From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

On its first day in office, the Trump administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement and began a regulation effort aimed largely at the energy sector. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government wants to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 to satisfy its commitment to the Paris agreement that Trudeau signed back in 2016.

But far from “building a strong economy” and making Canada “more competitive,” as the government  claims, its Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) will hurt Canada’s already struggling economy while failing to meet its own emission reduction targets.

In essence, the ERP has two components. The first one, and probably the most well-known to Canadians, is the carbon tax, which places a cost on fossil fuel use based on the amount of GHG emissions produced. The tax increased to $80 per tonne on April 1, 2024 and is scheduled to reach $170 per tonne by 2030.

The second—and least discussed—ERP component is the Trudeau government’s cascade of regulatory measures and mandates including requirements for fuel producers and importers to reduce the carbon content of their fuels, and electric vehicle mandates that require all new (light-duty) vehicles sold to be zero-emission by 2035 (with interim targets of 20 per cent by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030). Additional measures include restrictions on fertilizer use in agriculture, emissions caps in the oil and gas industry, energy efficiency mandates for buildings, and more. With more regulations come increased costs to producers, and these costs are largely passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.

But aside from vague and unsupported claims that the ERP will strengthen the economy, the government hasn’t provided a detailed assessment of the plan’s costs and benefits. In other words, while the government has outlined how it plans to reduce emissions—carbon taxes, regulations, mandates—we still don’t know how much these policies will cost or how they will benefit Canadians.

But a recent study published by the Fraser Institute evaluate the economic and environmental impacts of the ERP.

According to the study’s projections, the carbon tax alone will cost $1,302 per worker annually by 2030, reduce employment by an estimated 57,000 jobs, and shrink the Canadian economy by 1.5 per cent compared to a scenario without the ERP. Considering that the economy grew just by 1.3 per cent in 2023, this cost is significant.

After you account for the ERP’s additional regulatory measures and mandates, the economic cost rises. By 2030, the full implementation of the ERP—which includes the carbon tax, regulatory measures and mandates—will shrink the economy by 6.2 per cent, cost Canadian workers $6,700 annually, and reduce employment by 164,000 jobs. Alberta, of course, will bear a large portion of these costs.

To make matters worse, the ERP will still fall short of the Trudeau government’s 2030 emission-reduction target. According to the study, the ERP will reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by about 26.5 per cent between 2019 and 2030, achieving only approximately 57 per cent of the government’s target. In short, Trudeau’s climate plan won’t deliver the economic growth or environmental impact the government anticipates.

Canadians should understand the costs of the Trudeau government’s Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP), which won’t achieve its targets while making Canadians worse-off. Any government should reject climate targets and policies where Canadians are merely an afterthought.

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she will consider the findings of a report she commissioned that called for halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers, admitting there are questions about the “efficacy” of the jab in kids.

“I was pleased to see that we had a broad cross-section of doctors able to look at our previous COVID response, identify processes that were in place, identify things that may have gone wrong,” Smith said [24:50 min mark] while speaking to reporters on January 29.

Smith was responding to a question in response to the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s “COVID Pandemic Response” 269-page final report released last week.

She said she is looking to “identify things that are now under question, like the efficacy of masks and the efficacy of this vaccine in children.”

Smith added that her government is “going to take a look at” the report’s findings and “obviously we’ll, we’ll make some decisions about whether to move forward on any of the recommendations.”

The report was commissioned by Smtih last year, giving the task force a sweeping mandate to investigate her predecessor’s COVID-era mandates and policies.

The task force’s final report was released last week. It recommended halting “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.”

Among the recommendations of the task force was the call to “(f)urther research to establish the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary before widespread use in adults and children,” the establishment of “a website and/or call-in center for the vaccine injured in Alberta” as well as establishing a “mechanism for opting out of federal health policy until provincial due process has been satisfied.”

The report also noted that “(c)hildren and teenagers have a very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission and there is a lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from severe COVID-19.”

Earlier this week, LifeSiteNews reported how Alberta health minister Adriana LaGrange said she will “consider” the findings of a report published last week that recommends immediate halting COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers.

Smith: Doctors’ right to ‘speak their mind’ must be protected

While answering reporters’ questions on January 29, Smith also said the doctors in the province need to be able to “speak their minds without punishment from their colleges.”

“I think that’s going to be important too, otherwise, politicians only bad decisions,” she noted.

The report touched on how many doctors in Alberta who gave opposing views to the mainstream narrative regarding COVID jabs, masks, and the use of alternatives to treat the virus were wrongly vilified.

Smith mentioned that the point of the report was to find out what went wrong during COVID and to not repeat the same mistakes should there be another pandemic.

LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs that include heart damage and blood clots.

The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.

After becoming premier in late 2022, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.

Under predecessor Jason Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.