The Conservative Party has a plan to force Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to cancel a planned increase to the carbon tax by 23% on April 1st, or the Tories will force a no confidence vote in the government. This is a brilliant piece of political theatre that will force the Liberals to vote in favour of the increase.
00:00:00.000Some breaking news here. Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev is demanding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cancel the 23% planned increase to the carbon tax on April 1st, or the Conservative Party will have a no-confidence vote on Justin Trudeau's Liberal government tomorrow in Parliament.
00:00:18.220Now, if you've been watching Canadian politics for even a moderate amount of time, you already know that this vote is not actually going to succeed in its literal intent to dissolve the government and have a new federal election.
00:00:28.900The NDP and the bloc will vote to hold up the Liberal government, but what Pierre Polyev is actually doing here is a piece of political calculus I think is actually extremely smart.
00:00:39.620I first want to play the video of him announcing this action, and then I want to jump over to why I believe this is actually kind of a stroke of political genius.
00:00:48.680Because what he is doing here is obviously not trying to topple the government, but make the NDP the bloc and the Liberals all put their money where their mouths are.
00:00:56.500But before I get to the video, I just want to quickly do a shameless plug that I, Wyatt Claypool, am running for the Conservative Party nomination for Calgary Signal Hill.
00:01:05.060It's on the west side of Calgary, so if you live in this area, check if you live in the riding, buy a Conservative Party membership, and check out my website in the description below, wyattclaypool.com.
00:01:14.700Anyways, here is Pierre Polyev making this announcement about the carbon tax non-confidence vote.
00:01:20.160This is a hell we could not have imagined eight years ago.
00:01:23.820In fact, of all the warnings we made about Justin Trudeau, that the media decried his partisanship, we never even came close to claiming he would do the things that he has now in reality done.
00:01:37.180We were far, far too generous towards him in our interpretation of what would happen to this country under eight years of his socialist NDP policies.
00:01:48.560So now, today I am announcing that I am giving Trudeau one last chance to spike his hike.
00:01:55.040One last chance, and only one more day.
00:01:58.740Today I am announcing that if Trudeau does not declare today an end to his forthcoming tax increases on food, gas, and heat,
00:02:06.520that we will introduce a motion of non-confidence in the Prime Minister.
00:02:10.640It will read that the House declare non-confidence in the Prime Minister and his costly government for increasing the carbon tax by 23% on April 1st,
00:02:20.460as part of his plan to quadruple the tax, while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat, and house themselves,
00:02:27.500and call for the House to be dissolved so Canadians can vote in a carbon tax election.
00:02:32.700Now, this is actually a genius piece of political theater.
00:02:38.960Obviously, again, the non-confidence vote is not going to succeed in dissolving the government.
00:02:43.780But what Polyev is doing is forcing the liberals to vote in favor,
00:02:48.860or at least say that they will maintain the carbon tax increases.
00:02:52.480Because when the carbon tax was first passed, basically every year or so,
00:02:57.260there was planned increases in the rate of the carbon tax.
00:03:00.900And these were sort of automatically set.
00:03:03.040So the liberals haven't had to vote on each new increase of the carbon tax.
00:03:07.240And this one coming up on April 1st is highly controversial.
00:03:11.860So Polyev, knowing Trudeau is probably not going to pause it or even cancel the increase,
00:03:17.080he is forcing the liberals to now, in a no-confidence vote,
00:03:21.960or at least forcing the bloc and the NDP,
00:03:24.640to say that they're on board with what the liberals are doing right now.
00:03:27.600They don't care how high the carbon tax goes.
00:03:30.080They care more about keeping their seats in Parliament
00:03:32.800than opposing bad Justin Trudeau legislation and sort of high taxes.
00:03:38.980What Polyev is also doing is he's framing a theoretical new election