Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Economy

Trudeau punishing Canadians for surviving cold winter

Published

5 minute read

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Franco Terrazzano

Millions of Canadians are keeping an anxious eye on their thermostats, praying the power stays on and bracing for carbon-taxed heat bills to arrive.

A frigid winter cold snap delivered daytime temperatures in the minus thirties with overnight windchills of more than minus 50 in parts of Canada. Natural gas furnaces are running around the clock, keeping families from freezing and water pipes from bursting.

The situation got scary Saturday when an Alberta-wide alarm blared across smartphones, TVs and radios. The province warned the power grid was maxing out and rolling blackouts were about to hit.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took to social media imploring Albertans to turn off their lights, stop using appliances and hunker down to save the power grid from blacking out. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe tagged in, announcing his province was sending 153 megawatts to Alberta.

When it’s minus 40, running the furnace isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is punishing Canadians with a carbon tax for the sin of staying warm and staying alive in winter.

The federal carbon tax is currently set at $65 per tonne, costing 12 cents per cubic meter of natural gas and 10 cents per litre of propane. An average Canadian home uses about 2,385 cubic metres of natural gas per year, so the carbon tax will cost them about $300 extra to heat their home.

Even after the rebates, average families will be out hundreds of dollars this year because of the higher heating bills, gas prices, inflation and the economic damage that comes with the carbon tax, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

But the Trudeau government isn’t done. On April 1, the carbon tax is going up to $80 per tonne. That will cost 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

In fact, Trudeau plans to crank up his carbon tax every year. Over the next three years, Trudeau’s carbon tax will cost the average family $1,100 on natural gas alone.

Canada is a cold place. Keeping the heat on isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. And Trudeau’s carbon tax punishes families who need to stay warm during the winter months. Even worse, Trudeau knows the carbon tax makes it more expensive for families to stay warm.

“We are putting more money back in your pocket and making it easier for you to find affordable, long-term solutions to heat your home,” Trudeau said, when he removed the carbon tax from home heating oil for three years.

This was an admission of an obvious reality: the carbon tax makes life more expensive. Otherwise, why would Trudeau take the carbon tax off a form of heating energy?

Trudeau’s carbon tax-carve out was a political ploy to keep his Atlantic MPs from revolting while support for the Liberals plummeted in their typical stronghold.

While many Atlantic Canadians use heating oil, 97 per cent of Canadian families use other forms of energy, like natural gas or propane, and won’t get any relief from the feds this winter.

Even in Atlantic Canada, 77 per cent of people in the region want carbon tax relief for all Canadians this winter, according to a Leger poll commission by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Provincial politicians of all stripes have demanded the feds take the carbon tax off everyone’s heating bill.

That’s because staying warm isn’t a partisan issue. All Canadians need to heat their home. And we shouldn’t be punished with a tax just to survive the winter.

Trudeau should completely scrap his carbon tax. But at the very least he should extend the same relief he provided to Atlantic Canadians and take the carbon tax off everyone’s home heating bill.

Business

Opposition leader Poilievre calling for end of prorogation to deal with Trump’s tariffs

Published on

From Conservative Party Communications

The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on the threat of tariffs from the US:

“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country. Our American counterparts say they want to stop the illegal flow of drugs and other criminal activity at our border. The Liberal government admits their weak border is a problem. That is why they announced a multibillion-dollar border plan—a plan they cannot fund because they shut down Parliament, preventing MPs and Senators from authorizing the funds.

“We also need retaliatory tariffs, something that requires urgent Parliamentary consideration.

“Yet, Liberals have shut Parliament in the middle of this crisis. Canada has never been so weak, and things have never been so out of control. Liberals are putting themselves and their leadership politics ahead of the country. Freeland and Carney are fighting for power rather than fighting for Canada.

“Common Sense Conservatives are calling for Trudeau to reopen Parliament now to pass new border controls, agree on trade retaliation and prepare a plan to rescue Canada’s weak economy.

“The Prime Minister has the power to ask the Governor General to cut short prorogation and get our Parliament working.

“Open Parliament. Take back control. Put Canada First.”

