Business
Trudeau gov’t has spent nearly $200 million on carbon tax paperwork since 2019: report
From LifeSiteNews
” the Trudeau government was forced to reveal that the tax cost Canadians $82,628,993 last year to collect and then to mail out rebate cheques. The Trudeau government assigned 474 employees to carbon tax paperwork ”
The carbon tax cost Canadians nearly $200 million in paperwork since Parliament introduced the fuel charge in 2019.
According to new records published December 7 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Liberal government under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent $199.2 million in taxpayer money on federal administration costs for the carbon tax.
“What were the annual costs to administer collection of the carbon tax and rebate program?” Conservative MP Chris Warkentin questioned in the House of Commons.
In response, the Trudeau government was forced to reveal that the tax cost Canadians $82,628,993 last year to collect and then to mail out rebate cheques. The Trudeau government assigned 474 employees to carbon tax paperwork.
While the Canada Revenue Agency had initially only hired a few employees to manage the carbon tax, the payroll expanded sevenfold after the Trudeau government decided to mail out rebates instead of allowing Canadians to file for the tax credit in their annual returns.
Accordingly, in 2022 there were only 33 employees assigned to the rebate program, but in 2023 the number had risen to 242. Similarly, the total cost of managing the tax rebates increased from $4.3 million in 2022 to $48.6 million in 2023.
Despite the high cost, the Liberal government has maintained that the carbon tax is necessary and the “most efficient” way to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Carbon pricing is central to our climate plan because it is the most efficient and lowest cost policy to reduce greenhouse gas pollution,” Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault claimed last February. “The cost of doing nothing is staggering.”
Similarly, Trudeau defended the cost of collecting the tax last June, saying, “Everyone except apparently the Conservatives understands building in price signals on things we do not want like pollution is one of the most efficient ways of reducing emissions.”
In 2022, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson claimed that 99% of economists agreed on the efficiency of the carbon taxes; however, he failed to cite any paperwork to back up his assertions.
“With respect to the price on pollution, if we asked 100 economists 99 will tell us it is the most efficient way to reduce emissions,” Wilkinson said.
The carbon tax, framed as a way to reduce carbon emissions, has cost Canadians hundreds more annually despite rebates.
The increased costs are only expected to rise, as a recent report revealed that a carbon tax of more than $350 per tonne is needed to reach Trudeau’s net-zero goals by 2050.
Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $65 per tonne, but the Trudeau government has a goal of $170 per tonne by 2030.
In October, Trudeau announced that he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil for three years, a provision that primarily benefits the Liberal-held Atlantic 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 will not be exempted from the carbon tax.
Despite both Canadians and politicians supporting carbon tax exemptions for all, Trudeau and his government refuse to provide relief.
The 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 members are involved.
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Cricket Farm Axes Jobs
I remember back a few years ago, making my way down to the midway of the Calgary Stampede to check out all of the new flavorful wares.
The Midway hasn’t really offered much by way of new rides since I was a kid, not entirely sure I’d be interested in riding them, even if they did…
The Budweiser beer grounds get old, when a cold beer sets you back over $10.
Mini donuts have lost their luster…
But every year, there are new menu items that had given a reason to at least make the cost of admission worth giving this another shot.
Walking through the grounds, the wife and I noticed that one of the new Stampede Delicacies was pizza with bugs on it…
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And I remember commenting to the wife that commercially made pizza has always had bugs in it…just nothing that they’d admit too for fear of being closed down by health regulations.
I mean…what’s next – boasting about mouse droppings in your soup?
But this bug thing has seemingly still managed to take off for reasons I cannot fathom. Are cow farts really impacting the planet that much?
It’d be hard to believe and harder to prove, even if this were true.
But then to read about some massive cricket farm in Eastern Canada, where cricket proteins were to be used in the mass production food items – chips, crackers, protein and energy bars and even flour – were soon to become a thing made me even more leery of processed foods.
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Acheta Powder, by listing in ingredients…because this is the soft way to slip something onto the “may contain”, listings…which seems more innocuous than bugs or crickets…
But because my consumption of processed food items is low, were never much of a consideration and hunting for this on items I had no intention on purchasing anyways, seemed an awful waste of time.
The Eastern Canadian Cricket farm was built by Aspire Foods, for the tune of about $90 Million Bucks…$8.5 million provided by yup – you guessed it, Your Taxes, through federal grants.
Which, while is nothing in relation to the $40 Billion that has been extorted by the governments, out of your hard earned paycheque, to subsidize EV Batteries, with a 20 year ROI of ZERO…is still as big of a loss because…apparently, like the failure in trying to force people into expensive and unpractical EVs or turning plants into meat looking substitutes…
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Mmmmmmmmmmmm…
Is also a Huge Failure.
Not enough people are eating Ze Bugs…which has turned out to shutter 2/3rds of the staffing in the workforce, in London, Ontario at the Aspire Cricket Farm.
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Now…I’m all for innovation.
It’s what has created the device I’ve used to create this post and share it with all of you. I love some of the items that have leant to making my life easier and reduced efforts for tasks that offer little by way of satisfaction or payoff…
But with this being said…the market will always be the decider on what will or will not take off…and even with the bombardment of fear mongering around climate change and sustainability, bugs as a protein substitute are rapidly proving themselves out of market because…like me, you are not eating Ze Bugs!
Business
Sanctuary State Told To Cut Spending On Hotel Stays For Migrants As Costs Expected To Hit $1 Billion
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
A state commission is encouraging Massachusetts to cut costs on emergency shelter services for migrants and other families by spending less on expensive hotels.
The emergency shelter system in Massachusetts housing migrant families and others experiencing homelessness is expected to spend over $1 billion in fiscal year 2025, according to a state commission report investigating the matter. The report comes as Massachusetts, a sanctuary state that limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities, is continuing to experience financial hardship over the border crisis and an influx of migrants into their communities.
The draft report proposed spending less on the most expensive accommodations for migrants — which would include hotels and motels. Prior reports have found that housing migrants in hotels or motels in the state can be as costly as $300 per night.
“Since the EA shelter system reached capacity at 7,500 families last year, approximately 50% of families have been in hotels and motels across the state,” the report stated. “The Commission recommends limiting reliance on hotels and motels to best serve families and increase the financial and operational efficiency of the system, while recognizing that hotels and motels may be a last-resort option for surge capacity at times of rapid changes in demand.”
“Data suggests that hotels and motels are the most expensive type of shelter in the EA system,” the report concluded. It also noted that the state’s shelter caseload and system costs have skyrocketed to “unsustainable levels” since 2022.
The immigration crisis taking place under the Biden-Harris administration has hit Massachusetts particularly hard. Roughly 355,000 illegal migrants and other inadmissible foreign nationals live in the state, and approximately 50,000 have arrived since 2021, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
Democrat Gov. Maura Healey, in her efforts to clamp down on the state’s crisis, has publicly called on illegal immigrants to not go to Massachusetts, offered plane tickets for them to leave, and has asked residents to take in migrant families. The state has also experienced a rising number of deportation cases as illegal migrants continue to flock there.
Despite the growing pains with mass illegal immigration, the governor has remained steadfast in her opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for an immigration crackdown, and she confirmed that her state’s law enforcement would “absolutely not” help with mass deportation efforts. The entire state of Massachusetts is considered a sanctuary for illegal migrants for its laws limiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
The state legislature appropriated $639 million to the emergency assistance shelter system for fiscal year 2025, according to the report. However, expense projections are expected to hit $1.094 billion – leaving a shortfall of roughly $455 million for the fiscal year.
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