Western Standard - November 09, 2023


Singh calling for a “windfall tax” on oil companies to pay for heat pumps


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

223.42252

Word count

1,041

Sentence count

58

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Jagmeet Singh is calling for a new tax on energy companies, and he doesn t need much convincing that it s a good idea. It s a simple windfall tax that could be levied on the profits of Western Canadian energy companies.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 So Singh's calling for a new tax to pilfer the profits of Western Canadian energy companies,
00:00:05.460 and he won't have to twist Trudeau's arm all that hard to get it.
00:00:08.980 Now, heat pumps. Yes, they've become the environmentalist flavor of the week.
00:00:12.840 It's kind of hard to say why. I mean, heat pumps have been around for decades.
00:00:16.440 They never really came into popular use because they don't work very well in most Canadian regions,
00:00:21.400 and they cost a fortune.
00:00:23.000 Even with a $5,000 rebate from the taxpayers on those things that have been around for a while,
00:00:27.840 not many people are taking up heat pumps.
00:00:30.520 They're a lot like solar panels on homes.
00:00:32.640 They offer a supplemental source of energy but really aren't economical for most people,
00:00:37.020 at least not yet at this point.
00:00:38.180 The technology might get better later, but it's not here yet.
00:00:41.140 I mean, insurance companies won't cover homes with heat pumps if that's the only form of heat in the household.
00:00:46.000 They know that the pumps are likely to fail during cold snaps,
00:00:48.900 and then, of course, you get the ruptured water pipes and freezing, and it causes catastrophic damage.
00:00:53.480 So you still end up having to pay for gas service and maintain a furnace on top of paying for a heat pump.
00:00:59.800 I mean, if you're with gas to begin with, and that pump could cost you $10,000 to $15,000 to install,
00:01:04.120 and suddenly it just doesn't look all that appealing, does it?
00:01:06.180 Not to mention, heat pumps use a whole pile of electricity.
00:01:08.980 They're sort of like reverse air conditioners, and homeowners can look forward to a spike in their electric bills
00:01:14.480 even if there's a modest decrease in their gas heating costs if they switched over
00:01:18.560 or whatever other source of heat they used.
00:01:20.680 All the same, to be fair, they offer one option among many for home heating and cooling.
00:01:25.560 Some people in moderate climates have said they work really well for them for some air conditioning and heat,
00:01:29.420 but we're not in a moderate climate. That's the problem.
00:01:31.880 But either way, hey, if it works for you, good for you.
00:01:35.180 I have no issue with that choice.
00:01:36.680 The problem comes when the government taxes me, though, to pay for somebody else's heat pump.
00:01:40.240 Then I have a problem.
00:01:41.620 Because like electric vehicles, people aren't inclined to buy these heat pumps without huge subsidies.
00:01:46.840 Also, you know, the subsidies are going to have to be massive to encourage large numbers of people
00:01:51.720 to invest in systems that just don't work well for them.
00:01:54.340 So why have we got this sudden big push for these pumps?
00:01:56.440 Well, Trudeau recently stepped in it.
00:01:58.980 Nothing new.
00:01:59.920 He cut the carbon tax for home heating for people in Atlantic provinces who use heating oil.
00:02:04.080 It was a crass move to try and buy electoral love from the East Coast, and it blew up in his face.
00:02:08.780 In a bizarre attempt to justify the move, Trudeau said it was to encourage people using heating oil to switch to heat pumps.
00:02:14.240 Now, how would making it cheaper to use heating oil, you know, how would that encourage people to move away from heating oil in the first place?
00:02:22.980 It's a mystery only Trudeau could understand.
00:02:25.120 Still, this move brought heat pumps, which had previously been a seldom used heating option into Canada, into the spotlight.
00:02:32.520 It fits in with the environmental obsession of making everybody move to electric forms of energy,
00:02:36.780 despite the lack of electric infrastructure being in place to make it feasible.
00:02:40.160 It also ignores the fact that much of the electric power in Canada still comes from coal and natural gas.
00:02:45.620 But again, we understand it's virtue signaling.
00:02:47.160 It's not about reality or the environment.
00:02:49.180 Jagmeet Singh knows people aren't willing to invest in heat pumps.
00:02:52.140 So like a good socialist, he feels the government should do so on the people's behalf, even though it's our money.
00:02:58.180 The costs to convert every home to heat pumps would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:03:02.620 At least that's according to Western Standard energy writer Sean Polzer.
00:03:05.760 You can look that up on there.
00:03:06.820 Even if houses that were already just on pure electric heat were excluded from that, the costs would be astronomical.
00:03:12.600 Now, Singh might be economically witless, but he does know the government doesn't happen to have a couple hundred billion dollars laying around.
00:03:19.480 That's why he's proposed stealing the money from energy companies with what he's, of course, calling a windfall tax.
00:03:24.940 You don't hear about those taxes when oil was near $10 or $5 a barrel, of course.
00:03:28.920 And never mind the reality that even if the government stole every penny from the energy company profits,
00:03:33.240 they'd barely get over $40 billion.
00:03:34.540 Never mind that the companies would flee Canada in such a circumstance,
00:03:38.440 and never mind how it would decimate the pension funds and savings of Canadians.
00:03:42.080 Singh sees a target, and in his simplistic economic world,
00:03:45.720 he would just propose nationalizing energy companies if they didn't cooperate anyways.
00:03:48.600 I mean, it worked like a charm in Venezuela, didn't it?
00:03:50.860 While I doubt the government would be so bold as to scoop the entire profits of energy companies,
00:03:54.560 it's very believable they would make a large grab for them.
00:03:57.240 Trudeau's floundering, and Singh is a slave to a socialist ideology.
00:04:02.040 Neither party has anything to lose in enraging the prairie provinces.
00:04:06.300 The policies of the government don't make sense because the government isn't even trying to make sense anymore.
00:04:10.560 Trudeau's throwing everything he has at the wall in hopes of somehow turning about his plummeting political support.
00:04:15.540 And Jagmeet Singh is working to take advantage of the government's weakness.
00:04:19.260 Get ready for it, folks.
00:04:20.280 Get ready for the National Energy Program Part 2 as the Liberals hit the wall. 0.59
00:04:24.380 Because the Liberals and NDP won't be able to restrain themselves for much longer,
00:04:27.680 and Justin would be more than happy to join in with Singh and try and do to Alberta
00:04:32.180 what his dadda failed to do the first time with the National Energy Program.
00:04:35.980 Be on guard, guys.
00:04:37.100 Singh's calling for it, and Trudeau will be listening soon.