Connect with us

Business

Maxime Bernier warns Canadians of Trudeau’s plan to implement WEF global tax regime

Published

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

If ‘the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.’

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier has warned that the Liberal government’s push for World Economic Forum (WEF) “Global Tax” scheme should concern Canadians. 

According to Canada’s 2024 Budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is working to pass the WEF’s Global Minimum Tax Act which will mandate that multinational companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15 percent.

“Canadians should be very concerned, for several reasons,” People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier told LifeSiteNews, in response to the proposal.

“First, the WEF is a globalist institution that actively campaigns for the establishment of a world government and for the adoption of socialist, authoritarian, and reactionary anti-growth policies across the world,” he explained. “Any proposal they make is very likely not in the interest of Canadians.” 

“Second, this minimum tax on multinationals is a way to insidiously build support for a global harmonized tax regime that will lower tax competition between countries, and therefore ensure that taxes can stay higher everywhere,” he continued.  

“Canada reaffirms its commitment to Pillar One and will continue to work diligently to finalize a multilateral treaty and bring the new system into effect as soon as a critical mass of countries is willing,” the budget stated.  

“However, in view of consecutive delays internationally in implementing the multilateral treaty, Canada cannot continue to wait before taking action,” it continued.   

The Trudeau government also announced it would be implementing “Pillar Two,” which aims to establish a global minimum corporate tax rate. 

“Pillar Two of the plan is a global minimum tax regime to ensure that large multinational corporations are subject to a minimum effective tax rate of 15 per cent on their profits wherever they do business,” the Liberals explained.  

According to the budget, Trudeau promised to introduce the new legislation in Parliament soon.  

The global tax was first proposed by Secretary-General of Amnesty International at the WEF meeting in Davos this January.  

“Let’s start taxing carbon…[but] not just carbon tax,” the head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, said during a panel discussion.  

According to the WEF, the tax, proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “imposes a minimum effective rate of 15% on corporate profits.”  

Following the meeting, 140 countries, including Canada, pledged to impose the tax.  

While a tax on large corporations does not necessarily sound unethical, implementing a global tax appears to be just the first step in the WEF’s globalization plan by undermining the sovereignty of nations.  

While Bernier explained that multinationals should pay taxes, he argued it is the role of each country to determine what those taxes are.   

“The logic of pressuring countries with low taxes to raise them is that it lessens fiscal competition and makes it then less costly and easier for countries with higher taxes to keep them high,” he said.  

Bernier pointed out that competition is good since it “forces everyone to get better and more efficient.” 

“In the end, we all end up paying for taxes, even those paid by multinationals, as it causes them to raise prices and transfer the cost of taxes to consumers,” he warned.  

Bernier further explained that the new tax could be a first step “toward the implementation of global taxes by the United Nations or some of its agencies, with the cooperation of globalist governments like Trudeau’s willing to cede our sovereignty to these international organizations.”   

“Just like ‘temporary taxes’ (like the income tax adopted during WWI) tend to become permanent, ‘minimum taxes’ tend to be raised,” he warned. “And if the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.”   

Trudeau’s involvement in the WEF’s plan should not be surprising considering his current environmental goals – which are in lockstep with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – which include the phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.    

The reduction and eventual elimination of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum – the aforementioned group famous for its socialist “Great Reset” agenda – in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.     

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Business

Trump says ‘nicer,’ ‘kinder’ tariffs will generate federal revenue

Published on

From The Center Square

By 

President Donald Trump says the slate of tariffs he plans to announce Wednesday will be “nicer,” “kinder” and “more generous” than other countries have treated the U.S.

Trump plans to unveil reciprocal tariffs on all nations that put duties on U.S. imports Wednesday, which the president has been calling “Liberation Day” for American trade.

Trump’s latest comments on tariffs come as he aims to reshape the global economy to reduce U.S. trade deficits and generate billions in federal revenue through higher taxes on imported products.

Trump’s trade policies have upended U.S. and global markets, but the president has yet to get into specifics ahead of Wednesday’s planned announcement.

At the start of March, Trump told a joint session of Congress that he planned to put reciprocal tariffs in place starting April 2.

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them,” Trump said. “If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

On Sunday night, Trump said on Air Force One that U.S. tariffs would be “nicer,” “kinder” and “more generous” than how other countries have treated the U.S.

Last week, Trump announced a 25% tariff on imported automobiles, duties that he said would be “permanent.” The White House said it expects the auto tariffs on cars and light-duty trucks will generate up to $100 billion in federal revenue. Trump said eventually he hopes to bring in $600 billion to $1 trillion in tariff revenue in the next year or two. Trump also said the tariffs would lead to a manufacturing boom in the U.S., with auto companies building new plants, expanding existing plants and adding jobs.

Trump predicts his protectionist trade policies will create jobs, make the nation rich and help reduce both trade deficits and the federal government’s persistent deficits.

The “Liberation Day” tariffs come after months of talk since Trump took office in January. On the campaign trail, Trump frequently called “tariff” the most beautiful word in the English language.

