BC's carbon tax, a monstrous scam
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Summary
Learn English with Christy Clark. Christy Clark is the Premier of British Columbia, Canada's largest and most important province, and one of the cleanest and greenest in the world. She is also the first female premier in the country to become premier of a major industrialized province and has been in office for less than a year.
Transcript
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I was part of the government in 2008, don't throw things at me, that brought in North
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America's first revenue neutral carbon tax, right here in British Columbia, and I'm very
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It means that by law, every nickel that came in under the carbon tax had to be returned
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to you in the form of lower personal income taxes and lower business taxes, because we
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wanted to make sure it was a tax shift, not a tax grab.
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What I worry about with a lot of politicians when it comes to the environment is, it all
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of a sudden ends up being taking more money out of your pockets, and people get angry at
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And the revenue neutral carbon tax, I'm sorry to say, is no longer revenue neutral, because
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when the NDP got in power, the first thing they did is said, no way we're giving money
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That's called a tax cut, they don't like reducing taxes.
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And so they're now taking it all into government, and it's billions of dollars.
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And I've been very clear, in the first 90 days of becoming Premier of this province, we're
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And that is billions of dollars, by the way, that's going to go right back into your pocket
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in the form of lower taxes, and it will be immediate, and it will be noticed.
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And that's the right thing to do, because it's a tax shift.
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But you know, there are other things we could do.
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We are blessed in British Columbia, that all the natural minerals and resources needed to
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get us, the planet, to that green future, are actually located right here in the province
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We have an opportunity to help the world transition to a greener future.
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So, for example, in China and India, where coal-fired power is their mainstay for generating
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power, it is the dirtiest form you could possibly imagine.
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But we also have liquid-fired natural gas that we can transport to China and India, transition
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them off of their coal-fired power, and that is the equivalent of reducing emissions by 50%.
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And some purists will tell you, well, that's still not good enough, because you shouldn't
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But I say we have an obligation, because we are part of global citizenry, to do our bit.
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A 50% reduction in Asia is like parked in every car permanently in Canada.
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And the other thing is, a lot of the natural resources we have, whether it's copper or
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palladium, whatever the case may be, that are needed for batteries and windmills and
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solar panels and all the rest of it, are found right here in British Columbia.
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So let's make sure that we're getting those resources from a place that sustainably mines
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it, not like some of these places in the world that exploit workers, have no environmental
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That's our added advantage that I think can help us solve a lot of these problems that