you on a truck, quite often including a pickup truck by

00:20:17.680 somebody within 100 kilometers of where you're sitting. And so I think it's important, especially

00:20:23.520 when a government is talking about imposing a big new tax like this, to turn around and understand how

00:20:29.420 that would affect average people, including those who are trying to help bring you stuff that you need.

00:20:35.780 Well, certainly politicians and journalists like Erin Weary, who claim to speak for and represent,

00:20:41.100 you know, broad swaths of the country, I think would be very wise to follow that advice. And I have a

00:20:48.400 feeling that's something that they don't do often enough. And I think you're absolutely right. I did

00:20:53.560 want to ask you about the carbon tax, because I know that's something that the Canadian Taxpayers

00:20:58.740 Federation has been very vocal about. Now, we know that the parliamentary budget office in Ottawa

00:21:05.220 recently rebuked a Trudeau government claim, which was that everyone was going to be better off

00:21:10.140 from the carbon tax, that it was actually going to help put more money in the pockets of Canadian

00:21:15.380 families. That turned out to be entirely nonsense, despite the fact that I'm sure Erin Weary and plenty

00:21:21.380 of the fact checkers over at the CBC and Legacy Media were quick to call conservatives disinformation

00:21:27.680 by claiming that the carbon tax was a tax that would take money out of your pocket, not put money in

00:21:32.920 your pocket. But I'm wondering if you could walk us through what that report said and, you know,

00:21:39.840 what's your position on the carbon tax? What do you think needs to be done with it at this point?

00:21:44.520 Ash heap of history, as Margaret Thatcher put it, it needs to be completely gone. Both of them,

00:21:50.600 the one that we have right now federally, and the second one that Prime Minister Trudeau is planning for

00:21:55.780 the rest of Canada outside of BC, just in time for Christmas, which is also going to increase the

00:22:00.720 cost of diesel and gas at the gas pumps. So that needs to be gone, like lickety split. I found it really

00:22:06.900 interesting that the parliamentary budget officer went through and did this work, and kudos to them.

00:22:13.240 And yeah, turns out, it actually, you don't get more back than you pay in. And let's just stop for

00:22:18.860 a second and think about what a silly statement that is. You'll get more back in tax than you pay in.

00:22:25.220 Well, government does not have a magical money appreciation tree in its courtyard. When you put money

00:22:33.460 into government, it does not magically earn wealth and give you more back. The very idea that you would

00:22:40.200 get more back than you pay in is silly, because the only money that government uses is your money. It's tax

00:22:45.980 dollars. So on the very surface of it, that didn't make any sense. But okay, let's just go along with this

00:22:51.840 magical thinking. Turns out, yeah, the average family in Canada is not going to get more back than they pay in

00:22:58.940 in the in the carbon tax. And folks in Alberta are going to get kicked the hardest. I think last I

00:23:04.440 checked, it was something like $1,000, $1,200 a year, you know, net that they would be out. Further to

00:23:11.580 that, there is so much expense connected to the carbon tax that it's almost impossible to perfectly

00:23:17.500 quantify. Because if you think about it, like we said, look around wherever you are right now,

00:23:22.680 everything you eat and use was brought to you on a truck, most likely that was using gas and

00:23:28.820 then diesel. And if it was trained to you on a railroad, that's also using diesel that was

00:23:35.520 shipped to you that is using oil and gas. So it really trickles down that way so that everything

00:23:41.740 you use that has a carbon tax attached to it to bring it to you is going to be more expensive

00:23:46.680 because of the carbon tax. Further, farmers actually have to pay the carbon tax in one way.

