Trudeau gov’t considered using term ‘heat-flation’ to link rising costs with ‘climate change’

Recently revealed documents show that members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet were looking to associate rising inflation in Canada with “climate change” by using the term “heat-flation,” but abandoned the idea after negative feedback from polls.

The documents show that Trudeau’s own Privy Council Office in an April 24 report said it had commissioned its own “in-house” research on the “concepts of ‘climate-flation’ and ‘heat-flation’” to see Canadians take on the terms.

Predictably, the bid to try and convince Canadians that the rising costs of living was the result of so-called “climate change” did not go over well with those polled as nobody had even heard of the term “heat-flation.”

The information regarding the poll was gleaned from a report titled Continuous Qualitative Data Collection Of Canadians’ Views, as noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, and asked if Canadians had heard of these “terms before” with “none indicated they had.”

“Describing what they believed these terms referred to, many expected they were likely connected to the issue of climate change and rising economic costs of its effect as well as efforts to mitigate its impacts going forward,” noted the report.

“To clarify, participants were informed ‘heat-flation’ is when extreme heat caused by climate change makes food and other items more expensive, and that ‘climate-flation’ was a broader term that encompassed all of the ways in which climate change can cause prices to go up including but not limited to extreme heat.”

The report noted that while some of the people polled thought “climate change” might have had some effect on inflation, many other issues were seen as the cause.

The report noted that “All believed climate change was having at least some impact on the price of food” but not in the way the government narrative asserts.

The report found that some Canadians “felt that in addition to extreme heat and drought making it more difficult for farmers to protect their crops and livestock, extreme weather events could also cause damage to vital roadways and infrastructure making it more difficult to transport food products across the country. A few also expressed that in addition to impacting Canadian food production climate change could also make it more expensive to import food.”

Of note is that no Canadian government has balanced the budget since 2007, and many critics have pointed to this ever-increasing debt-load to the reason inflation has rocked the country.

When it came to the carbon tax, many expressed the view that the “carbon pricing system had served to further increase the rate of inflation.”

Whether its inflation, the carbon tax or other factors, it remains true that Canada’s poverty rate is on the rise.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a July survey found that nearly half of Canadians are just $200 away from financial ruin as the costs of housing, food and other necessities has gone up massively since Trudeau took power in 2015.

Critics argue that instead of addressing these issues, the Trudeau government has instead used the “climate change” agenda to justify applying a punitive carbon tax on Canadians.

However, polls indicate that most Canadians are not as concerned with “climate change” as they are with other issues, and many do not buy into the alarmist government narrative. Many critics have also accused government officials of being hypocrites, as they punish Canadians via the carbon tax and other measures while themselves taking advantage of frequent flights at the expense of taxpayers.

Despite the rising unpopularity of such policies, the Trudeau government has continued to push a radical environmental agenda similar to those endorsed by globalist groups like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.

Related Topics:#AnthonyMurdoch #JustinTrudeau #LifeSiteNews ClimateChangeHysteria Heat-Flation

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Alberta Next Panel calls for less Ottawa—and it could pay off

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Carney government sowing seeds for corruption in Ottawa

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Alberta

Alberta Next Panel calls for less Ottawa—and it could pay off

Published on December 26, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

Last Friday, less than a week before Christmas, the Smith government quietly released the final report from its Alberta Next Panel, which assessed Alberta’s role in Canada. Among other things, the panel recommends that the federal government transfer some of its tax revenue to provincial governments so they can assume more control over the delivery of provincial services. Based on Canada’s experience in the 1990s, this plan could deliver real benefits for Albertans and all Canadians.

Federations such as Canada typically work best when governments stick to their constitutional lanes. Indeed, one of the benefits of being a federalist country is that different levels of government assume responsibility for programs they’re best suited to deliver. For example, it’s logical that the federal government handle national defence, while provincial governments are typically best positioned to understand and address the unique health-care and education needs of their citizens.

But there’s currently a mismatch between the share of taxes the provinces collect and the cost of delivering provincial responsibilities (e.g. health care, education, childcare, and social services). As such, Ottawa uses transfers—including the Canada Health Transfer (CHT)—to financially support the provinces in their areas of responsibility. But these funds come with conditions.

Consider health care. To receive CHT payments from Ottawa, provinces must abide by the Canada Health Act, which effectively prevents the provinces from experimenting with new ways of delivering and financing health care—including policies that are successful in other universal health-care countries. Given Canada’s health-care system is one of the developed world’s most expensive universal systems, yet Canadians face some of the longest wait times for physicians and worst access to medical technology (e.g. MRIs) and hospital beds, these restrictions limit badly needed innovation and hurt patients.

