Trudeau Libs and Scheer's Tories, same old story on climate change

[Anonymous]

The difference between the anthropogenic climate change policies of Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is simple.



The Conservatives don't have a policy and pretend they do. The Liberals have a policy and pretend it will work.



Scheer's strategy is to attack Trudeau's policy — a national carbon price which is, in effect, a national carbon tax — without proposing an alternative.



Other than that he will reveal his policy before next year's election, that it will not contain a carbon tax, and that it will meet Canada's commitment to the United Nations to reduce its industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.



Trudeau's strategy is to attack Scheer as a climate denier while claiming his national carbon price will meet the commitment Trudeau made to the UN in 2015, when he signed the Paris climate agreement, to reduce Canada's emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, 30% by 2030.



This despite the fact his own government's experts, the federal environment commissioner and Canada's provincial and territorial auditors general (except for Quebec) and the UN, all say Canada is failing to meet the commitment Trudeau made in Paris.



[size=150]The reason Trudeau's plan is failing is that its primary purpose is to increase government revenue by forcing Canadians to give more money to the government, rather than reduce emissions.

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Trudeau claims his national carbon price is revenue neutral. It's not.



A revenue neutral carbon price would return all the money raised by Trudeau's carbon price/tax to Canadian taxpayers, consumers and businesses in the form of income tax cuts or direct grants.



Trudeau's national carbon price doesn't require that of Canada's provincial or territorial governments.



All he has said is that Ottawa might return the money to the public in provinces where he has to impose his national carbon price because they refuse to voluntarily do so themselves.



[size=150]Trudeau's carbon price will not even be revenue neutral to the federal government because it will get a slice of the pie through the federal Goods and Services Tax.[/size]



While Scheer claims he cares about addressing climate change, along with other major environmental issues, his promise of an effective plan to reduce emissions without any form of a carbon tax is far-fetched.



Rather, it looks as if Scheer is in the camp of Canadians who either believe man-made climate change is a hoax and that the UN's real agenda is global wealth redistribution, or that addressing it is too expensive with too little chance of success, or that there's no point in Canada, responsible for 1.6% of global emissions, to act when other countries which are far larger emitters are not held to the same standard.



Neither Scheer nor Trudeau act as if they truly believe the Earth faces an imminent, existential threat from man-made climate change, the global justification for carbon pricing from the UN and the 197 countries that ratified the Paris climate agreement.



Their positions are consistent with Conservative and Liberal prime ministers going back for more than three decades, who have consistently set emission reduction targets for Canada and consistently missed them.



Indeed, any Canadian who believes man-made climate change will be the most important issue in next year's federal election should consider voting for Elizabeth May and the Green Party.



The Greens' carbon pricing policy — called revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend — is the only one designed to lower emissions, rather than raise government revenues.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-liberal-tory-same-old-story-on-climate-change">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnist ... ate-change">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-liberal-tory-same-old-story-on-climate-change



Trudeau and Scheer are playing games. I believe if Scheer is elected in follow in the footsteps of every pm over the last twenty years. Unrealistic emission reduction targets, pay lip service to climate change action and never meeting targets. Doesn't matter anyway, because there's nothing Canadians can do to stop the change the climate from changing. Carbon taxes only place an unnecessary financial burden on them.

[Anonymous]

No more funny business. No more obfuscation. No more fancy rhetoric.



The Liberal government's federally imposed carbon tax is going to hit Canadians in their wallets and it's time we were given the goods on how much that will cost.



On Monday, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a zinger of a report. It mostly dealt with the economic and fiscal outlook for the coming year.



But contained in it were also projected cost estimates for the federal carbon tax Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to impose on every province.



[size=150]The controversial tax starts at $10 per tonne this year and ramps up to $50 per tonne by 2022. That year, the PBO projects, it'll suck $10 billion from Canada's economy.



This will have the effect of reducing our GDP by 0.5%. In other words, Trudeau's pet tax will play a role in shrinking the economy.[/size]



A half a percentage point is no small potatoes either. That one single measure can have such a significant negative impact on the economy, and such questionable benefits for the environment is a problem – especially since the U.S. has rejected carbon taxes.



That $10 billion is an aggregate number though. How much will it hit your own wallet? What sort of dent in your family's annual budget will this cause?



That's where things get tricky. Kudos to the PBO for doing the legwork on this. However, detailed numbers aren't so readily available.



This isn't because they can't be tabulated. Or because they're not tabulated. They are. It's because the government isn't willing to release them.



Finance Canada already has the figures in a report. But when Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre requested that report via access to information laws, all he received was a heavily redacted document.



The numbers were removed, as if this was some sort of national security secret. Give us a break!



