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Taxpayers demand a public inquiry into Elections B.C.

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Carson Binda

Elections B.C. is drawing scrutiny which threatens to undermine taxpayer’s faith in our elections.

That’s a problem.

Here’s the solution: call a public inquiry into Elections B.C., not a politicised process through legislative committees working behind closed doors.

There is nothing to suggest the B.C. provincial election was stolen. There is nothing to suggest Elections B.C. was in cahoots with one party or another. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to turn a blind eye to its bureaucratic mishandling of the most important day in our democratic cycle.

In a democracy, taxpayers must have faith in elections and repeated screw-ups from Elections B.C. erodes that trust. And make no mistake, Elections B.C. did screw up its handling of the provincial election.

The problems with Elections B.C. range from bad to worse.

It took Elections B.C. more than a week to finish the preliminary tally of votes. Voting closed Oct. 19, but the final count didn’t occur until Oct. 28.

British Columbians shouldn’t be left in limbo because Elections B.C. bureaucrats won’t work late to count votes. And it shouldn’t take an extra week for the final count to begin.

Then came the revelation that Elections B.C. officials were storing ballots in their personal homes. Think about that for a moment. When you cast your ballot, did you imagine it would find its way into the basement of a bureaucrat’s home?

British Columbians generally believe Elections B.C. acts in good faith. But why allow questionable chains of custody for the most important pieces of paper in a democracy? Why risk storing ballots in bureaucrats’ basements instead of secure government buildings?

And we have good reasons to question the competency of the Elections B.C. bureaucracy.

First, the public was told Elections B.C. failed to count 14 votes in Surrey-Guildford. Then Elections B.C. found another 14 uncounted votes in the same riding, bringing the total to 28.

The NDP won Surrey-Guildford by 22 votes, meaning 28 uncounted votes could have been enough to alter the election. It’s also the riding that gave the NDP a one-seat majority government.

Elections B.C. blamed “human error” in a statement sent to the CTF for the uncounted votes in Surrey-Guildford.

A ballot box with 860 votes in Prince-George Mackenzie went uncounted and unreported during the initial counts. This mistake should have been caught immediately.

“Elections officials should have discovered this error when completing the ballot reconciliation process on election night, however this was not completed correctly,” according to Elections B.C.

Not only did Elections B.C. make a mistake by ignoring the ballot box in the first place, they also screwed-up the election night process by not catching its mistake.

In three-quarters of B.C.’s 93 ridings, mistakes by Elections B.C. led to unreported votes. That’s unacceptable.

To be fair, all the votes were eventually accounted for and counted. But our elections are too important to risk with these kinds of blunders from bureaucrats.

Both the ruling NDP and opposition B.C. Conservatives agree there needs to be an investigation into Elections B.C.’s mistakes.

The NDP wants an all-party committee made up of MLAs to probe Elections B.C. But that’s not good enough.

Legislative committees are political and are made up of politicians fighting for the spotlight. They can hide behind in-camera meetings the public doesn’t have access to.

For the public to have faith in our elections, the public needs to be involved in the inquiry. That’s what the B.C. Conservatives are calling for: an independent public review.

British Columbians need to have faith in our elections, so the public must be a part of the investigation. This is far too important an issue for taxpayers to be shunted off to the side while politicians play partisan games.

Carson Binda is the B.C. Director for the Canadians Taxpayers Federation.   

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Saskatchewan becomes first Canadian province to fully eliminate carbon tax

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Saskatchewan has become the first Canadian province to free itself entirely of the carbon tax.

On March 27, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the removal of the provincial industrial carbon tax beginning April 1, boosting the province’s industry and making Saskatchewan the first carbon tax free province.

“The immediate effect is the removal of the carbon tax on your Sask Power bills, saving Saskatchewan families and small businesses hundreds of dollars a year. And in the longer term, it will reduce the cost of other consumer products that have the industrial carbon tax built right into their price,” said Moe.

Under Moe’s direction, Saskatchewan has dropped the industrial carbon tax which he says will allow Saskatchewan to thrive under a “tariff environment.”

“I would hope that all of the parties running in the federal election would agree with those objectives and allow the provinces to regulate in this area without imposing the federal backstop,” he continued.

The removal of the tax is estimated to save Saskatchewan residents up to 18 cents a liter in gas prices.

The removal of the tax will take place on April 1, the same day the consumer carbon tax will reduce to 0 percent under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s direction. Notably, Carney did not scrap the carbon tax legislation: he just reduced its current rate to zero. This means it could come back at any time.

Furthermore, while Carney has dropped the consumer carbon tax, he has previously revealed that he wishes to implement a corporation carbon tax, the effects of which many argued would trickle down to all Canadians.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) celebrated Moe’s move, noting that the carbon tax was especially difficult on farmers.

“It puts our farming community and our business people in rural municipalities at a competitive disadvantage, having to pay this and compete on the world stage,” he continued.

“We’ve got a carbon tax on power — and that’s going to be gone now — and propane and natural gas and we use them more and more every year, with grain drying and different things in our farming operations,” he explained.

“I know most producers that have grain drying systems have three-phase power. If they haven’t got natural gas, they have propane to fire those dryers. And that cost goes on and on at a high level, and it’s made us more noncompetitive on a world stage,” Huber decalred.

The carbon tax is wildly unpopular and blamed for the rising cost of living throughout Canada. Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $80 per tonne.

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of ‘sedition’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Mark Carney described the Freedom Convoy as an act of ‘sedition’ and advocated for the government to use its power to crush the non-violent protest movement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refused to elaborate on comments he made in 2022 referring to the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest as an act of “sedition” and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.

“Well, look, I haven’t been a politician,” Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linked border blockade took place in 2022, asked, “What do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?”

“I became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,” he said. “I came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.”

Carney’s lack of an answer seems to be in stark contrast to the strong opinion he voiced in a February 7, 2022, column published in the Globe & Mail at the time of the convoy titled, “It’s Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.”

In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of “sedition,” adding, “That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”

Carney went on to claim in the piece that if “left unchecked” by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would “achieve” its “goal of undermining our democracy.”

Carney even targeted “[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,” accusing them of “funding sedition.”

Internal emails from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) eventually showed that his definition of sedition were not in conformity with the definition under Canada’s Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the “use of force” as a necessary aspect of sedition.

“The key bit is ‘use of force,’” one RCMP officer noted in the emails. “I’m all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I don’t know we’re there except in a small number of cases.”

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was a peaceful event of public protest against COVID mandates, and not one protestor was charged with sedition. However, the Liberal government, then under Justin Trudeau, did take an approach similar to the one advocated for by Carney, invoking the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters. Since then, a federal judge has ruled that such action was “not justified.”

Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on their trial.

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