Connect with us

Economy

Trudeau accused of lacking leadership after refusing to meet with premiers about carbon tax

Published

5 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the prime minister’s answer ‘snarky.’

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s refusal to meet with five Canadian premiers, who have demanded a meeting with him to discuss the ever-escalating carbon tax that shot up 23 percent on April 1, shows he lacks any true “leadership,” quipped Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.

Last Thursday during an interview with the CBC’s Matt Galloway for an episode that aired-on April 4, Trudeau said he already “had” a meeting with the premiers in 2016 and will “continue to talk with premiers” about the carbon tax but will not meet with them soon.

Moe said Trudeau’s refusal to meet with the premiers is “not leadership.”

“Premiers have respectfully asked the Prime Minister for a meeting to discuss the carbon tax. Here is the snarky answer that we got,” Moe wrote Monday on X, with a link to a CBC report regarding Trudeau dismissing a full-out meeting with the premiers.

“That’s not leadership,” he added.

Shortly after the Trudeau government raised the carbon tax by 23 percent on April 1, the premiers of AlbertaSaskatchewanOntario,  and New Brunswick all wrote letters to Trudeau asking him to convene an emergency first ministers meeting, to discuss the carbon tax’s detrimental effect on Canadians finances.

The first premier to write to Trudeau was Newfoundland and Labrador’s Andrew Furey, who wrote to him before April 1 demanding a meeting.

Last Thursday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in her letter to Trudeau wrote, “Albertans and Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in decades.”

“In March, natural gas was selling at less than $1.80 a gigajoule. Now that the carbon tax has increased to $4.09 per gigajoule, the tax alone is more than double what it costs Albertans to heat their homes. This is not just reckless, it is immoral and inhumane,” she wrote.

Last Friday at a press conference, Ford said, “Taxing people doesn’t reduce emissions, and that’s what they’re doing. They’re hurting the economy. They’re hurting people. Unacceptable.”

Protests against Trudeau have been increasing in recent months due to the unpopularity of higher carbon taxes as well as other governmental policies.

LifeSiteNews reported last week that protesters let Trudeau know their true feelings about his tanking in the polls by heckling him with loud drum beats and screams during a press conference.

On April 1, Canada’s carbon tax, which was introduced by the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2019, increased from $65 to $85 per tonne despite seven of 10 provincial premiers objecting to the increase and 70% of Canadians saying they are against it.

Trudeau has remained adamant that he will not pause the hikes.

As it stands, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $65 per tonne, but the Trudeau government wants to increase this to $170 per tonne by 2030.

Recent polls show that the scandal-plagued government has sent the Liberals into a nosedive with no end in sight. Per a recent LifeSiteNews report, according to polls, in a Canadian federal election held today, Conservatives under leader Pierre Poilievre would win a majority in the House of Commons over Trudeau’s Liberals.

Trudeau’s government is trying to force net-zero regulations on all Canadian provinces, notably on electricity generation, as early as 2035. The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are adamantly opposed to Trudeau’s 2035 goals.

The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals, which are 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 been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the 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

Economy

The White Pill: Big Government Can Be Defeated (Just Ask the Soviet Union)

Published on

From StosselTV

People have been “black pilled” to think the world is doomed. Michael Malice says there’s hope.

In his book, “The White Pill,” he argues that tyrannical regimes, like the Soviet Union, can be toppled.

Today, media and universities distort history, and push socialism. It used to be worse. The New York Times once covered up Stalin’s famine, even as millions starved. Why? Malice says it’s because NYT star reporter Walter Duranty liked communism’s utopian promises, and status he got from his exclusive Stalin interviews.

Malice says the fall of the Soviet Union should give us hope that America can resist the universities and media’s brainwashing – or any tyranny that someone is “black pilled” about.

Our video explains Malice’s “white pill” and why you might want to take it.

After 40+ years of reporting, I now understand the importance of limited government and personal freedom.

——————————————

Libertarian journalist John Stossel created Stossel TV to explain liberty and free markets to young people.

Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20.

Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.

Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award.

————

To get our new weekly video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://www.johnstossel.com/#subscribe

————

Continue Reading

Alberta

Ford and Trudeau are playing checkers. Trump and Smith are playing chess

Published on

CAE Logo

 

By Dan McTeague

 

Ford’s calls for national unity – “We need to stand united as Canadians!” – in context feels like an endorsement of fellow Electric Vehicle fanatic Trudeau. And you do wonder if that issue has something to do with it. After all, the two have worked together to pump billions in taxpayer dollars into the EV industry.

There’s no doubt about it: Donald Trump’s threat of a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian goods (to be established if the Canadian government fails to take sufficient action to combat drug trafficking and illegal crossings over our southern border) would be catastrophic for our nation’s economy. More than $3 billion in goods move between the U.S. and Canada on a daily basis. If enacted, the Trump tariff would likely result in a full-blown recession.