We have a right to know – especially given that the calculations have already been done by our public servants.



[size=150]The public is increasingly turning against carbon taxes – and with good reason. There are better ways to be environmentally friendly than hitting regular people where it hurts.

[/size]

Trudeau needs to come clean on carbon taxes and reveal their true cost.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-its-time-to-come-clean-on-carbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/editorial ... rbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-its-time-to-come-clean-on-carbon-taxes



Trudeau is deliberately hitting the middle class and he  knows it. That's why he won't be transparent and release details of his destructive carbon tax.

[Anonymous]

I know how carbon taxes takes money away from my family and gives it to cronies of Rachel Notley.

[Angry White Male]

They want us all to just ride our bicycles around.  The perfect utopia consists of us never heating our home, or driving a car.  Perfect utopia.  Except for the fact that they seem to be forgetting where we live...



Maybe Trudeau should ride his bicycle around Ottawa in December.

[Anonymous]

They want us all to just ride our bicycles around.  The perfect utopia consists of us never heating our home, or driving a car.  Perfect utopia.  Except for the fact that they seem to be forgetting where we live...



Maybe Trudeau should ride his bicycle around Ottawa in December.

I think they want us driving our cars, so they can get the revenue from gasoline taxes and carbon taxes.

[Anonymous]

They want us all to just ride our bicycles around.  The perfect utopia consists of us never heating our home, or driving a car.  Perfect utopia.  Except for the fact that they seem to be forgetting where we live...



Maybe Trudeau should ride his bicycle around Ottawa in December.

I think they want us driving our cars, so they can get the revenue from gasoline taxes and carbon taxes.

Of course. It's a win-win situation for True Dope. He can claim leadership on tacking climate change(even though it's useless) and he gets an extra $15-18 billion in additional GST revenue. Kind of like cigarettes. Every time they raise sin taxes on them they get more revenue to buy votes while claiming to protect the health of Canadians. Pure horseshit.

[Anonymous]

They want us all to just ride our bicycles around.  The perfect utopia consists of us never heating our home, or driving a car.  Perfect utopia.  Except for the fact that they seem to be forgetting where we live...



Maybe Trudeau should ride his bicycle around Ottawa in December.

I think they want us driving our cars, so they can get the revenue from gasoline taxes and carbon taxes.

Of course. It's a win-win situation for True Dope. He can claim leadership on tacking climate change(even though it's useless) and he gets an extra $15-18 billion in additional GST revenue. Kind of like cigarettes. Every time they raise sin taxes on them they get more revenue to buy votes while claiming to protect the health of Canadians. Pure horseshit.

Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau are saving the world by taking more money away from my family.

 

[Anonymous]

Progessives have hijacked the NDP. That party is now the biggest screw working people party.

[Anonymous]

The national carbon tax conversation is starting to turn into something of a comedy of errors. Here are some excerpts from an exchange at Tuesday's House of Commons finance committee that reads like something from Abbott and Costello or Oscar Wilde.



Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre: The question is — and you do have the answer — how much will it cost to the average Canadian household to pay the total [carbon] tax on all goods?



John Moffet (Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment): We currently don't have that estimate.



Moments later, Poilievre: In the federal jurisdiction, which is the exclusive focus of my questioning, how much will it cost the average Canadian household to pay this carbon tax?



Moffet: Again, that depends on how the jurisdiction uses the revenues, which the federal government is obliged, under this law, to return to the jurisdiction of origin.





Poilievre: The bill empowers the federal government to collect a $50-a-tonne carbon and you do know what that would cost the average Canadian household. Can you please tell Canadians now?



Moffet: I'm going to repeat the answer. It depends on how the revenues are used.



Moments later, Poilievre: I think there's an easy way to get to the answer, then. How much would the federal government have to return to the average Canadian household to compensate for the full cost of the carbon tax?



Moffet: I don't have that number available. I can tell you —



Poilievre: Has it been calculated?



Moffet: — though, that... No.



Poilievre: You're telling me that Finance Canada has not calculated what the original cost of the tax at $50 a tonne would be?



Moffet: I can't speak for Finance Canada.



You get the picture. And that's only a small sample of the bizarre exchange. There's more and I encourage you to go online at the House of Commons site and watch.



Now what makes this so hilarious is that, like something out of an Oscar Wilde plot, we the audience already know information that's been revealed to us in a previous act.



The reason Poilievre is so doggedly persistent on this is because we know for a fact that there is a document out there put together by the government that explicitly does tabulate the carbon tax costs per household, based on income brackets.



Poilievre has seen it. I've seen it. Some bureaucrats have seen it. It's just that they've blacked out the numbers when it was released under access to information laws.



