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Trudeau’s environment minister proclaims himself ‘proud socialist’ before House of Commons

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7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Steven Guilbeault made the declaration during a debate about the impact of carbon tax policies on soaring energy bills

Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault proudly proclaimed before the House of Commons on Tuesday that he is a “proud socialist” during a debate over a carbon tax the federal government has imposed on Canadians that has contributed to sky-high energy bills.

“I’m a Liberal and a proud socialist,” Guilbeault said after being asked a question by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Ted Falk concerning the carbon tax.

Guilbeault then blamed former conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for not “believing” in “climate change” as a reason the current conservatives do not support a carbon tax.

“This reminds me of a certain quote from Prime Minister Harper who talked about the fight against climate change as a socialist plot,” he said.

“Here it is, you have it again, Mr. Speaker. They do not believe that climate change is an issue. They do not believe we should do anything about it.”

Falk had said to Guilbeault before his “socialist” response that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has created a “carbon tax” coalition with other socialist and separatist entities in Canada to cause financial pain for Canadians.

“After eight years, we now have the socialists, the separatists, and this prime minister who’s just not worth the cost,” Falk said.

“They’re all part of this costly carbon tax coalition that is leaving Canadians out in the cold.”

Trudeau has many times before blamed Harper for his government’s ills, it should be noted.

Reaction to Guilbeault’s comments came swiftly from many Canadian political pundits and others.

“Steven Guilbeault isn’t just a ‘proud socialist,’ he’s a total nutbar, climate extremist and incompetent minister,” wrote Paul Mitchell, a former People’s Party of Canada candidate and political commentator on X (formerly Twitter).

“Every provincial premier should demand that Guilbeault be sacked. Dealing with him is intolerable.”

Jim Murphy, a retired Toronto police officer, wrote on X, “I’m a bit confused, shouldn’t @s_guilbeaultbe a member of the NDP and not the @liberal_party? Serious question.”

The carbon tax has been a hot topic in the House of Commons, notably after Trudeau announced about two weeks ago he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil for three years but only for Atlantic Canadian provinces. The current cost of the carbon tax on home heating fuel is 17 cents per liter. Most Canadians, however, heat their homes with clean-burning natural gas, which will not be exempted from the carbon tax.

Trudeau’s carbon tax pause for Atlantic Canada announcement came amid dismal polling numbers showing his government is likely to be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party in the next election.

As a result, the CPC under leader Pierre Poilievre introduced a motion calling for the carbon tax to be paused for all Canadians. This motion was voted down on Monday by the Liberals with support from the Bloc Quebecois.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) voted in support of the CPC motion, despite the fact they have an informal coalition with the party that began last year, agreeing to support and keep the Liberals in power until the next election is mandated by law in 2025.

As for Guilbeault, he is perhaps Trudeau’s most radical minister in terms of his extreme environmental views. He recently said the Liberal government was going to push ahead with net-zero emission regulations despite the fact Canada’s Supreme Court recently ruled against the federal government’s “no more pipelines” legislation.

Earlier this year, the CPC slammed Trudeau for having Guilbeault accept an invite from China for climate talks.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been a staunch opponent of Trudeau’s net-zero regulations and praised the court decision as returning power to the provinces.

Guilbeault has a history of environmental activism. In 2001, he was arrested after scaling the CN Tower in Toronto as part of a stunt for Greenpeace.

The CPC has previously called out extreme views emanating from the Liberal Party.

In September, Poilievre called Trudeau and his father Pierre Elliot Trudeau “Marxists” when asked by an Ontario resident what could be done to help prevent Canada from going “down” due to Liberal policies.

LifeSiteNews reported last month how Trudeau’s carbon tax is costing Canadians hundreds of dollars annually, as the rebates given out by the federal government are not enough to compensate for the increased fuel costs.

The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals – in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.

The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.

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Business

It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

Published on

From the  Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers

The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.

Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.

These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.

Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.

In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.

Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.

According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.

Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.

A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.

Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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2025 Federal Election

Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

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By Gage Haubrich

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.

Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.

Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”

At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?

Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.

And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.

Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.

The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.

And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.

The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.

Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.

All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.

When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.

Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.

Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.

Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.

“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.

But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.

More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.

Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.

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