Western Standard - November 02, 2023


Trudeau’s environmental obsession is fracturing national unity


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

209.79443

Word count

1,041

Sentence count

49

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Justin Trudeau continues to screw the west at every chance he gets, and his poll numbers continue to plummet. Can he change it? or is he stuck in the same old rut he s been in since he was elected in 2015?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 In Canada's 1980 federal election, there's a liberal strategist named Keith Davey,
00:00:05.160 and he coined the phrase, screw the West, we'll take the rest.
00:00:09.560 There's a blunt way of stating what is the most effective federal political strategy in Canada.
00:00:14.320 You drain resources from Western Canada while pandering to the East for votes.
00:00:18.180 In Canada, the tactic worked like a charm.
00:00:20.300 Pierre Trudeau won a majority government over the hapless Joe Clark.
00:00:24.340 Now, Justin Trudeau, he's taken Davey's advice, at least the first part of it, to heart.
00:00:29.120 He never hesitates to screw the West at every possible opportunity.
00:00:33.200 He's having a hard time, though, with the other part, which is taking the rest,
00:00:36.700 as his polling numbers continue their free fall into record low territory for the Liberal Party of Canada.
00:00:42.680 So, while the strategy of regional division in federal politics is a pretty sound one,
00:00:47.580 usually it still requires a party leader with a marginal degree of competence.
00:00:52.380 Trudeau's latest move has been his most crass.
00:00:54.680 He suspended the carbon tax supply to people's heating their homes with heating oil.
00:00:59.660 Now, this was almost clever on his part, or whoever his ideas was,
00:01:02.840 as it isn't overtly a regional political play, but in practice it's very regional.
00:01:08.020 There's only one part of Canada where heating oil is in common use,
00:01:11.100 and that's in the Atlantic provinces.
00:01:13.080 Media, politicians, and the public caught on to that tactic pretty much immediately.
00:01:17.100 The gross unfairness of the policy was just too much to swallow for provincial leaders,
00:01:21.080 and that's where the fracturing of this country is coming in.
00:01:24.180 Saskatchewan's Premier Scott Moe is saying he's going to outright break the law
00:01:28.380 and have Sask Power, the Crown Corporation that provides natural gas,
00:01:31.780 that refused to collect Justin's carbon taxes any longer.
00:01:34.720 Alberta Premier Smith, of course, is threatening further use of the Sovereignty Act
00:01:38.320 unless we get a break on the carbon tax to heat our homes out here in the prairies.
00:01:42.080 It gets pretty cold out here.
00:01:43.580 Even in B.C., where it doesn't get as cold, and it's an NDP Premier Eby,
00:01:46.720 he's calling for breaks for his province as well,
00:01:49.220 and Ontario's Premier Doug Ford is actually calling for scrapping the carbon tax altogether,
00:01:54.040 which is what Trudeau should do.
00:01:56.120 Quebec, of course, they already had special status,
00:01:58.520 so they're sitting quietly on the sidelines watching the cracks in national unity
00:02:02.780 widening into fissures under Trudeau's leadership.
00:02:05.180 I mean, they love seeing the unity going down the toilet.
00:02:07.740 Anyways, I mean, after years of claiming the carbon tax doesn't impact the cost of living for Canadians,
00:02:13.240 Trudeau just admitted the tax is causing hardship on people trying to heat their homes,
00:02:17.940 at least in Atlantic Canada.
00:02:19.520 I think we've got to heat them out here, too.
00:02:21.360 People heating with natural gas.
00:02:22.760 Yes, we will continue to suffer under the carbon tax,
00:02:24.900 because that's predominantly Western Canada.
00:02:27.920 Rural Economic Development Minister, federal one, Goody Hutchings,
00:02:31.440 she deserves her name as pronounced,
00:02:33.560 told CTV,
00:02:34.460 I can tell you that the Liberal Atlantic Caucus was vocal with what they've heard from their constituents,
00:02:39.940 and perhaps they need to elect more Liberals in the prairies so we can have that conversation as well.
00:02:45.400 Yeah, and basically putting the guns to our head,
00:02:47.380 it's their way of saying,
00:02:48.360 vote Liberal or we're going to continue to screw you with taxes.
00:02:51.440 Trudeau's always claimed that the climate issue is so important,
00:02:54.260 the carbon tax must remain in order to save the world.
00:02:57.060 If it really has that much benefit upon the environment, though,
00:02:59.620 how could he possibly reverse even a portion of such an important tax?
00:03:03.160 I mean, won't some fuzzy bunnies die somewhere because the temperature went up now?
00:03:06.880 Unchecked inflation.
00:03:08.220 That's dogged the Liberal government since the pandemic,
00:03:12.140 and now the head of the Bank of Canada has admitted the carbon tax alone is responsible for 16% of the inflation.
00:03:17.840 Now, whatever little credibility Trudeau might have had on the carbon tax, it's in tatters.
00:03:22.660 The tax survived court challenges due to its apparent world-saving nature,
00:03:26.600 but now how can you go to court and say,
00:03:28.360 well, it's there to save the world, but we'll selectively apply it here, there, and everywhere.
00:03:32.040 Now, something interesting is seeing the sharks within the Liberal Party.
00:03:34.540 They're starting to circle.
00:03:35.260 Well, heir apparent Mark Carney, he came out to speak on how he kind of respects Trudeau's work on the climate,
00:03:41.800 but he would do things differently on the carbon tax.
00:03:44.400 It's a subtle way of doing it, but his words are starting to take on the tone of a leadership contender.
00:03:48.140 Others are going to come out of the woodwork as an unofficial leadership campaign begins to develop.
00:03:53.640 But will Trudeau get it?
00:03:54.900 Can he get it?
00:03:56.100 Does he really think if he just pounds on the West hard enough, his political fortunes will change?
00:04:00.720 I mean, ignoring the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling that found most of his No More Pipelines bill to be unconstitutional
00:04:06.180 didn't win him any support in the East anyways, and it just infuriated the West further,
00:04:09.780 and made him look all the more inept with his policy development.
00:04:14.040 If and when, Trudeau reads the writing on the wall, what is he going to do on the way out the door, though?
00:04:18.020 He desperately wants to have a legacy as a climate crusader, and he's always seen Western Canadian industries as his biggest enemy on that front.
00:04:25.100 He wants to finish what his dad-dad did and shut down the West. 0.79
00:04:27.840 Will he make one more guy, you know, effort to crush the West, whether out of spite or misguided idealism?
00:04:33.220 I wouldn't put it beyond him.
00:04:34.920 Trudeau's already proven his pet climate project is more important than national unity.
00:04:39.940 The fractures he's creating within the country could lead to a full shattering of the nation.
00:04:45.660 I don't know.
00:04:46.240 Even changing leaders, it probably won't change things.
00:04:48.140 But people better start paying attention, people in the East, because you're the ones who put them there. 0.90
00:04:52.280 And if you want unity in this country, you are not going to get it as long as that ass clown is our Prime Minister.