The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - March 30, 2024


Pierre Poilievre vs 200 ＂Experts＂ on the Carbon Tax


Episode Stats

Length

10 minutes

Words per Minute

188.4542

Word Count

1,975

Sentence Count

119

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

A bunch of economists have a problem with the idea that the carbon tax works. They don't like it, so who do you believe? Conservative leader Pierre Polyev, or 200 economists who agree with him? Well, guess what? Neither do they.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So I've been informed by Canada's legacy media that on the topic of the carbon tax,
00:00:05.560 either you can believe big, scary, and probably evil Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev,
00:00:11.500 or you can believe 200 wise experts who probably donate a lot to charity and they're attractive
00:00:17.920 people to boot. Or at the very least, this is how Bruce Arthur is trying to frame the issue
00:00:22.800 over at the Toronto Star. But let me be clear, I've seen this being done by a lot of legacy
00:00:27.860 media journalists and opinion writers in the past. But Bruce Arthur put out this article and it's
00:00:32.920 titled, Pierre Polyev says one thing, 200 experts refute it, who to believe? And that's particularly
00:00:39.140 sad to base an entire article on an appeal to authority fallacy. But I wanted to make this
00:00:44.960 video because of this one line that Bruce Arthur put up in the article. And it says, well, what about
00:00:51.080 more than 200 Canadian economists? Because that's how many signed a letter this week addressing the
00:00:56.120 main arguments against carbon pricing. And he goes on to basically detail out what their
00:01:01.720 opposition was to Pierre Polyev's opposition to the carbon tax. But let me just cut to the chase and
00:01:06.940 say this is all completely silly. I want to jump over to that letter right now, because at least in my
00:01:13.060 opinion, it's full of it and it proves it's full of it in one of the first lines. So it kind of details
00:01:18.740 out the purpose of this letter. But on the first little debunking that they do, the critics claim
00:01:23.320 number one, they immediately say something that's entirely false in the first few, like in the first
00:01:29.200 line, it says, since federal carbon pricing took effect in 2019, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions
00:01:35.960 have fallen by almost 8%. Okay, this is entirely untrue. It's true in the most technical sense that
00:01:45.460 GHG emissions have fallen. But if you're somebody with a real head on their shoulders, you wouldn't
00:01:51.180 take this at face value. Oh, our GHG emissions have fallen since 2019? Well, does that have anything
00:01:56.580 to do with carbon tax? Well, no. But this letter of economists who should know better are okay with
00:02:02.080 saying that, well, the carbon tax works because GHG emissions have fallen 8%. Well, how did they fall
00:02:07.480 8%? I just want to quickly bring that up on screen. And you shouldn't realize how dumb this is
00:02:12.460 immediately. So this is Canada's GHG emissions in tons over time. And so in 2019, the carbon tax comes
00:02:20.480 into effect. We're at 578 tons per capita or whatever it is. I don't know. Sorry, I didn't look
00:02:26.260 at it that deeply. But 578.6. And then we have fallen to 8% as of the year 2022 or 2023. Well, maybe
00:02:35.360 that has to do with the fact that between 2019 and 23, we had a COVID-19 pandemic where people were
00:02:42.900 locked up at home and it ended up severely slowing down the economy and ruining many businesses. The
00:02:49.640 fact that you'd have economists sign on to this partisan hackery claiming, well, the carbon tax works,
00:02:56.740 line one of their debunking, they put this as their number one point. This was their strongest point
00:03:02.280 because you always put your strongest arguments first. Everybody knows that. And their first
00:03:07.080 argument against the critics like Pure Paglia, Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, Blaine Higgs, all the
00:03:12.820 other premiers against the carbon tax, their first line trying to debunk their claims is itself wrong
00:03:19.340 that yes, emissions have fallen by 8% because the economy cratered during COVID. Yes, we can reduce
00:03:26.500 emissions if we lock up people at home, crush a bunch of small businesses, slow down the oil
00:03:32.260 and gas industry and do a bunch of other terrible things to Canada's economy. Then we can actually
00:03:37.580 get emissions lower. And it keeps going down these different kind of debunking points. All of them
00:03:43.400 are either trying to make a point based off of pure technicality or it's stuff that's just not true.
00:03:49.060 At one point, they just shift over to doing flat out liberal party propaganda saying, well, you know,
00:03:54.980 people actually do make more money on the rebate than they pay in the carbon tax. Just pushing out a PMO
00:04:01.240 talking point from Justin Trudeau himself. It's not correct. They should know better. They don't
00:04:06.920 really care to know better because you have to realize this and it doesn't shock you probably
00:04:11.740 that universities are full of leftists. They're full of people who, sight unseen, agree with the
00:04:18.200 concept of a carbon tax, whether it works or not. I just finished my master's degree in public policy
00:04:24.720 not that long ago. And what I wrote on was effectively a long debunking of the idea that
00:04:30.700 poverty drives crime in Canada. That if poverty rates go up, that means crime rates will go up.
00:04:37.340 And it sounds on its surface like that must be true. Well, of course, people are poor. They're
00:04:41.860 going to commit crimes. It's not actually true. There's tons of low income communities all over
00:04:46.920 Canada that have super low crime. It is communities that are impoverished and also have weak education
00:04:53.720 sort of systems as well as bad family structures. That's where you find crime. Crime ends up being
