Opinion
Trudeau’s home heating oil exemption shows politics trumps real affordability

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Jay Goldberg
It turns out desperate pigs really do fly.
In a colossal policy reversal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a suspension of the carbon tax on home heating oil for the next three years. But that one concession favours one region over others and is far from enough to protect Canadians from the brutal realities of the carbon tax’s impact on family budgets.
Trudeau’s carbon tax concession was specifically targeted at Atlantic Canada because it deals with home heating oil. Forty per cent of Atlantic Canadian households use heating oil to heat their homes. Compare that to just two per cent of Ontario households.
Atlantic Canada had a special deal with Trudeau until this summer. The federal government gave Atlantic provinces permission to exempt home heating oil from their carbon taxes.
But the region’s special deal ran out in July, with full federal carbon tax pricing kicking in on Canada Day, including on heating oil.
With winter fast approaching, taxpayers in Atlantic Canada recognized the massive tax hike they were about to face just to stay warm.
Last winter, Atlantic Canadian households paid no carbon tax on their home heating oil bill. This winter, the average household was poised to spend $272.
Public opinion polls of late show Atlantic Canadians are preparing to vote with their chequebooks. The anti-carbon tax Conservatives are gaining steam.
The Conservatives forced a vote in the House of Commons on repealing the carbon tax earlier this month. One Liberal MP from Newfoundland and Labrador had the courage to stand up for his constituents and vote to repeal the tax.
Avalon MP Ken McDonald was crystal clear in articulating why he voted the way he did.
“I’ve had people tell me they can’t afford groceries,” McDonald said. “They can’t afford to heat their homes. You can’t make it more expensive on people than what they can handle. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now.”
McDonald spoke a truth Trudeau has consistently refused to hear, or at least acknowledge. The federal carbon tax is making life less affordable for Canadians.
A report from the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer shows this plain as day. This year, the average Canadian family will lose between $347 and $710 due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
After McDonald voted to repeal the carbon tax, other Liberal MPs from Atlantic Canada voiced their concerns in public.
In the wake of all of this, Trudeau caved. He announced a three year suspension of the carbon tax on home heating oil. Conveniently, that suspension ends just after the next federal election.
Most Ontario households use natural gas to heat their homes. It’s cleaner than home heating oil, but Trudeau is keeping the carbon tax on natural gas in place.
That’s proof that this is all about politics.
The average Ontario household using natural gas will be paying a $326 carbon tax bill this winter. Those folks won’t get an exemption under Trudeau’s new plan.
If Liberal MPs in Ontario take a courageous stand like McDonald did in Newfoundland, families here wouldn’t get punished with a carbon tax for heating their homes.
What shouldn’t be lost in any of this is that carbon tax misery will still be felt coast to coast, even though many in Atlantic Canada are getting special treatment.
Families in every province will still pay carbon taxes at the pumps when filling up to drive the kids to school. And food will still be more expensive because truckers who ship the food and farmers who produce the food will still be paying carbon taxes on fuel.
It’s time for Trudeau to stop driving up the cost of living and dividing Canadians based on political calculations. The feds need to axe the carbon tax on everything everywhere, no matter the postal code.
2025 Federal Election
Nine Dead After SUV Plows Into Vancouver Festival Crowd, Raising Election-Eve Concerns Over Public Safety

Sam Cooper
In Vancouver, concern about public safety — particularly assaults and violent incidents involving suspects previously known to police — has been a longstanding civic and political flashpoint
In an evolving mass-death investigation that could have profound psychological and emotional impacts on Canada’s federal election, Vancouver police confirmed Sunday that nine people were killed Saturday night when a young man plowed a luxury SUV through a festival block party in South Vancouver, leaving a trail of instant deaths and horrific injuries, with witnesses describing convulsing bodies and wounded toddlers in the aftermath.
The driver, a 30-year-old Vancouver resident known to police, appeared to be shaken and apologetic, according to eyewitness accounts and video from the scene. Authorities stated the case is not being treated as terrorism.
Late Saturday night, Vancouver police confirmed at a news conference that the man, who was known to police “in certain circumstances,” had been arrested.
The incident occurred around 8:14 p.m. during the annual Lapu Lapu Festival, a celebration of Filipino Canadian culture held near East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street. Thousands of attendees had packed the area for cultural performances, food stalls, and community events when the luxury SUV entered the closed-off area and accelerated into the crowd. Photos of the vehicle, with its doors ajar and a crumpled front end, indicate it was an Audi Q7 with black tinted windows.
In Vancouver, concern about public safety — particularly assaults and violent incidents involving suspects previously known to police — has been a longstanding civic and political flashpoint. Saturday’s tragedy sharpened those anxieties, potentially influencing the attitudes of undecided voters in a federal election that has focused on social disorder and crime framed by the Conservative side, with the Liberal frontrunners countering that firmer sentencing laws would undermine Canada’s Charter of Rights.
Witnesses to Saturday’s tragedy described scenes of chaos and terror as the SUV slammed into festival-goers, accelerating through the crowd.
“I thought it was fireworks at first — the sounds, the screams — then I saw people flying,” one witness told reporters on the scene.
Authorities have launched a full criminal investigation into the suspect’s background, including previous interactions with law enforcement.
The tragedy unfolded during the final, high-stakes weekend of Canada’s federal election campaign, throwing public safety and political leadership into sharp relief.
On Saturday night, before news of the Vancouver incident broke, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre posted a message on X at about 10 p.m., declaring, “This election comes down to one word. Change. Our Conservative plan will bring home an affordable life and safe streets — For a Change.”
Meanwhile, Liberal leader Mark Carney, campaigning in the Greater Toronto Area, posted at roughly the same time, “Dropped in on dim sum today in Markham. The best part of this campaign has been meeting Canadians in their communities — and hearing how excited they are about our future.”
As the scale of the tragedy became clear, both leaders shifted sharply in tone.
Poilievre posted again around 1 a.m. Sunday, writing, “I am shocked by the horrific news emerging from Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day Festival tonight. My thoughts are with the Filipino community and all the victims targeted by this senseless attack. Thank you to the first responders who are at the scene as we wait to hear more.”
Carney, who had posted shortly before midnight that, “We don’t need anger. We need to build,” followed with a direct statement on the Vancouver attack around 2 a.m. Sunday morning, writing, “I am devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver earlier this evening. I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver. We are all mourning with you.”
Online, the tragedy quickly reignited concerns about violent crime, bail, and the rights of offenders — issues that have increasingly polarized Canadian political debate.
In response to Carney’s statement, a comment from an account named Willy Balters reflected the growing anger: “He’ll be out on bail by morning right?”
Another commenter, referencing past political controversies over judicial reform, posted to Carney, “You stood behind a podium and declared murderers’ Charter Rights can’t be violated.”
The raw public sentiment mirrored broader criticisms that Canada’s criminal justice system — and its perceived leniency toward repeat offenders — has failed to keep Canadians safe.
Just days prior, a different incident tapped into similar public anger. B.C. Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko posted, “A visitor to Vancouver was brutally attacked by a man only hours after he was released on bail for assaulting police and uttering threats. @Dave_Eby — is this the kind of welcome visitors to FIFA will have to look forward to? BTW, this violent man is out on bail AGAIN!”
That incident continued to draw heated social media on Sunday, with David Jacobs, a well-known conservative-leaning commenter, posting, “A man, while out on bail for assaulting a peace officer, violently assaulted a woman. He’s out on bail again. The Liberals put criminal rights far ahead of victim rights and community safety. Stop the insanity. Vote for change!”
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2025 Federal Election
Polls say Canadians will give Trump what he wants, a Carney victory.