It falls upon Canada’s leaders to prevent that from happening. That’s why Justin Trudeau flew to Florida two weeks ago to point out to the president-elect that the trade relationship between our countries is mutually beneficial.

This is true, but Trudeau isn’t the best person to make that case to Trump, since he has been trashing the once and future president, and his supporters, both in public and private, for years. He did so again at an appearance just the other day, in which he implied that American voters were sexist for once again failing to elect the nation’s first female president, and said that Trump’s election amounted to an assault on women’s rights.

Consequently, the meeting with Trump didn’t go well.

But Trudeau isn’t Canada’s only politician, and in recent days we’ve seen some contrasting approaches to this serious matter from our provincial leaders.

First up was Doug Ford, who followed up a phone call with Trudeau earlier this week by saying that Canadians have to prepare for a trade war. “Folks, this is coming, it’s not ‘if,’ it is — it’s coming… and we need to be prepared.”

Ford said that he’s working with Liberal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to put together a retaliatory tariff list. Spokesmen for his government floated the idea of banning the LCBO from buying American alcohol, and restricting the export of critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries (I’m sure Trump is terrified about that last one).

But Ford’s most dramatic threat was his announcement that Ontario is prepared to shut down energy exports to the U.S., specifically to Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, if Trump follows through with his plan. “We’re sending a message to the U.S. You come and attack Ontario, you attack the livelihoods of Ontario and Canadians, we’re going to use every tool in our toolbox to defend Ontarians and Canadians across the border,” Ford said.

Now, unfortunately, all of this chest-thumping rings hollow. Ontario does almost $500 billion per year in trade with the U.S., and the province’s supply chains are highly integrated with America’s. The idea of just cutting off the power, as if you could just flip a switch, is actually impossible. It’s a bluff, and Trump has already called him on it. When told about Ford’s threat by a reporter this week, Trump replied “That’s okay if he does that. That’s fine.”

And Ford’s calls for national unity – “We need to stand united as Canadians!” – in context feels like an endorsement of fellow Electric Vehicle fanatic Trudeau. And you do wonder if that issue has something to do with it. After all, the two have worked together to pump billions in taxpayer dollars into the EV industry. Just over the past year Ford and Trudeau have been seen side by side announcing their $5 billion commitment to Honda, or their $28.2 billion in subsidies for new Stellantis and Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plants.

Their assumption was that the U.S. would be a major market for Canadian EVs. Remember that “vehicles are the second largest Canadian export by value, at $51 billion in 2023 of which 93% was exported to the U.S.,”according to the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, and “Auto is Ontario’s top export at 28.9% of all exports (2023).”

But Trump ran on abolishing the Biden administration’s de facto EV mandate. Now that he’s back in the White House, the market for those EVs that Trudeau and Ford invested in so heavily is going to be much softer. Perhaps they’d like to be able to blame Trump’s tariffs for the coming downturn rather than their own misjudgment.

In any event, Ford’s tactic stands in stark contrast to the response from Alberta, Canada’s true energy superpower. Premier Danielle Smith made it clear that her province “will not support cutting off our Alberta energy exports to the U.S., nor will we support a tariff war with our largest trading partner and closest ally.”

Smith spoke about this topic at length at an event announcing a new $29-million border patrol team charged with combatting drug trafficking, at which said that Trudeau’s criticisms of the president-elect were, “not helpful.” Her deputy premier Mike Ellis was quoted as saying, “The concerns that president-elect Trump has expressed regarding fentanyl are, quite frankly, the same concerns that I and the premier have had.” Smith and Ellis also criticized Ottawa’s progressively lenient approach to drug crimes.

(For what it’s worth, a recent Léger poll found that “Just 29 per cent of [Canadians] believe Trump’s concerns about illegal immigration and drug trafficking from Canada to the U.S. are unwarranted.” Perhaps that’s why some recent polls have found that Trudeau is currently less popular in Canada than Trump at the moment.)

Smith said that Trudeau’s criticisms of the president-elect were, “not helpful.” And on X/Twitter she said, “Now is the time to… reach out to our friends and allies in the U.S. to remind them just how much Americans and Canadians mutually benefit from our trade relationship – and what we can do to grow that partnership further,” adding, “Tariffs just hurt Americans and Canadians on both sides of the border. Let’s make sure they don’t happen.”

This is exactly the right approach. Smith knows there is a lot at stake in this fight, and is not willing to step into the ring in a fight that Canada simply can’t win, and will cause a great deal of hardship for all involved along the way.

While Trudeau indulges in virtue signaling and Ford in sabre rattling, Danielle Smith is engaging in true statesmanship. That’s something that is in short supply in our country these days.

As I’ve written before, Trump is playing chess while Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford are playing checkers. They should take note of Smith’s strategy. Honey will attract more than vinegar, and if the long history of our two countries tell us anything, it’s that diplomacy is more effective than idle threats.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

Continue Reading

Trending

X