Justin Trudeau's carbon pricing plan for home heating oil has been a long time coming, and it's finally here. But it comes with a catch-up interview with Environment Minister Stephen Gabbard, where he completely contradicts himself multiple times, and then flip-flops and argues back against the other side.
00:00:00.000Never claim that Liberal Environment Minister Stephen Gilboa hasn't done anything for you, because today he has given us one of the worst interviews I've ever witnessed from a minister, including the Prime Minister himself, Justin Trudeau.
00:00:13.880This is quite literally one of the worst interviews I've ever seen in my life, where the man somehow, in the course of two minutes and ten seconds, contradicts himself multiple times, argues against his own positions, and then flip-flops and argues back against them from the other side.
00:00:30.260It's incredible to watch. I want you to see the full thing here, and I want to break it down on the other side.
00:00:35.800Can you explain to Canadians watching, Minister, why it was okay to pause the price on carbon for home heating oil, but not for this upcoming increase as of April 1st?
00:00:45.740So, the very reason for putting a price on pollution, and it's been done before, and not just for climate change, but for other environmental challenges, is that you want to incentivize change in behavior for companies, industrial organizations, but also individuals.
00:01:03.700What we found out with home-eating oil is that most, the vast majority, in fact, of people who are still using home-eating oil in Canada, and there are more people in my home province of Quebec than in all of Atlantic Canada, for example, that still use it,
00:01:18.860but tend to be lower-to-income Canadians who don't have the money to make the switch for less polluting form of home-eating oil, which is why we decided to put a pause specifically on this,
00:01:34.440because home-eating oil is the most expensive, it's the most inefficient, and it's the most polluting way of heating your home.
00:01:40.440And I do take your point, Minister, that as far as volume goes, there are more of those homes outside of Atlantic Canada,
00:01:47.560but as a portion of the types of heating that's used, it's far greater in Atlantic Canada than it is in other parts of the country,
00:01:55.600and the Atlantic MP surrounding the Prime Minister, when he made that announcement, I think, speaks to that fact.
00:02:01.700But at this point in time, given the affordability struggles, like you highlight many of those using home-eating oil are facing,
00:02:07.800would it not be worth considering pressing pause in this instance?
00:02:12.880No, no, it wouldn't, because we can't put a pause on climate change.
00:02:16.880And what Pierre Prolyev never talks about is the fact that people right now, 8 out of 10 Canadians' families,
00:02:23.540get more money back than they pay in carbon pricing.
00:02:27.340So the richest among us don't, the people who pollute the most, but 8 out of 10 Canadian families,
00:02:33.740and that has been confirmed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
00:02:36.260So, if we were to do that, we would actually hurt people economically while they're struggling.
00:03:15.980But notice in that interview, I think about three or four times, he completely reversed his position.
00:03:21.280So at the start, the interviewer asks him, well, why did you guys remove the carbon tax on home heater oil,
00:03:27.380specifically in the Maritimes, when you're unwilling to remove the 23% increase to the carbon tax for the rest of the country on April 1st?
00:03:35.680And he says, well, it's because those who are in the Maritimes, and he makes the point about Quebec because,
00:03:41.900hey, there's still more Quebecers paying it on their home heater oil because Quebec has its own carbon tax.
00:03:49.240He's saying, well, it's more expensive, it's more polluting, and these people are more low income,
00:03:53.420and they can't afford to switch to something cleaner.
00:03:55.660Well, it's a completely irrelevant point because the carbon tax is a per-unit tax.
00:04:01.400It is not taxing them any more than anybody else because it is only based on the units of the resource that they use.
00:04:07.620And people using home heater oil, natural gas, or any of this other stuff are not disproportionately using more units than anybody else.
00:04:14.920Anyways, it's like if you go to the gas station.
00:04:16.780It doesn't matter if you use regular or premium gasoline.
00:04:19.320It is the same per-unit tax on your gasoline.
00:04:22.540So you, in theory, are getting a rebate back in line with your usage.
00:04:28.120Okay, and then moving on, the interviewer then follows up and asks him the question about removing the carbon tax on everyone else.
00:04:34.120And then he says, well, we can't put a pause on climate change, so we can't remove or we can't even cancel the increase in the carbon tax on April 1st.
00:04:42.440And while you seem to have a fine time pausing climate change on the home heater oil demographic in the Maritimes, you had no problem doing that.
00:04:52.480Supposedly, that wasn't affecting climate change, even though you admitted it's the dirtiest form of fuel that you could potentially use that's popular on the market.
