The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - October 31, 2023


Did Trudeau Kill His Own Carbon Tax？


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

187.1077

Word count

1,878

Sentence count

111

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau announces a three-year pause on the federal carbon tax for heating oil in the Maritimes. Why is this a good thing for certain areas of Canada, and why should anybody else pay for it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 It's telling of the times that we're currently in that right now Canadians are witnessing the federal carbon tax being dismantled, and it's not being dismantled by conservative majority government. In fact, it's actually being dismantled by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party themselves.
00:00:14.920 Now, this isn't intentional. They're not coming out in a press conference saying, hey, guys, we messed up. We're going to get rid of the carbon tax. They're just trying to stop applying the carbon tax to certain voting bases that they're trying to win back since they're really waning in the poll numbers these days and especially the fundraising numbers.
00:00:31.620 So Justin Trudeau just a few days ago, and this is funny because a week ago, Liberal cabinet ministers were saying they were not considering getting rid of the carbon tax at all, but Trudeau a few days ago declares that he's going to put a three-year pause on the carbon tax for heating oil.
00:00:46.760 Now, know that heating oil is primarily used in the maritime provinces, but 40% of households in Atlantic Canada use heating oil, and obviously Justin Trudeau is trying to gird up the Liberal Party numbers in that area of Canada, an area of Canada where the Liberals used to absolutely win, literally won every single seat back in 2015, but they're losing a lot of ground these days.
00:01:06.920 So this was obviously to throw a bone towards Atlantic Canada, try and hold on to their support, and sort of stave off any conservative flips in that area for different seats.
00:01:15.480 Now, why this is such a silly thing for Justin Trudeau to do, and tantamount to him dismantling his own carbon tax, is he's killing off all the reasons to keep the carbon tax around.
00:01:26.540 Premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, pointed out he's basically killing off two myths of the carbon tax that the Liberal government has been pushing, which means that the carbon tax could easily go away now.
00:01:36.960 Scott Moe has basically threatened that Saskatchewan might stop collecting the carbon tax from their residents because, obviously, the carbon tax no longer applies to everyone.
00:01:46.340 That's one of the sort of issues with what Justin Trudeau is doing.
00:01:49.940 He's basically saying the carbon tax really doesn't matter, and it only applies to certain people.
00:01:54.640 So why should Saskatchewan enforce the carbon tax against its own citizens who don't use heating oil, like, based on the idea that we're all supposed to be paying, you know, the price of pollution or whatever?
00:02:05.760 Obviously, it's no longer a pressing matter that everyone pays it, so why should anybody pay it?
00:02:10.920 And also, what Justin Trudeau has done by saying that people in the Maritimes using heating oil don't have to pay the carbon tax for their own heating, he is saying that the carbon tax is hurting Canadians, something he has avoided saying for eight years since pushing the carbon tax.
00:02:26.760 The idea was that, well, actually, through rebates, people who make, you know, under $80,000 a year are actually benefiting from the carbon tax because you pay less in the carbon tax at the gasoline pump than you get back in rebates.
00:02:41.300 Now, this was always nonsense, even those making less than $40,000 a year who are getting the full benefit of the carbon tax are obviously being hurt at the grocery store and anything else that needs energy to be created or transported, which is effectively every product on the entire planet outside of digital assets.
00:03:00.400 But so Justin Trudeau is saying that I am so that we're pausing the carbon tax and the Maritimes on heating oil because it is hurting the Maritimer's ability to afford the cost of living.
00:03:12.700 So obviously, the carbon tax is not one of these sort of neutral, positive things that's actually great for everybody.
00:03:19.200 It's hurting certain people, and Justin Trudeau is admitting it.
00:03:22.060 And in court, the liberals have even tried to argue that the carbon tax is actually good for people.
00:03:26.560 It's not hurting anybody so that provinces have to settle down who are trying to take legal challenges to the carbon tax.
00:03:33.560 And again, when you're not applying the carbon tax equally, then why should anybody else pay for it?
00:03:39.940 I hope other provinces take the lead of Scotmo in Saskatchewan and just declare they're not going to pay for it either.
00:03:45.560 Because imagine if income taxes just had exemptions if you were living in certain jurisdictions, that they make some nonsensical cutouts like, well, saying like, well,
00:03:53.860 industries in this certain valley in this province are kind of being hard hit, so we're just going to cancel income and corporate taxes.
00:04:01.640 Well, that's not how taxes should work.
00:04:04.220 Taxes don't just get to be levied against people that you think can pay better than others.
00:04:08.420 People pay based on their income.
00:04:10.360 They don't pay based on their region outside of provincial taxes where it's obviously opt in by living there.
00:04:16.180 When it comes to the federal government, you don't get to pick and choose who pays taxes.
00:04:20.700 And this is why I, frankly, oppose a lot of specific taxes on specific products.
00:04:25.440 I don't like the idea that something gets taxed at luxury prices, something just has a normal sales tax, and other things get tax exemptions on certain imports or exports.
00:04:33.940 It's a foolish system.