This is similar to an exchange I had on radio recently with Christopher Ragan, an economics professor at McGill and, more importantly, chair of the Ecofiscal Commission, the leading policy group in the country that researches and advocates carbon pricing.



After I asked him multiple times how much the carbon tax would rake in, he finally put the number at $35 billion.



He's since backtracked on that number in an opinion piece for Maclean's, instead citing the figure as topping out at $28 billion.



But the mea culpa was a bizarre one that dodged the issue and then chastised me for even asking the question and not focusing instead on what would be done with the revenues once they're raked in, which is only one half of the conversation.



We've got a big problem here. Why do none of the so-called experts have this incredibly important figure readily available?



Whatever numbers we agree upon will only be projections (like all such estimate) and there will be various models that will offer up differing figures. But even still, why can't the leading voices on this issue provide a satisfactory answer to one of its most rudimentary questions?



Carbon tax advocates have found themselves in a really tough position right now. Perhaps we as a country should press pause on moving forward with this whole fiasco until we can get the basics covered.



We all like a good farce, but not when it comes to public policy.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-it-seems-not-even-the-experts-understand-carbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnist ... rbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-it-seems-not-even-the-experts-understand-carbon-taxes



They don't know how much it will cost people and won't admit it's meaningless.

[Anonymous]

It generates a lot of revenue, that's all they need to know.

[Angry White Male]

Where does all the money go?

[Anonymous]

Higher gas prices could torpedo Justine just like the did Clark in 79.

It looks like déjà vu all over again.



Forty years ago, in 1979, an arrogant Prime Minister Joe Clark threatened to impose on Canadians higher gas prices at the pump, 18 cents tax per gallon, to be exact. His government fell on a non-confidence vote to the then Liberal opposition led by Pierre Trudeau.



What goes around, comes around.



When Justin Trudeau and his Liberals impose carbon taxes on the Canadian people this year, they may meet the same fate as the hapless Joe Clark and his then minority Conservative government, for the same reasons.



Recall the sage words of philosopher George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it."



The historical similarities between the Clark government of '79 and the Trudeau government of today, are eerily similar.



After sixteen years of continuous Liberal rule, Joe Clark was elected as prime minister of a minority Conservative government. Clark wrongly believed at the time he had a mandate to effect massive change.



In his first budget, the Clark government proposed an 18 cent per gallon (4 cent per litre) tax on gasoline in order to reduce the budgetary deficit. In fact, Clark had won primarily in reaction to the last years of Pierre Trudeau's reign, in which Canada suffered from economic stagnation, high unemployment, budgetary deficits and rising inflation.



Similarly, Justin Trudeau won a majority government in 2015 primarily in reaction to ten years of tough-minded rule by Stephen Harper and the fact that Trudeau promised "sunny days", modest deficits and an economy more friendly to the middle class.



In winning a majority government, Trudeau also wrongly believed he had a mandate to effect massive change to all Canadian companies producing carbon emissions and to all Canadians who drive cars and trucks.



In 1979 there was also strong opposition to the proposed gas tax from the Trudeau Liberals, the NDP and from the federal members of the populist Quebec Social Credit party, whom the Conservatives needed to prop up their minority government.



Then Finance Minister John Crosbie proceeded for a vote in Parliament with this unpopular budget, promising that "it was short term pain for long term gain."



As foreseen, the Social Credit members abstained from voting and the opposing Liberal and NDP parties combined to defeat the budget and to defeat the minority Conservative government. Clark was forced to call another federal election. Clark and his gang lost that election to a revived Liberal party under a reborn Pierre Trudeau and the rest is political history.



Trudeau and his Liberals will be imposing as of 2019, carbon taxes of $20 per tonne, increasing to $50 per tonne by 2022.



Currently in Toronto, it costs about $1.35 per litre of gas at the pumps and $1.65 per litre in Vancouver.



Upon the imposition of Trudeau's growing carbon taxes, gas prices at the pumps will further skyrocket.



To Trudeau this is a good thing, as the high cost of gas according to the Liberals will be an incentive to Canadians to bike to work or walk to the corner grocery store to buy groceries.



Trudeau and his out of touch Liberals do not appreciate that most Canadians need trucks for work or cars to take their children to school, or travel to work or buy groceries. Regardless of the costs. Many of them really have no choice.



It could be that in 2019 Trudeau, like Joe Clark, will learn to his dismay that Canadians do not like short term pain at the gas pumps for the uncertainly of a long term gain in the environment.

[Anonymous]

It's a long video, but worth watching if you have the time. I don't agree with all of it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Seoul..



Maybe next Saturday I'll watch all of it.