James Dorn, senior fellow emeritus at the Cato Institute, said Trump’s rhetoric on tariffs doesn’t match the economic reality of Americans.

“Tariffs expand the scope of government, politicize economic life, increase uncertainty, and reduce individual freedom,” he wrote. “Government officials gain arbitrary power while market participants face fewer opportunities for mutually beneficial exchanges and greater uncertainty as the rules of the game change.”

Dorn said consumers would pay the price.

“Tariffs are levied on U.S. importers as goods – both final and intermediate –subject to the tariff enter the country,” he wrote. “Importers and consumers typically end up paying the tariffs, as they cut into profit margins and drive consumer prices up.”

Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau Federation, have urged Trump to back off tariff threats.

Trump has promised that his tariffs would shift the tax burden away from Americans and onto foreign countries, but tariffs are generally paid by the people who import the foreign products. Those importers then have a choice: absorb the loss or pass it on to consumers through higher prices. The president also promised tariffs would make America “rich as hell.”

Continue Reading

Business

Biden’s Greenhouse Gas ‘Greendoggle’ Slush Fund Is Unraveling

Published on

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Michael Chamberlain

We warned you: this gas didn’t smell right from the beginning.

The Greendoggle has made the big time! Not every shady government giveaway to special interests gets its own Wall Street Journal editorial.

But how often does the new EPA administrator announce that his staff has discovered that $20 billion that had been appropriated for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF or “Greendoggle”) had been “parked” in a bank by the Biden EPA until it could be ladled out as grants to climate industry cronies? That’s what Administrator Lee Zeldin announced back in February, referencing a Biden appointee who was infamously caught on tape explaining that the agency was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” – trying to get the unspent money out of the reach of the Trump administration. Zeldin’s “clawing back” that money, and the lawsuit by “public-private investment fund” Climate United to get the $7 billion it was awarded, has got the media paying attention. Finally.

Administrator Zeldin’s announcement that EPA is taking back the $2 billion awarded to an organization tied to prominent political figures marks another auspicious turn in the GGRF saga, which Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) has followed and warned about since the beginning. Passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (Mr. Orwell, please call your office …), the GGRF was a massive spending program that would provide funds to environmentalist groups to finance green technology projects. The sheer amount of money Congress shoveled at the EPA was unprecedented. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with commensurate oversight resources – Mr. Zeldin says this was by design. The result was the Greendoggle, an environmentalist slush fund administered by insiders for insiders.

According to emails PPT obtained via FOIA request, the EPA invited a group of green activist organizations and thinktanks to a highly irregular November 2022 meeting to “provide early feedback on the RFI and ask clarifying questions.” And, as PPT foresaw, several groups with ties to EPA officials are on the invitation list. EPA’s “revolving door” with radical environmental groups spun fast in the Biden years.

PPT dug in and researched the green banks, finding multiple insider connections to the Biden administration. “With $27 billion dollars sloshing around, the American public should be on high alert for waste, fraud and abuse,” we warned in October 2023.

The next month, when the “short list” of coalitions vying to become GGRF distributors was announced, the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Nick Pope, whose reporting on the GGRF since early on has been essential in exposing the Greendoggle, revealed it featured “several organizations with considerable connections to the Biden administration, as well as the Democratic Party and its allies.” To put it mildly.

As the Greendoggle came together, the legacy media remained incurious, but for anyone paying attention, it smelled bad. There seemed to be no accountability, and given the Biden EPA’s ethical track record, that was concerning, to say the least.

One of the eight entities eventually chosen was the Coalition for Green Capital (CGC), a green bank whose mission is to “accelerate the deployment of clean energy technology throughout the US while maintaining a targeted focus on underserved markets.” CGC board member David Hayes left the organization for nearly two years to join the Biden White House Climate Policy Office as a special assistant to the president. He then went back to the CGC board. As PPT put it in a complaint it filed in June 2024 with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the EPA’s inspector general (and which the Zeldin EPA cited in its legal defense of the clawback), while at the White House Hayes “presumably worked at the highest level on the very GGRF program from which CGC sought funding upon his return. This timing is suspect considering CGC itself publicly announced his return to its board as part of its effort to obtain GGRF funding.” Not very subtle, but it worked. CGC got a $5 billion windfall out of the Greendoggle.

It just so happened that, while Mr. Hayes was in the administration, so was another CGC veteran, Jahi Wise. Like Hayes, Wise was a special climate assistant to the president, until he joined the EPA in December 2022 as … founding director of GGRF. Subtlety doesn’t seem to be among the skill sets CGC looks for in its people. Wise at least didn’t return to CGC after that. He joined a George Soros foundation.

The GGRF should become a metaphor for congressional shortsightedness, bureaucratic arrogance and the venality of special interests at the government trough. The “green” industry is an industry like any other, green special interests are special interests and the color of a taxpayer dollar doesn’t change because it’s being wasted in a nominally noble cause.

The Greendoggle stank, gas and all.

Michael Chamberlain is Director of Protect the Public’s Trust.

Continue Reading

Trending

X