00:04:35.220 It's just sort of economic micromanaging from the government that we really shouldn't have.
00:04:40.600 Now, I think that Justin Trudeau is almost hoping that his unintentional actions to get rid of the carbon tax get rid of it.
00:04:48.480 Not that he wants to openly get rid of it, but he doesn't want this to be an election issue in 2025.
00:04:54.460 He's hoping that come time that he's on a debate stage with Pierre Polyev, he can basically say, well, Pierre, I know you keep going on about the carbon tax, but it's been two years since we've had carbon tax, and Canadians have bounced back handsomely in the economy.
00:05:06.820 He doesn't want to have to wear this albatross in the next election.
00:05:11.620 So he actually might encourage premiers by poking at them to try and get rid of the carbon tax so that he doesn't have to run on it.
00:05:20.120 Because I don't see the liberals as being so incompetent that getting rid of the carbon tax on heating oil wouldn't create a big domino effect.
00:05:28.920 And a lot of people who, I'm not saying they're pro-carbon tax, but they're pretty neutral on the subject, like Trevor Toome from the University of Calgary, has pointed out that the argument that the liberals are making against heating oil on the grounds of affordability could literally be applied to any other product in Canada, or any other sort of like, any other product in Canada that the carbon tax is applied to.
00:05:50.320 If people being in economic struggles designates a tax to be defunct, then obviously the carbon tax should be defunct all across Canada.
00:06:00.360 We're effectively already in a recession.
00:06:03.240 We have massive inflation troubles, and only Maritimers are having trouble. 0.99
00:06:07.520 I don't think Maritimers would agree to that. 1.00
00:06:09.780 I think they would recognize that everyone else in the country is also hurting really bad.
00:06:13.660 And that it's absurd to make people pay a tax that does not do anything for the environment in order to put a price on pollution.
00:06:22.780 Because like, let me be very clear, the carbon tax does nothing.
00:06:26.440 Because if it's just a redistributionary tax, like the liberals claim it is, well, how is it stopping climate change?
00:06:34.080 Also, you're taxing gasoline and energy, you know, some of the most inelastic goods in the entire economy.
00:06:41.500 After food and clothing, people buy gasoline for their car because you need to get to work some distance away from your home.
00:06:49.420 You need to heat your home.
00:06:50.720 And people, if you just put a small tax on it, when I say small, not that carbon tax isn't hurting people.
00:06:55.900 But I mean, like, even though it's just like a small percentage of the overall gasoline price,
00:07:01.780 obviously that's not going to make people stop buying gas for their car and they're going to walk to work.
00:07:07.020 That's absurd.
00:07:07.860 It's an inelastic good.
00:07:09.200 Elastic goods are things that you don't really need, like, you know, DVD packages of random television shows that ended 20 years ago.
00:07:18.140 Yes, if taxes were applied to DVD box sets of sitcoms, people would stop buying them because you don't really need that.
00:07:25.840 So a 40% tax on that will make people quickly stop paying for it.
00:07:29.600 Whereas gasoline, even if you put a 100% tax on gasoline, people will buy gas still.
00:07:35.660 They'll just drive to whatever their local MP's office is and break down the door and tell them to get rid of it.
00:07:43.100 It's just one of those products that people cannot live without.
00:07:46.000 So it's actually cruel to tax it because you're not going to get people to change their behavior to live a little bit differently so it doesn't get applied to them so hard.
00:07:54.740 It's a product that only causes pain because people cannot avoid the pain on the product, even if they stop driving.
00:08:01.940 It is still being applied to the truckers bringing the food to the grocery store, their go-to.
00:08:05.480 It's still even applying to things like shampoo being put on the shelves at London Drugs.
00:08:09.720 It applies to everything.
00:08:11.940 So I'm happy that Justin Trudeau is silently agreeing with conservatives for once and getting rid of the carbon tax.
00:08:19.080 Anyways, this should be pretty much it for me today.
00:08:21.360 I'm just going to plug my current legal fundraiser in the description of this video.
00:08:25.820 We just got past questioning of the guy suing me.
00:08:28.380 It went very well for us, I think.
00:08:29.960 My questioning should be coming up in a couple weeks' time.
00:08:32.460 It cost me a lot of money to fight this court case.
00:08:34.660 So if you can just throw $50 my way, $25 my way, in the Give, Send, Go description link below, that would be amazing.
00:08:43.100 I also have my ex or Twitter.
00:08:45.160 I still like calling it Twitter.
00:08:46.240 I have my Twitter accounts URL also in the description if you want to follow me there.
00:08:50.000 And by the way, I'm also running to be the Conservative Party nominee for the riding of Calgary Signal Hill.
00:08:57.860 So if you live in Signal Hill or you know anybody in Signal Hill, let them know that I'm running.
00:09:02.460 Tell them to buy a Conservative membership and vote for me whenever the nomination election day comes.
00:09:08.280 That would be fantastic.
00:09:09.680 Other than that, I hope everyone has a beautiful Halloween day.
00:09:13.440 I know I'm not wearing anything Halloween-ish or anything in my sets Halloween-themed.
00:09:18.940 That Georgian cartoon book kind of looks a little freaky, but yeah, nothing too interesting here. 1.00
00:09:23.920 I should wear like an orange tie or something if I record another video today.
00:09:28.800 I'm deeply sorry.
00:09:30.320 Other than that, have a great day.
00:09:32.460 Thank you.
00:09:33.220 Thanks.
00:09:33.540 Thank you.
00:09:34.400 Bye.
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