Regarding Canada, President Trump has said two things during this election campaign.
First, Trump said he wants Canada to become the 51st state. He’s not joking. He’s said it repeatedly.
Second, President Trump said he prefers to negotiate with Carney. He’s never taken that back either.
These two statements are connected. All Trump has to do is wait. He’s older and fortunately for him, he won’t have to wait long.
A Carney government will continue to block oil and gas development. When Carney speaks of national energy projects he’s referring to his renewable energy pipedream. Canadians will watch helplessly as the Carney government spends untold billions in a fruitless attempt to kill the oil and gas industries and force a net zero energy transition.
Even Russia and China in their wildest national adventures never tried to forcibly transition its entire energy system. It took the Soviet Union about 80 years to collapse as an economic structure. But the Soviets never attempted anything this ridiculous.
Somehow we’ve attempted to detach accessible and affordable energy from economic viability. If we think affordability is an issue now (and it is our top issue), just wait. The election hasn’t even happened and jobs backed by billions of our tax dollars are already disappearing.
The US economy with it’s affordable energy will look like Shangri-La compared to Canada. If you think this is hyperbolic please take a quick look at the Prime Ministers own Privy Council report which he has understandably neglected to speak about during the campaign. This is a report from the PM’s own planners which states “social stagnation and downward mobility are plausible elements of the future” and goes as far to suggest that desperate “people may start to hunt, fish and forage on public lands and waterways without reference to regulations.”
For those who believe Carney’s approach can be successful please note the collapse of GFANZ. Carney was chairman of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Those who committed to GFANZ agreed to kill investment in non renewable energy, funding only renewable replacements. Members of GFANZ hoped to compress a transition that naturally takes somewhere between one hundred and one thousand years into a decade or two.
By declaring a National Energy Emergency on his first day in office, Trump killed GFANZ in the US. In short order major investment firms and all the major US banks left the alliance. While Carney and other pretenders try to keep the GFANZ dream alive, their economies will compete with China’s cheap labour and USA’s cheap and abundant energy. GFANZ will survive in the short term only by the sacrifice of the citizen taxpayers of participating nations.
The reality is a Carney victory only strengthens Trump’s position. Trump wants Canada’s resources and a Carney government sets the table for that to happen. Not in a negotiation over trade disputes in the fall of 2025, but after Canada’s utter economic collapse a few years later.
There are people in Canada, definitely in Alberta who actually like the idea of becoming an American state. One of them told me he will vote for Carney to accelerate the conditions that make it more feasible. The real irony is that the Elbows Up crowd are the most adamantly opposed to future US statehood. Ironic because they’re doing the work Trump wants them to by putting Carney in charge of our economy. Canada seems poised to put the wrong general in charge at the most critical time.
This is not so much a battle against left and right, liberal and conservative as it is a last stand by the shrinking number of Canadians who still trust corporate media. While corporate media stir up the anti Trump narrative, Canadians who’ve moved on to the new independent medias concern themselves with other issues. One of these groups don’t answer polling questions. Maybe it will turn out Poilievre’s rallies are the real measuring stick. If you love Canada you better hope so.
If there’s one thing we know about the unpredictable US President, it’s that he will predictably say whatever he wants to. Why has President Trump not said he’d prefer to work with another conservative? Because he doesn’t care about his fellow conservative thinkers in Canada as much as he cares about a future North American-wide USA. Giving Trump a Carney victory? God help Canada. We’re going to need it.
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