Continue Reading

Business

Trump, taunts and trade—Canada’s response is a decade out of date

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

Canadian federal politicians are floundering in their responses to Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a 2016 mindset, still thinking Trump is a temporary aberration who should be disdained and ignored by the global community. But a lot has changed. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s current priorities should spend less time looking at trade statistics and more time understanding the details of the lawfare campaigns against him. Canadian officials who had to look up who Kash Patel is, or who don’t know why Nathan Wade’s girlfriend finds herself in legal jeopardy, will find the next four years bewildering.

Three years ago, Trump was on the ropes. His first term had been derailed by phony accusations of Russian collusion and a Ukrainian quid pro quo. After 2020, the Biden Justice Department and numerous Democrat prosecutors devised implausible legal theories to launch multiple criminal cases against him and people who worked in his administration. In summer 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and leaked to the press rumours of stolen nuclear codes and theft of government secrets. After Trump announced his candidacy in 2022, he was hit by wave after wave of indictments and civil suits strategically filed in deep blue districts. His legal bills soared while his lawyers past and present battled well-funded disbarment campaigns aimed at making it impossible for him to obtain counsel. He was assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and faced life in prison if convicted.

This would have broken many men. But when he was mug-shotted in Georgia on Aug. 24, 2023, his scowl signalled he was not giving in. In the 11 months from that day to his fist pump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump managed to defeat and discredit the lawfare attacks, assemble and lead a highly effective campaign team, knock Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, run a series of near daily (and sometimes twice daily) rallies, win over top business leaders in Silicon Valley, open up a commanding lead in the polls and not only survive an assassination attempt but turn it into an image of triumph. On election day, he won the popular vote and carried the White House and both Houses of Congress.

It’s Trump’s world now, and Canadians should understand two things about it. First, he feels no loyalty to domestic and multilateral institutions that have governed the world for the past half century. Most of them opposed him last time and many were actively weaponized against him. In his mind, and in the thinking of his supporters, he didn’t just defeat the Democrats, he defeated the Republican establishment, most of Washington including the intelligence agencies, the entire corporate media, the courts, woke corporations, the United Nations and its derivatives, universities and academic authorities, and any foreign governments in league with the World Economic Forum. And it isn’t paranoia; they all had some role in trying to bring him down. Gaining credibility with the new Trump team will require showing how you have also fought against at least some of these groups.

Second, Trump has earned the right to govern in his own style, including saying whatever he wants. He’s a negotiator who likes trash-talking, so get used to it and learn to decode his messages.

When Trump first threatened tariffs, he linked it to two demands: stop the fentanyl going into the United States from Canada and meet our NATO spending targets. We should have done both long ago. In response, Trudeau should have launched an immediate national action plan on military readiness, border security and crackdowns on fentanyl labs. His failure to do so invited escalation. Which, luckily, only consisted of taunts about annexation. Rather than getting whiny and defensive, the best response (in addition to dealing with the border and defence issues) would have been to troll back by saying that Canada would fight any attempt to bring our people under the jurisdiction of the corrupt U.S. Department of Justice, and we will never form a union with a country that refuses to require every state to mandate photo I.D. to vote and has so many election problems as a result.

As to Trump’s complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, this is a made-in-Washington problem. The U.S. currently imports $4 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world but only sells $3 trillion back in exports. Trump looks at that and says we’re ripping them off. But that trillion-dollar difference shows up in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts as the capital account balance. The rest of the world buys that much in U.S. financial instruments each year, including treasury bills that keep Washington functioning. The U.S. savings rate is not high enough to cover the federal government deficit and all the other domestic borrowing needs. So the Americans look to other countries to cover the difference. Canada’s persistent trade surplus with the U.S. ($108 billion in 2023) partly funds that need. Money that goes to buying financial instruments can’t be spent on goods and services.

So the other response to the annexation taunts should be to remind Trump that all the tariffs in the world won’t shrink the trade deficit as long as Congress needs to borrow so much money each year. Eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit will disappear, too. And then there will be less money in D.C. to fund lawfare and corruption. Win-win.

Continue Reading

Trending

X