Justin Trudeau's carbon tax has been a disaster from the get-out-of-office standpoint. It's time to take a look at why the carbon tax is such a disaster, and why it's serving no one but Justin Trudeau.
00:00:00.000Unless you're as politically meatheaded as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is, it should be absolutely clear to you that after NDP Manitoba Premier Wab Kanu met with federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev, that there was going to be no way of running on a carbon tax and hoping to win the next federal election.
00:00:18.700And yet Justin Trudeau is still doing it. Wab Kanu is not a political moderate. He is on the political hard left. He is to Justin Trudeau's left. And yet Wab Kanu at least has some political intelligence. He has some populist inclinations. And he knows in order to hold on to his working class base who just voted for him in the recent provincial election, that he has to oppose the federal carbon tax.
00:00:43.900There are going to be a lot of crossover voters in Manitoba, people who voted NDP in the provincial election who are planning on voting federal Conservative in the next federal election.
00:00:55.840Justin Trudeau is serving nobody with his stance on the carbon tax. The only people who like the carbon tax are the sort of people that even if Justin Trudeau said he was going to scrap the carbon tax altogether and it was a massive mistake, are still going to vote liberal.
00:01:10.280It's only Liberal Party ideologues who actually support the carbon tax. It's upper middle class, urban, white collar voters in downtown Toronto and Montreal.
00:01:21.340And so he is not actually growing his base of support at all by doing all these stupid press events, trying to gaslight people into thinking that the carbon tax rebates are going to make us all millionaires in the long run.
00:01:33.120It's nonsense. It's effectively a scam. But this is what has led us to fantastic interviews on the CBC with Justin Trudeau, actually getting the tiniest bit of pushback from the host of these shows, asking why he's even pushing the carbon tax when it seems like nobody actually wants it anymore.
00:01:52.920He is completely befuddled to actually justify himself. But because he's such a narcissist, he has no ability to admit he's made a mistake and pull back on this policy.
00:02:02.920And he is going to continue destroying himself on the shores of the carbon tax simply because it has become his baby. Check this interview out.
00:02:13.480I think we're continuing to make that case. It's understandable that at a time of anxiety, of pressure on costs, of affordability concerns, that some politicians are trying to, you know, drum up support for themselves by scaring people and by giving misinformation.
00:02:31.340It's unfortunate, but we're going to continue telling the truth.
00:02:34.580So just to be clear, you don't think you've lost the narrative on this. We had a conversation this week with somebody who's a defender of the carbon tax.
00:02:39.480He explained it. He talked about it as a dumpster fire in terms of how it's rolled out. You don't think you've lost the narrative.
00:02:44.660It's not just conservative premiers, though. It's Wob Canoo in Manitoba. It's a fellow liberal in Andrew Fury in Newfoundland and Labrador.
00:02:52.380What would it take for them to convince you that this is not the right policy?
00:02:57.000Well, they have the opportunity to put forward a pricing frame that makes sure that pollution isn't free at the same level for the rest of the country,
00:03:05.980but in a way that works for their province if they don't want to have the federal backstop.
00:03:09.800So Andrew Fury has said that he wants a meeting with you to talk about this. He wants the premiers to come together with you. Will you have that meeting?
00:03:14.900I've had a meeting in 2016 with all premiers who have the meeting now with him.
00:03:18.600I will continue to talk with premiers, but I will continue.
00:03:21.540One of the reasons why there's great anxiety over this is because, as you've said, there are a lot of people who feel like the system is stacked against them.
00:03:27.440Young people in particular, they do everything they can. They get a good job. They're working hard.
00:03:32.160They can't square that circle. You've had nine years in power. To what extent is your government responsible for the fact that that system is stacked against them?
00:03:41.880We got elected in 2015 focused on supporting the middle class, and we brought in a number of measures that made a huge difference.
00:03:50.420We cut child poverty in half in this country with the Canada Child Benefit.
00:03:54.740But particularly since the pandemic, we've seen...
00:03:59.740Amazing. I like how the CBC host, he's not even exactly grilling Justin Trudeau.
00:04:05.300He's not doing a bad job at all, but he's just asking him questions that are out there.
00:04:09.300And not like the nonsensical way where a CBC journalist will go up to pure volume and say,
00:04:13.880there are people out there who think you're far-right conspiracy theorists.
00:04:16.720Like, that's silly. He's asking him questions that are commonly out there.
00:04:20.120Well, why, if so many premiers are opposing you, are you still pushing for this?
00:04:24.500The most hilarious part of that entire interview is when he says, well, I met with them back in 2016.
00:04:29.560Eight years ago, I guess is good enough for continuing a policy that has become wildly unpopular.
00:04:35.460And his contention that, well, if premiers like Andrew Fleury and people like Wob Canu don't like the carbon tax,
00:04:43.040well, they can always come up with their own pollution framework.
00:04:45.620Well, that's nonsense because the pollution framework that you have to come up with still basically has to at least make the federal carbon tax pricing as a minimum.
00:04:56.820This is why, and all these premiers, when he says, like, flippant stuff like that to them,
00:05:01.020why don't you come up with your own version of the carbon tax?
00:05:03.600They're looking at people like BC Premier David Eby looking like he might get his lunch eaten by the BC conservatives
00:05:11.120who weren't even a party a year and a half ago, and they're thinking, well, no, I'm not going to pass my own carbon tax
00:05:17.640because then I'm the main person responsible for this.
00:05:21.460They'd prefer Justin Trudeau keep his federal carbon tax in their area than them passing their own provincial carbon tax.
00:05:27.900They just want the carbon tax gone in general, but they're not going to own the terrible policy.
00:05:32.680They want at least Justin Trudeau to own it if there is going to be a carbon tax in, like, on the provincial or federal level.
00:05:39.100He's like watching a turtle stuck on a fence post.
00:05:43.180He doesn't know what to do here other than basically put out the same platitudes he's been, like, shilling out since 2015.
00:05:50.000And all those questions were very answerable if he had the slightest bit of humility.
00:05:55.160If he had an ounce of humility, he would say, yeah, fair enough.
00:05:59.140If young people are feeling like it's stacked against them, then we should be addressing those issues and those concerns.
00:06:04.300And if enough people don't like the federal carbon tax anymore, well, I'm a public servant.
00:06:10.400And I'll put a pause on the carbon tax and we'll reconsider it later.
00:06:13.140If he did that, he would at least gain five to six points in the polls overnight because a lot of people who, for some reason,
00:06:20.120have an irrational hatred for the conservatives are just looking for Justin Trudeau to be rational enough that they can still justify voting for him.