To give the provinces more flexibility, the Alberta Next Panel suggests the federal government shift tax points (and transfer GST) to the provinces to better align provincial revenues with provincial responsibilities while eliminating “strings” attached to such federal transfers. In other words, Ottawa would transfer a portion of its tax revenues from the federal income tax and federal sales tax to the provincial government so they have funds to experiment with what works best for their citizens, without conditions on how that money can be used.

According to the Alberta Next Panel poll, at least in Alberta, a majority of citizens support this type of provincial autonomy in delivering provincial programs—and again, it’s paid off before.

In the 1990s, amid a fiscal crisis (greater in scale, but not dissimilar to the one Ottawa faces today), the federal government reduced welfare and social assistance transfers to the provinces while simultaneously removing most of the “strings” attached to these dollars. These reforms allowed the provinces to introduce work incentives, for example, which would have previously triggered a reduction in federal transfers. The change to federal transfers sparked a wave of reforms as the provinces experimented with new ways to improve their welfare programs, and ultimately led to significant innovation that reduced welfare dependency from a high of 3.1 million in 1994 to a low of 1.6 million in 2008, while also reducing government spending on social assistance.

The Smith government’s Alberta Next Panel wants the federal government to transfer some of its tax revenues to the provinces and reduce restrictions on provincial program delivery. As Canada’s experience in the 1990s shows, this could spur real innovation that ultimately improves services for Albertans and all Canadians.

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Fraser Institute

Carney government sowing seeds for corruption in Ottawa

Published on December 26, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jason Clemens and Niels Veldhuis

A number of pundits and commentators have observed the self-confidence and near-unilateralist approach of our prime minister, Mark Carney. The seemingly boundless self-assurance of the prime minister in his own abilities to do the right thing has produced legislation that sets the foundation for corruption.

Consider the Carney government’s signature legislation, known as the Building Canada Act (Bill C-5), which among other things established the Major Projects Office (MPO). The stated purpose of the MPO and the act is to create a process whereby the government—in practical terms, the prime minister and his cabinet—identify projects in the “national interest” and fast-track their approval by overriding existing laws and regulations.

Put differently, a small group of politicians are now able to circumvent the laws and regulations that apply to every other entrepreneur, businessowner and investor to expedite projects they deem will benefit the country. According to several reports, senators openly referred to the bill as the “trust me” act because it lacked details and guardrails, which meant “trusting” that the prime minister and cabinet would use these new powers reasonably and responsibly.

Rather than fix the actual policies causing problems, which include a litany of laws and regulations from the Trudeau era such as Bill C-69 (which added vague criteria to the approval process for large infrastructure projects including pipelines) and Bill C-48 (which bans oil tankers from docking in British Columbia ports), the Carney government chose to create a new bureaucracy and political process to get around these rules.

And that’s the problem. By granting itself power to get around rules that everyone else has to play by, the government created the opportunity for corruption. Entrepreneurs, businessowners and investors interested in infrastructure projects, particularly energy projects, now need to consider how to convince a handful of politicians of the merits of their project. This lays the groundwork for potentially corrosive and damaging corruption now and into the future. While this prime minister may have an infinite amount of confidence in his abilities to do the right thing, what about the next prime minister, or the next one? These rules will outlive Prime Minister Carney and his government.

And it’s not just the Carney government’s signature Build Canada Act. The more recent Bill C-15, which implements certain aspects of the federal budget, contains provisions similar to the Build Canada Act that would also allow cabinet ministers to circumvent existing laws and regulations. A number of commentators have raised red flags about how the legislation would empower any minister to exempt any entity (i.e. person or firm) from any law or regulation—except the Criminal Code—under the minister’s responsibility for up to six years in order to foster innovation. The underlying rationale is that we have laws and regulations on the books that impede experimentation and innovation.

Again, rather than undertake the difficult work of updating and modernizing existing laws and regulations to empower entrepreneurs, businessowners, workers, and investors, and ensure they all play by the same rules, the Carney government instead wants to create a new mechanism for a select few to be able to sidestep existing laws and regulations.

A different way to think about both legislative initiatives is that the prime minister and his ministers are now able to provide specific companies with enormous advantages over their competitors through the political system. Those advantages have enormous value, and that value creates the opportunity for corruption now and in the future.

The Carney government recognizes that our regulatory system is badly broken, otherwise it wouldn’t create these work-around laws. It should do the hard work, which it was elected to do, and actually fix the laws and regulations that impede economic development and progress for all entrepreneurs, businessowners and investors. Otherwise, we risk a future littered with stories of advantage and corruption for political insiders.