Western Standard - October 29, 2024


Alberta takes Ottawa to court

Topics
federal carbon tax exemptions
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Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

172.31

Word count

1,060

Sentence count

61

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Learn English with Alberta s Premier Rachel Notley. In this episode, Rachel talks about the federal government's decision to exempt heating oil from the federal carbon tax, and why it's unfair for Albertans who rely on natural gas to keep their homes warm in the winter.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 It's the end of October, and here in Alberta, the nights are below zero.
00:00:04.220 There's snow up on the mountains, and parents are preparing to zip jackets over their kids'
00:00:08.580 Halloween costumes. In just a few weeks, winter will be upon us. And Alberta winters are no joke.
00:00:15.340 In this province, winter means long nights and freezing temperatures for weeks at a time.
00:00:19.880 I'm sure we all remember the polar vortex that swept through our province this past January,
00:00:25.440 when daily highs remained around minus 30 degrees and lows were around minus 40 degrees,
00:00:31.440 with the wind chill dropping temperatures closer to minus 50. Those temperatures are devastatingly
00:00:38.260 and dangerously cold. Home heating is not optional, and in Alberta, that means we rely on natural gas
00:00:44.500 not just to keep us warm, but to keep us safe. Winter is coming again, and that means that Alberta
00:00:50.080 families will again feel the sting of the federal carbon tax as they heat their homes with natural
00:00:55.080 gas. Here in Alberta, we don't tend to think that more taxes are the solution for anything,
00:01:01.040 let alone a tax on all the things our citizens need to live and thrive in this cold climate.
00:01:07.080 Given the cost of living challenges many households are facing, piling more financial burden onto Canadians
00:01:12.960 is simply cruel and punitive. Until recently, the punishment from Ottawa was shared equally across
00:01:18.640 the country. At the very least, that equal footing gave Canadians a unified front to push back on the
00:01:24.320 federal government. A sense, maybe, that we were all in it together. But a year ago, almost to the day,
00:01:30.160 Ottawa announced it was exempting heating oil from the federal carbon tax for three years. Now, that's great
00:01:35.780 for the people of Atlantic Canada and Quebec, who have a higher proportion of their citizens who use
00:01:40.760 heating oil. But let's be clear, most Albertans don't resent them for it either. Unfortunately, this exemption
00:01:47.780 applies to practically no one outside of eastern Canada. Added to that, the carbon tax on natural gas
00:01:54.080 is more than triple the cost of natural gas itself. The carbon tax rate is about four cents a gigajoule,
00:02:01.580 and gas is selling for $1.25 a gigajoule. Now, we can debate why Ottawa made this decision.
00:02:07.340 We may even have a few theories. But whatever their reasons, the outcome is blatantly unfair
00:02:13.400 for people in Alberta and other parts of Canada who use natural gas and other fuels to stay warm
00:02:18.860 in the winter. From where we're sitting, it looks an awful lot like one more attempt to divide our
00:02:24.940 country, to reward one region and punish another. And we're not going to sit back and let this unfair
00:02:30.440 carve out disadvantaged Albertans for another winter. And so I'm pleased to announce that this morning, 0.98
00:02:35.140 Alberta filed an application for a judicial review of the exemption in the federal court.
00:02:40.360 We're asking the court to declare the exemption both unconstitutional and unlawful. We hope that
00:02:47.340 this will force Ottawa to recognize the burden the carbon tax places on Canadians and eliminate the tax
00:02:53.640 altogether. Albertans know we've got their backs on this. Our government has been fighting the federal
00:02:59.060 carbon tax since 2019. We even took it to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021. It was
00:03:05.120 wrong when it was made into law, and it's wrong now. The federal carbon tax has always been unfair,
00:03:10.800 but the selective way it's being applied now is also unconstitutional. And the impacts on Albertans
00:03:17.560 will only get worse as the costs continue to increase. According to their own communications,
00:03:23.460 the exemption was intended to lower energy bills for people who use heating oil.
00:03:28.860 They're saying in effect that some Canadians deserve lower energy bills, but not all. They're also more
00:03:36.400 or less admitting that the federal carbon tax raises costs for households, which confirms what we've been
00:03:41.700 saying about it all along. The carbon tax is driving up the cost of everything. Let's take an example from
00:03:47.280 our education system. Since the carbon tax was first implemented, Alberta school authorities have paid
00:03:53.140 more than $49 million to the federal government without receiving any rebate. By the 2030-2031 school
00:04:00.540 year, we are projecting that they'll pay more than $60 million per year. There's a lot our school
00:04:06.560 authorities could do with that money. They, for instance, could hire 495 teachers with what they'll
00:04:11.620 be sending to Ottawa in 2030. In our health care system, we could hire nearly 1,000 nurses by 2030,
00:04:18.900 critical frontline workers, instead of sending that money to Ottawa. Or consider the cost to municipalities.
00:04:25.380 In 2023 alone, the city of Calgary could have hired an additional 112 police officers or firefighters for the
00:04:32.540 amount that they sent to Ottawa for the carbon tax. Or consider the savings in a time when Canadians are coping
00:04:40.100 with levels of inflation that we haven't seen in decades. The carbon tax is adding to inflation. In fact, according
00:04:46.140 to the Bank of Canada, the federal carbon tax increases inflation by 0.15% per year, year over
00:04:52.360 year. But we also know that the impact that taxes have on inflation, because when we paused the
00:04:57.820 collection of our $0.13 per litre provincial fuel tax, we saw inflation slow in our province. We've seen
00:05:03.300 the same thing in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Imagine the impact on inflation if we removed three times that
00:05:09.500 amount in 2030. The carbon tax on fuel will reach 39.6 cents per litre. According to the Canadian Energy
00:05:17.500 Centre, the carbon tax will account for 24% of annual fuel costs. Imagine the savings to Canadians if their
00:05:24.140 bill was a quarter the cost when they filled up. If the federal government is now saying that removing the
00:05:29.500 carbon tax on home heating oil will lower costs, then this carbon tax exemption for eastern Canada blows a big
00:05:35.100 hole in their justification for the carbon tax. Furthermore, applying it unequally is unconstitutional, and it
00:05:43.100 runs counter to Ottawa's own carbon tax legislation. Our end goal is the same as a growing number of Canadians from across the
00:05:50.100 country to get rid of the retail carbon tax. If Ottawa won't axe this heartless tax altogether, they can at least play fair when
00:05:58.100 imposing it on Canadians. And that's what we'll be heading back to court to achieve. 0.98
00:06:03.100 We'll see you next time.