00:23:53.400 And that is when they dry their product. A lot of folks don't know this, but with they've got their

00:23:57.760 grain or their seeds or whatever they're using, they usually use natural gas and sometimes propane

00:24:03.820 to dry it. That actually is nailed with the carbon tax. And I didn't even know that before I started

00:24:10.020 at the CTF. And that adds a lot of cost because of course, everything uses grain. Even if you're a

00:24:15.860 carnivore like Dr. Jordan Peterson, the cow that you're eating did eat grain. And so that cost is up

00:24:22.940 there. So basically the carbon tax punishes people for driving to work, moving around the country and

00:24:29.340 heating your home. Those demands like getting to work and heating your home are inelastic, meaning

00:24:36.820 people just can't opt out. It's not like picking paper or plastic bags at the grocery store. You

00:24:41.460 can't opt out. You don't want to freeze to death. You don't want your pipes to burst and you got to get

00:24:45.400 to work to buy food. So the carbon tax is just a punishment for people's everyday existence in Canada.

00:24:51.140 And so it was good to see the parliamentary budget officer back up what we'd been saying all this

00:24:56.520 time that, yeah, sorry guys, you're not going to get more than you pay in. And I just wanted to put

00:25:01.280 out a word of warning because I'm here in British Columbia and we've always been the canary in the

00:25:06.480 coal mine, so to speak, for the carbon tax. We have the highest carbon taxes in all of North America.

00:25:12.420 Right now in British Columbia, it's about 28 cents a litre for gasoline just in our two carbon taxes.

00:25:20.520 And what's interesting is our so-called rebate absolutely cuts off by the time a two-person

00:25:27.680 working family hits $58,000 a year. The average two-person working family, so your average working

00:25:34.840 people that politicians love to embrace, is $84,000 a year. So it helps absolutely no average

00:25:43.180 working people in British Columbia. The rebate does not exist. And when we were first sold this bill of

00:25:49.260 goods in 2008, the BC Liberals told us all sorts of stuff. It was just a bunch of magic beans. They

00:25:54.860 said it was going to be revenue neutral, that it would create a whole bunch of alternative energies

00:25:59.580 that would be affordable, and that it would reduce emissions. Today, none of those things is true.

00:26:05.200 Our emissions keep on going up in BC, even though we have the highest carbon tax in Canada. So it's a

00:26:09.900 huge failure and it's really expensive and average people pay through the nose for it. So we really

00:26:14.560 need to see this thing gone. Right. And again, where is Erin wary to report on that? Because 0.99

00:26:19.260 Canada's emissions have also gone up since 2015. I think they're up 10 percent, and we don't see that.

00:26:24.460 It's interesting to hear you go through all the various ways that these taxes hurt working people,

00:26:30.420 hurt middle class people. I remember Dustin Trudeau came in and his whole platform was helping the

00:26:34.740 middle class and those hoping to join it. That seems to be completely out the window. When I was

00:26:39.560 researching for this interview, Chris, I found it kind of amusing. You know, here you have your report.

00:26:44.940 Pickup trucks are going to get taxed an additional $1,000 to $4,000 based on the truck, in addition to

00:26:49.520 the carbon tax, which you just went through, how punitive and expensive is, and all the other taxes

00:26:53.620 that are aimed at middle class people. At the same time, the government continues to subsidize

00:26:59.180 electric vehicles like Tesla's. Tesla's are an incredibly expensive luxury vehicle. And yet,

00:27:04.920 here we have federally up to a $5,000 rebate for a long-range battery. In Ontario, they offer

00:27:11.320 $1,000 for the purchase of a fully electric car, $1,000 for a plug-in. In Quebec, up to $8,000

00:27:19.820 for an electric vehicle, under $60,000. It's this bizarre scenario where you have the government

00:27:25.720 subsidizing rich people. Rich people drive Teslas. Teslas are incredibly nice, incredibly expensive.

00:27:31.400 So the government's incentivizing and subsidizing rich people and increasing taxes on the working

00:27:37.600 poor, working class, middle class people. What kind of bizarre world do we live in? 1.00

00:27:43.120 It is bizarre. That's the right term. And again, a reminder, this is not free government money that

00:27:48.580 is coming to these folks. Every nickel of that came from themselves or their neighbors or their

00:27:53.180 entire neighborhood, depending on how much of a rebate they're getting back. So it isn't just some

00:27:58.020 magic thing that the government can write off. That is not how this works. It's money in, money

00:28:02.920 out. That's how this functions. And they're increasing the deficit hand over fist. And it's

