From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Ryan Thorpe

The Trudeau government is dumping $1.7 million into a failed bid to get countries around the world to impose carbon taxes, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“All Canadians need to do to know Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax push is an utter failure is look south of the border and see the United States’ refusal to impose their own tax,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “If Trudeau can’t even get our biggest trading partner and ally to impose a carbon tax, then why is he wasting money trying to push this unpopular tax around the world?”

The Trudeau government launched the Global Carbon Pricing Challenge at COP26 in 2021.

The program “aims to see 60 per cent of global GHG emissions covered by carbon pricing policies by 2030.” The program website notes “carbon pricing is most effective when more countries adopt it.”

But the results so far are dismal for the government.

Only 24 per cent of global emissions are currently covered by a carbon tax. About 70 per cent of countries do not have a national carbon tax, according to the World Bank.

Three of the four largest emitting countries – the U.S., Russia and India – currently do not have a national carbon tax, according to the World Bank.

“The [climate] community has largely moved into a different framework,” said John Podesta, a long-time Democratic strategist, when asked about whether the Biden administration would impose a carbon tax in the U.S.

Only 12 countries, including Kazakhstan and Chile, have signed onto the Global Carbon Pricing Challenge as “partners,” alongside the European Union. Côte d’Ivoire is listed as the lone “friend” of the program.

There are 195 countries in the world, according to the United Nations.

“This program is a complete failure that’s wasting taxpayers’ money,” Terrazzano said. “The carbon tax makes life in Canada more expensive, forces taxpayers to pay for more bureaucrats to administer it and now we learn we’re also paying for the government to push this failed policy on other countries.”

Records obtained by the CTF show the Trudeau government has spent $811,598 on salaries for bureaucrats, operations and maintenance, and guidance and control for the program since the 2021-22 fiscal year.

The government committed an additional $974,900 towards the creation of an independent secretariat to “support the GCPC.”

The federal government has also spent about $200 million administering the carbon tax in Canada since it was first imposed, according to separate records obtained by the CTF.

Canada’s “GDP is expected to be about $25 billion lower in 2030 due to carbon pricing than it would be otherwise,” according to the Globe and Mail.

“Trudeau should stop wasting money, stop punishing Canadians and scrap the carbon tax,” Terrazzano said.

@Sheila_Copps

Not sure which election you are watching. The Liberals are winning in double digits. Not bad for a party this is supposed to be 20 points behind on the national polls. https://x.com/Sheila_Copps/status/1805439460110135640

One of the truly wonderful things about X is its ability to capture the privileged in full regalia, exercising their entitlement in real time. For this purpose no one struts quite like Sheila Copps, the Madame Lafarge of the Liberals’ Sponsorship Scandal, the disaster that reduced her party to such a low estate that only pusillanimous Justin Trudeau could be their saviour.

Ms. Copps was tossing around cringeworthy headlines Monday night/ Tuesday morning concerning the by-election in Toronto St. Paul’s riding. Reading them (“If Coppsy says it’s over, it’s over”) we went to bed thinking her insider PMO candidate Leslie Church had eked out a small but necessary plurality.

Only to wake up to the former deputy PM wiping free-range egg from her face as the Conservatives stole this bedrock riding. And while Ms. Copps tried to play the Libs as a plucky underdog, the party HQ threw everything and everyone into the riding to rescue them from Justin Trudeau hate. It wasn’t enough. In fact, their desperation worked against them.  Door-front canvassing was hazardous as the Forest Hill set, apprised of new capital-gains taxes, told cabinet ministers and other party hacks they’d rather boil in a Tim’s Dark Roast than support Sinbad the Black Face PM anymore.

While Copps spluttered about how fate was against Liberals, she couldn’t blame low turnout. A 45 percent turnout for a by-election in central Toronto, where a drive to the corner store can take 30 minutes in YYZ gridlock, is decisive. Which leaves the Liberal Party as currently constituted under Genocide Man in a bad place. Or, more accurately, no place.

The paid scribes at CBC tried to soften the blow. “The Liberals’ poor showing in a stronghold like this could prompt some soul-searching for Trudeau..” Could prompt? Some soul searching? That’s like saying Napoleon is having second thoughts about invading Russia. The CBC writers acted like he’d gotten a speeding ticket, not a ticket to political oblivion. Or to the WEF, his true constituency.

As many have noted, the only one thinking that Trudeau should stay is Trudeau himself. His teenaged angst thing doesn’t allow for contradiction. Except it’s not his call anymore after St. Pauls. If the hollowed-out Libs can find anyone willing to do the Kim Campbell Caretaker To Disaster role, they should change the locks on the PMO now.

Bespoke banker to the privileged Mark Carney is the name they mention, because he combines Liberal arrogance with taste for the Green Apocalypse. But current backbench MPs trying to stretch the writ till their pensions are assured and those who want Senate jobs after the collapse aren’t likely to pop their heads up with any risky ideas.

The Freeland-led Cabinet, which currently resembles the faculty lounge at a third-rate community college, is widely despised and as unelectable as a rabbi in Gaza. Sad. It all seems just days ago when the Laurentian elite in St. Paul’s was soaking up Sunny Ways policies like Diversity Is Strength as if handed down from the Oracle.

In the overlap from Stephen Harper, when all things could be blamed on The Prince of PMO Darkness, the niggling lapses like Justy as Calypso King or firing his indigenous female Minister of Justice could be blithely dismissed. The RCMP were diverted. When Blame the Harp was gone, he morphed into Justin the Terrible, a full-blooded caudillo arresting truckers and shutting down society for vaccines. He was now a titan of moral authority hiding under his desk from working people.

His vaunted immigration project (“Do I hear 40 million?”) dovetailed nicely with his distaste for traditional Canadians like truckers and farmers who live without private jets. When multi-generational Canadians protested about the housing bubble this created he staged a cemetery photo op to tell the world that his constituency is genocidal. The hubris was epic.

But in time it all caught up to him. His Prince of Araby mask was ripped off, and the facts of his turpitude finally became undeniable. His ultimate failing was probably the Diversity Dance, which postulated that he could import millions into the nation, allow them free rein on religion and culture, and house them in tiny houses. The bar was low, but the pomposity was high.

This Skippy scam was based the great liberal pathetic fallacy. By extending reason and understanding to people who want neither you will bring them around to your thinking. And voting for you. You need gullibility to believe this stuff. Luckily for Trudeau he had the purchased media to make this sound like a good idea.

But all good things must end. People who worshipped Diversity eventually realized it separated people and fractured Canadian society. Instead of uniting Canadians behind shared goals it perpetuated grievances, creating a victimization pecking order, each complaint more pathetic than the last. It caught up to him in St. Paul’s.

One other satisfying element from St. Paul’s was the inability of Trudeau’s common-law political partner Jagmeet Singh to exploit the antipathy to Trudeau. The NDP live in permanent hope that a Liberal crater represents their chance to seize the political middle. But Singh’s Uriah Heap performance in propping up Trudeau’s ethics breaches and suspected illegalities isn’t fooling anyone. Least of all the fashionista lefties of Forest Hill or Yonge & Eglinton.

If the humiliation from St. Paul’s riding was poison for Trudeau and the Libs then it was worse for Singh and the Deepers. A new day is coming. Unlike climate change it will get here soon.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.