00:04:59.340 a completely incidental factor. You can find communities where there's high crime, where
00:05:03.920 there's not that much poverty, and you can find areas with tons of poverty, but there's no crime.
00:05:08.680 But you'll have all these people coming out and still just saying, well, you know that 375 people,
00:05:14.460 and the funny thing is these are educated people coming up. They're like, well, 375 people now
00:05:19.680 disagree with pure poly of the carbon tax. Who cares? I know economists who also don't like the
00:05:25.140 carbon tax. Are their opinions now devalued? Well, I guess they are because Brian Breguet came out and
00:05:31.140 he's a conservative candidate actually in British Columbia and a university professor. And he was
00:05:36.060 mocking Bruce Arthur for updating his article saying, okay, it's closer to 340 economists now.
00:05:42.160 And Brian Breguet responded to this by saying, how many voters were like, nah, I'll vote poly of it's if
00:05:48.060 it's only 200 economists. But now, but if it were now at 340, forget it. I'm team Trudeau again.
00:05:55.760 And this is how the legacy media thinks that you should think that if they have frankly enough
00:06:01.140 of their friends from academia come out and say, actually, you're wrong to not like the carbon tax
00:06:06.820 that you're going to sit back and say, well, I guess I like the carbon tax. Now a hacky professor
00:06:12.300 from a random university told me the carbon tax is good. Well, I guess it is good. And the funny thing
00:06:17.660 is when I've, when I scrolled through the list of professors who are signed onto that letter,
00:06:22.720 a lot of them, like a lot of the ones who are missing are very telling. I know some professors
00:06:27.680 who lean a little bit left who are not on that letter. I guarantee they approach them because
00:06:32.600 they're very famous people who tend to discuss sort of fiscal policy and whatnot in Canada a lot.
00:06:38.920 And they're not on this letter. And I can guarantee it because, or I can guarantee you that they didn't
00:06:43.660 sign on because they thought this letter was full of crap. And it's basically just liberal propaganda
00:06:48.440 that a bunch of left-wing professors are willing to sign their name next to because they don't like
00:06:53.420 pure poly than the conservatives. And it's so obnoxious when you see all these academics coming
00:06:59.020 out and saying to people, and I'm not trying to do this whole pulling this whole lived experience
00:07:03.460 thing. If someone has a lived experience, you can't disagree with them. But I'm talking about
00:07:08.000 like the lived experience of millions of people in this country. A lot of people are economically
00:07:12.780 struggling. And whenever the carbon tax goes up, they can feel that pain in the bills that they are
00:07:18.700 having to pay. Yes, these people can say, well, it's only three cents a liter it's going up by. It's
00:07:22.680 only three cents a liter. Okay, guys. Yeah, I know that all these professors who make $300,000,
00:07:27.800 $250,000 a year can handle the price of three cents a liter, especially a bunch of them live on
00:07:33.160 campus, depending on where they're teaching at. But guys, like people actually have to deal with
00:07:39.580 physical real life reality. And that when the carbon tax is hurting them, and they've turned
00:07:45.280 against the carbon tax, there's probably a reason for that. And you coming up with a fallacious
00:07:49.540 argument that, well, GHG emissions are actually down. So you should be okay with taking a bunch of
00:07:55.520 economic pain. No, no, I'm against all net zero policies for this very reason. I don't care how
00:08:03.120 much we can reduce emissions if we just hurt a bunch of middle class and low income Canadians
00:08:08.040 by jacking up taxes on energy that people need to survive. I'm not for that because that's ridiculous
00:08:14.920 and actually a very nasty thing to do to people. The idea that it's okay to impoverish some people
00:08:20.380 because look, we reduced emissions by 8%. We really didn't do that because of the carbon tax. But you
00:08:26.060 know, that's just details. I never want to push any economic policy that for an abstract goal that
00:08:32.960 doesn't actually make anyone's life better, we're going to hurt people. No, I'm not going to sign
00:08:39.440 on to that. And the media is effectively trying to gaslight people into reading enough times across
00:08:44.440 the headlines that, you know, the experts are saying that you're making money on the carbon tax,
00:08:48.560 you should like it. People live with it. They know not they're not better off. It doesn't matter how
00:08:52.940 many times you tell people they're better off. They're not better off. And they're not going to
00:08:57.020 believe you. It is the most belittling kind of way of talking to Canadians possible. The idea that,
00:09:03.440 well, you're just not smart enough to understand the complex brilliance of the carbon tax. It's not
00:09:08.860 brilliant, guys. And it's deeply unpopular. So maybe the liberals should try and figure out a way
00:09:13.800 of actually climbing down from this terrible policy, rather than having hacky morons like Bruce
00:09:18.900 Arthur write up articles about how you should you should believe in like liberal party policy
00:09:24.320 because appeal to authority. I don't care. Anyways. Oh, that's it for me today, guys. I just wanted to
00:09:32.280 quickly do my normal shameless plug that I, Wyatt Claypool, I'm running for the Conservative Party
00:09:36.660 nomination in Calgary Signal Hill. If you live on the west side of Calgary, check if you live in this
00:09:41.240 riding. This is what the new riding boundaries are going to look like. Buy a membership, vote for me,
00:09:45.200 check out my website, WyattClaypool.com. And if you want to support myself and the National
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00:10:21.940 things than just legal fees. Okay. Well, that should be it for me today, guys. Have a good one.