Danielle Smith slams Trudeau’s carbon tax exemption for Atlantic Canada and not rest of country

‘As a Canadian, do you feel it is fair to continue paying the carbon tax on home heating when some places are now exempt?’ the Alberta premier asked.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith chided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as being unfair in not applying “tax fairness” for Albertans and all Canadians after Trudeau announced a pause on the carbon tax for home heating oil but only for Atlantic Canada.

“If you’re going to have a federal government asserting that they have to have this power so that everybody is treated equally, then they don’t treat everyone equally. It seems to me that that’s something that should go back to the court and ask them whether or not they want to reconsider whether this is an appropriate use of the federal powers,” Smith said recently at a press conference.

“I would rather the federal government accept that if this is a painful tax coming into winter for Atlantic Canadians, it’s a painful tax going into the winter for everyone and just make sure that he does the right thing and takes the tax off for all types of home heating and every province,” Smith said.

As a Canadian, do you feel it is fair to continue paying the carbon tax on home heating when some places are now exempt?

Comment below 👇 pic.twitter.com/9jHEp9cFpK

— Danielle Smith (@ABDanielleSmith) November 2, 2023

Smith has been fighting a prolonged battle with the Liberal federal government of Trudeau, who has gone on the attack against Alberta’s oil and gas industry through the implementation of ideologically charged laws, including the punitive carbon tax.

Trudeau, however, has given breaks to some parts of the country on the carbon tax for home heating fuels but not others.

He recently announced that he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in for three years, but only for Atlantic Canadian provinces. The current cost of the carbon tax on home heating fuel is 17 cents per litre. Most Canadians, however, heat their homes with clean-burning natural gas, a fuel that will not be exempted from the carbon tax.

Trudeau’s announcement came amid dismal polling numbers showing his government will be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election.

Recent political challenges against the carbon tax have failed. Recently, a CPC motion calling for the carbon tax to be paused for all Canadians failed to pass after the Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs voted against it. This motion interestingly had support from the New Democratic Party (NDP) but that was not enough to get it passed.

Canadian premiers come together to demand carbon tax pause for all provinces

Trudeau’s latest offering of a three-year pause on the carbon tax in Atlantic Canada has caused a major rift with oil and gas-rich western provinces, notably Alberta and Saskatchewan, and even Manitoba, which has a new NDP government.

This prompted all premiers of Canada to come together to call on the Trudeau government to extend the carbon tax fuel pause to all Canadians.

“All this is doing is causing unfairness, making life less affordable, and really harming the most vulnerable as we get into the winter season,” Smith said today about most provinces being left out of the carbon tax pause.

Going one step further, on November 10, Five Canadian premiers from coast to coast banded together to demand Trudeau drop the carbon tax for home heating for all Canadian provinces, saying his policy of giving one region a tax break over another have caused “divisions” in Canada.

After Trudeau announced a special tax break for Atlantic Canada, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said his province will stop collecting a federal carbon tax on natural gas used to heat homes on January 1, 2024, unless it gets a similar tax break as the Atlantic Canadian provinces.

Alberta has repeatedly promised to place the interests of their people above the Trudeau government’s “unconstitutional” demands while consistently reminding the federal government that their infrastructures and economies depend upon oil, gas, and coal.

As for Smith has fought back, and recently tore a page off a heckler’s fantasy suggestion of a solar and wind battery-powered future after she stepped into the lion’s den to advocate for oil and gas at a conference hosted by a pro-climate change think tank.

Smith has said she will be looking into whether a Supreme Court challenge on the carbon tax is in order. She noted, however, that as Alberta has a deregulated energy industry, unlike Saskatchewan, she is not able to stop collecting the federal carbon tax.

The Trudeau 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 are involved.

The Trudeau government has also defied a recent Supreme Court ruling and will push ahead with its net-zero emission regulations.

Canada’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the federal government’s “no more pipelines” legislation is mostly unconstitutional after a long legal battle with the province of Alberta, where the Conservative government opposes the radical climate change agenda.

Related Topics:#AnthonyMurdoch #CarbonTax #HomeHeating #HomeHeatingOil #LifeSiteNews #PremierDanielleSmith

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Alberta awash in corporate welfare

Published on July 26, 2024

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

To understand Ottawa’s negative impact on Alberta’s economy and living standards, juxtapose two recent pieces of data.

First, in July the Trudeau government made three separate “economic development” spending announcements in Alberta, totalling more than $80 million and affecting 37 different projects related to the “green economy,” clean technology and agriculture. And second, as noted in a new essay by Fraser Institute senior fellow Kenneth Green, inflation-adjusted business investment (excluding residential structures) in Canada’s extraction sector (mining, quarrying, oil and gas) fell 51.2 per cent from 2014 to 2022.

The productivity gains that raise living standards and improve economic conditions rely on business investment. But business investment in Canada has declined over the past decade and total economic growth per person (inflation-adjusted) from Q3-2015 through to Q1-2024 has been less than 1 per cent versus robust growth of nearly 16 per cent in the United States over the same period.

For Canada’s extraction sector, as Green documents, federal policies—new fuel regulations, extended review processes on major infrastructure projects, an effective ban on oil shipments on British Columbia’s northern coast, a hard greenhouse gas emissions cap targeting oil and gas, and other regulatory initiatives—are largely to blame for the massive decline in investment.