00:28:08.340 one of the reasons why our inflation is so crazy right now. Yes, there are other global factors that

00:28:14.100 can affect inflation. But as our federal director, Franco Teresano, has explained very well, one of the

00:28:19.700 big bolsters of our deficit is, or our inflation, is our deficit spending. Because they'll go into

00:28:26.360 deficit. And then the Bank of Canada, on the other hand, prints more money in order to cover the

00:28:30.320 deficit. And so that causes extra inflation. And so if folks are worried about butter going up and

00:28:37.320 pork going up and chicken going up and all of that, one of the reasons for that is because of the

00:28:43.720 freewheeling spending of this government. And so it's really important right now. I know it's tough

00:28:49.440 out there. I get calls every week. I got a call a few weeks ago from a lady who was beside herself, 0.98

00:28:54.700 her adult son, who just got his life back on track after he broke up with his wife,

00:28:59.160 is a tradesperson. They lived together in a basement suite in Chilliwack. And he couldn't

00:29:03.540 afford to drive his truck from Chilliwack up and over to Maple Ridge, which is a pretty long commute,

00:29:09.440 because it's two bucks a liter right now. In the Vancouver area, it's $2 a liter.

00:29:15.360 It's just these are real people really suffering. And it's high time for government to pay attention.

00:29:20.540 And one of the big factors in that is one, the overspending, right, by the Trudeau government,

00:29:25.480 and two, carbon taxes. And I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but the carbon tax element

00:29:31.100 is going to get way worse. They're cranking this thing up to $170 a ton within the next eight years.

00:29:38.900 What that means is it's going to cost you about $40 extra just in that one carbon tax to fill up a

00:29:46.840 minivan, like every single time. You know, that is a full turkey dinner with all the fixings for a

00:29:53.780 family every time they're filling up. And it's not helping. Emissions keep on going up. So this is

00:29:59.720 real money we're talking about, and it's causing hardship for working people.

00:30:04.220 Well, absolutely. And the inflation tax, I mean, it's directly related to government policy,

00:30:08.120 because they're the ones printing money. And sure, it's happening all over the world,

00:30:10.700 because governments all over the world are printing money like mad men because of COVID. So

00:30:14.680 thanks for making that point, because it is, it's hard. If you're on a fixed income,

00:30:18.780 if you're on a limited budget, and all of a sudden, you know, everything's 10% more expensive than it

00:30:23.060 was last year, plus you have all these taxes, plus $2 a liter gasoline out west. It's tough. And

00:30:29.000 Canadians really need to stand up to this Trudeau government. Our media is not going to do it.

00:30:34.100 We know that. So I just wanted to quickly point out, there was a stat, sorry to interrupt. There's a

00:30:38.760 stat that I check every now and then, and I think it's for the first time ever. MNP puts out a report,

00:30:44.100 basically asking, how are you financially? And for the first time ever that I noticed,

00:30:48.740 might have been different before, more than more than half, more than half of Canadians say they're

00:30:53.180 within 200 bucks of insolvency, which means every month, they're within 200 bucks of not being able

00:30:59.460 to cover their basic bills. And usually it's a scary amount. It's hovering between 35 and maybe

00:31:05.420 even 40%. When I would check it now, I think it's 52%. So we're in some serious trouble here.

00:31:11.480 Yeah, this is the economy that Justin Trudeau creates. You know, he said that he wants to

00:31:15.900 grow the economy from the hard out or whatever he said, the budgets will balance themselves. Well,

00:31:20.220 this is the reality. And it's scary. I know True North reports on those kind of stories and how close

00:31:25.240 so many families are. It's so tough. So Chris, we really appreciate all you do to bring these

00:31:30.260 important stories to light. All of the research you do out west. Thank you so much for joining the show.

00:31:36.340 Hopefully we'll have you on more often.

00:31:37.720 You bet. Thanks for having us.

00:31:39.700 All right. That's Chris Sims. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this is the Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - April 21, 2022

Proposed ‘pick-up truck tax’ the latest in Trudeau’s war against the working class

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