Connect with us

Economy

NDP slated to back Conservative motion calling for nationwide pause on home heating carbon tax

Published

1 year ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

‘The reality is we have people who are struggling to make ends meet— to heat their homes during the winter,’ NDP House leader Peter Julian told reporters Thursday, indicating the party’s support for the Conservatives’ motion.

In a rare turn of events, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is slated to vote in favor of a Conservative Party of Canada (CPC motion calling for a nationwide pause on the carbon tax applied to home heating fuel.

While the motion is non-binding, should the NDP vote in favor of the motion, it could force the federal government under Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pause the tax for all Canadians, and could even open up the possibility of a future vote of non-confidence.  

CPC MPs served a notice in the House of Commons that they will put to a vote, as early as this coming Monday, their motion which reads: “That given the government has announced a ‘temporary three-year pause’ to the federal carbon tax on home heating oil, the House call on the government to extend that pause to all forms of home heating.”  

The motion was brought forth by CPC leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday of this week.  

Trudeau announced last week 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, a fuel 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 come the next election.     

Earlier this week, Poilievre dared Trudeau to call a “carbon tax” election so Canadians can decide for themselves if they want a government for or against a tax that has caused home heating bills to double in some provinces.    

Trudeau claimed the Conservatives “still want to fight another election on denying climate change,” and that they are “wrong” as Canadians would vote Liberal again.   

Trudeau has thus far rejected calls for giving carbon tax exemptions to other provinces.  

NDP appears to support Conservative motion

The CPC’s motion appears to have the support of the NDP, an interesting development considering the deal they have with the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party has a minority government and formed an informal coalition with the NDP last year, with the latter agreeing to support and keep the former in power until the next election is mandated by law in 2025.

Yesterday, NDP House Leader Peter Julian told reporters, “The reality is we have people who are struggling to make ends meet— to heat their homes during the winter.”  

“The panicked action of last week really needs to be adjusted so there are supports that go to people right across the country,” he said.  

Julian added that Trudeau’s backtracking of the carbon tax for one region of the country is not fair for the rest of Canadians.  

“It tends to disadvantage a lot of people,” he said.  

Should the NDP vote in favor of the CPC motion, it should pass the House of Commons. It is unclear whether the Bloc Québecois are in favor of the motion.  

Trudeau’s latest offering of a three-year pause on the carbon tax in Atlantic Canada has caused a major rift with oil and gas-rich western provinces, notably Alberta and Saskatchewan, and even Manitoba which has a new NDP government.  

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe on Monday said his province will stop collecting a federal carbon tax on natural gas used to heat homes come January 1, 2024, unless it gets a similar tax break as the Atlantic Canadian provinces.   

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said she will be looking into whether a Supreme Court challenge on the carbon tax is in order. She noted however that as Alberta has a deregulated energy industry, unlike Saskatchewan, she is not in a position to stop collecting the federal carbon tax.   

LifeSiteNews reported earlier this 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.    

Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop more online censorship laws

Related Topics:

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

More from this author
National / 1 hour ago

Andrew Scheer exposes the Mark Carney Canadians should know

Daily Caller / 4 hours ago

NEWT GINGRICH: Europe’s Elites Were Finally Told To Take A Look In The Mirror

armed forces / 4 hours ago

Trump fires chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, appoints new military leader

Business

Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
Continue Reading

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

Continue Reading

Trending

X