Meanwhile, as Ottawa impedes private investment, its latest bundle of economic development announcements underscores its strategy to have government take the lead in allocating economic resources, whether for infrastructure and public institutions or for corporate welfare to private companies.

Consider these federally-subsidized projects.

A gas cloud imaging company received $4.1 million from taxpayers to expand marketing, operations and product development. The Battery Metals Association of Canada received $850,000 to “support growth of the battery metals sector in Western Canada by enhancing collaboration and education stakeholders.” A food manufacturer in Lethbridge received $5.2 million to increase production of plant-based protein products. Ermineskin Cree Nation received nearly $400,000 for a feasibility study for a new solar farm. The Town of Coronation received almost $900,000 to renovate and retrofit two buildings into a business incubator. The Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada received $400,000 for marketing and other support to help boost clean technology product exports. And so on.

When the Trudeau government announced all this corporate welfare and spending, it naturally claimed it create economic growth and good jobs. But corporate welfare doesn’t create growth and good jobs, it only directs resources (including labour) to subsidized sectors and businesses and away from sectors and businesses that must be more heavily taxed to support the subsidies. The effect of government initiatives that reduce private investment and replace it with government spending is a net economic loss.

As 20th-century business and economics journalist Henry Hazlitt put it, the case for government directing investment (instead of the private sector) relies on politicians and bureaucrats—who did not earn the money and to whom the money does not belong—investing that money wisely and with almost perfect foresight. Of course, that’s preposterous.

Alas, this replacement of private-sector investment with public spending is happening not only in Alberta but across Canada today due to the Trudeau government’s fiscal policies. Lower productivity and lower living standards, the data show, are the unhappy results.

Author:

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Alberta

‘Fireworks’ As Defence Opens Case In Coutts Two Trial

Published on July 25, 2024

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ray McGinnis

Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert are on trial for conspiracy to commit murder and firearms charges in relation to the Coutts Blockade into mid-February 2022. In opening her case before a Lethbridge, AB, jury on July 11, Olienick’s lawyer, Marilyn Burns stated “This is a political, criminal trial that is un Canadian.” She told the jury, “You will be shocked, and at the very least, disappointed with how Canada’s own RCMP conducted themselves during and after the Coutts protest,” as she summarized officers’ testimony during presentation of the Crown’s case. Burns also contended that “the conduct of Alberta’s provincial government and Canada’s federal government are entwined with the RCMP.” The arrests of the Coutts Four on the night of February 13 and noon hour of February 14, were key events in a decision by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Janice Charette, and the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, Jody Thomas, to advise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act. Chief Justice Paul Rouleau, in submitting his Public Order Emergency Commission Report to Parliament on February 17, 2023, also cited events at the Coutts Blockade as key to his conclusion that the government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act.

Justice David Labrenz cautioned attorney Burns regarding her language, after Crown prosecutor Stephen Johnson objected to some of the language in the opening statement of Olienick’s counsel. Futher discussion about the appropriateness of attorney Burns’ statement to the jury is behind a publication ban, as discussions occurred without the jury present.

Justice Labrenz told the jury on July 12, “I would remind you that the presumption of innocence means that both the accused are cloaked with that presumption, unless the Crown proves beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of the charge(s).” He further clarified what should result if the jurors were uncertain about which narrative to believe: the account by the Crown, or the account from the accused lawyers. Labrenz stated that such ambivalence must lead to an acquittal; As such a degree of uncertainty regarding which case to trust in does not meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” threshold for a conviction.”

On July 15, 2024, a Lethbridge jury heard evidence from a former employer of Olienicks’ named Brian Lambert. He stated that he had tasked Olienick run his sandstone quarry and mining business. He was a business partner with Olienick. In that capacity, Olienick made use of what Lambert referred to as “little firecrackers,” to quarry the sandstone and reduce it in size. Reducing the size of the stone renders it manageable to get refined and repurposed so it could be sold to buyers of stone for other uses (building construction, patio stones, etc.) Lambert explained that the “firecrackers” were “explosive devices” packaged within tubing and pipes that could also be used for plumbing. He detailed how “You make them out of ordinary plumbing pipe and use some kind of propellant like shotgun powder…” Lambert explained that the length of the pipe “…depended on how big a hole or how large a piece of stone you were going to crack. The one I saw was about six inches long … maybe an inch in diameter.”

One of Olienick’s charges is “unlawful possession of an explosive device for a dangerous purpose.” The principal evidence offered up by RCMP to the Crown is what the officers depicted as “pipe bombs” which they obtained at the residence of Anthony Olienick in Claresholm, Alberta, about a two-hour drive from Coutts. Officers entered his home after he was arrested the night of February 13, 2022. Lambert’s testimony offers a plausible common use for the “firecrackers” the RCMP referred to as “pipe bombs.” Lambert added, these “firecrackers” have a firecracker fuse, and in the world of “explosive” they are “no big deal.”

Fellow accused, Chris Carbert, is does not face the additional charge of unlawful possession of explosives for a dangerous purpose. This is the first full week of the case for the defence. The trial began on June 6 when the Crown began presenting its case.

Ray McGinnis is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy who recently attended several days of testimony at the Coutts Two trial.