00:05:01.080And so, like, that's completely nonsensical.
00:05:04.820And I thought the whole point was to make people change their behaviors.
00:05:07.700But now he's admitting that if this is forcing people into poverty or low-income status, then it is worth actually lowering the amount of pressure on people.
00:05:17.080But even if you don't use home heater oil, you can still be low-income.
00:05:21.340There are way more low-income people not using home heater oil than people who are using it.
00:05:25.760And so then, to basically contradict his previous statements about trying to take the pressure off people with low incomes, he says, well, we can't put a pause on climate change.
00:05:36.000And then contradicts himself again by saying, actually, though, all of these people are making money on the carbon tax because of the rebate.
00:05:43.740And then he cites that, oh, the Parliamentary Budget Office said that people are making more.
00:05:48.280Eight out of ten Canadians are making more on the rebates than are being taken away from them.
00:05:55.700The PBO has maybe said that if you only take into account home heating and gasoline, yes, your rebate might be making a net $50, net $100 at the end of the year.
00:06:05.940But when you take into account all the other things you have to buy and the fact that the carbon tax is affecting all of those prices, nobody is making any money.
00:06:14.320The only people who are actually making anything are people who have very low heating costs for their homes and they don't drive.
00:06:20.940And they are low income so they get the full rebate.
00:06:23.660Not that many people are making money.
00:06:25.640And it's not worth having this massive bureaucracy on top of everything in order to administer this ridiculous policy.
00:06:31.680And when you take into account the bureaucratic costs of administering the carbon tax, even those people are probably not making anything because that is contributing to inflation in its own way.
00:06:41.220This is an absolute messaging disaster.
00:06:44.940He effectively admits the carbon tax is complete nonsense, that we can just pause it for certain things and that's, you know, it's a fun, there's fine economic reasons to do that.
00:06:53.080But for other people, no, it's terrible.
00:07:21.100So even though he has to admit it's hurting people and that he doesn't even track the admissions reductions that the carbon tax is not even actually contributing to because he knows the carbon tax is not reducing emissions, so he doesn't want to track it.
00:07:34.100Even though he knows all these things are true, in his own mind, he still thinks he's on the right side of history.
00:07:50.160You would be shocked how many people like Stephen Gilboa, Chrystia Freeland, and Justin Trudeau himself, the grand poobah, these people know they're lying, but they also believe their own lies at the same time.
00:08:01.640They are so egotistical and narcissistic.
00:08:04.600They can tell you something that they know they have no evidence for, but at the same exact time, they think it's true simply because they said it.
00:08:14.740That is how, like, kind of lunk-headedly dumb a lot of these people are, is that they believe that they can't tell a lie, so even when they know they told a lie, it's not a lie because I said it.
00:08:25.480Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys.
00:08:28.340Go check out my website if you live in my riding in Calgary.
00:08:33.040I'm running for the Conservative Party nomination.
00:08:34.760So if you live in the west side of Calgary, this is what the riding boundaries are going to look like after the redistribution in later April.
00:08:41.660So make sure you buy a Conservative Party membership.
00:08:54.540We are being sued by a billionaire developer for defamation.
00:08:57.760He cannot actually prove the defamation.
00:08:59.820We literally just had a guest writer reference a Globe and Mail article about him, basically reported nothing new about the man.
00:09:06.540And he is suing us for the claims that were made in a Globe and Mail article that were a year and a half old, yet he never sued the Globe and Mail, or at least he's taken about five or six months and not actually shown us the evidence that he even attempted to sue them.
00:09:19.260So he's full of it, and we will win this case.
00:09:21.940The problem is Alberta does not have anti-slap legislation.
00:09:25.340A slap suit is strategic litigation against public participation, and most provinces in Canada have anti-slap legislation that allows you to go in front of a judge and say, look at this case.
00:09:36.700Here's all the evidence that he shouldn't even be suing us, and this is completely frivolous and malicious, and a judge can dismiss it.
00:09:42.620In Alberta, we don't have that, so it takes years to get to the point where a judge can have judgment and say that this is a ridiculous civil lawsuit.
00:09:50.600I'm dismissing it and giving you all your costs back.
00:09:52.740So I've been having to fight it out, paying $26,000 in legal costs to get to the point where I can even maybe get a judge to say that this is stupid.
00:10:01.180So any contributions you make to that give-send-go really helps lower the burden of costs on myself.
00:10:06.760And sorry for making the long pitch on this one.
00:10:09.160I know some people actually want to know what's happening with that legal case, and that's kind of the big update.