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National

Taxpayers Federation calls on Smith to join carbon tax court fight

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Kris Sims

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to join New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and launch a legal challenge against the federal carbon tax.

“Alberta successfully led the fight against the ‘No More Pipelines’ law at the Supreme Court, and Smith should get our province to do the same against the carbon tax,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “Albertans are being punished every time we pay our heating bills and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is shredding constitutional accountability with his unequal application of the carbon tax.”

Higgs announced that if he is re-elected, New Brunswick would launch a renewed legal challenge against the federal carbon tax.

The federal carbon tax “carve-outs violate the Supreme Court’s ruling, and the tax makes gas, groceries, and essential services more expensive,” according to the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.

Last year, the federal government announced it is removing the carbon tax from furnace oil for three years, but did not exempt other forms of home heating energy.

“Across Canada, fuel oil makes up just three per cent of residential heating energy,” according to the government of Nova Scotia. “Natural gas was the most commonly used energy source for residential heating.”

The average Alberta home uses about  2,930 cubic metres of natural gas per year, according to Statistics Canada. That means removing the current federal carbon tax would save the average home about $439 this year.

“When Trudeau announced his furnace oil carve out, he admitted the carbon tax makes life more expensive and he left 97 per cent of Canadian families out in the cold,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “All premiers should do everything in their power to fight the carbon tax.”

A 2023 Leger poll found 70 per cent of Canadians support removing the carbon tax from all home heating fuels.

Business

Carney government should retire misleading ‘G7’ talking point on economic growth

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen and Milagros Palacios

If you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.

Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget. Don’t be surprised if it mentions Canada’s economic performance relative to peer countries in the G7.

In the past, this talking point was frequently used by prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau and their senior cabinet officials. And it’s apparently survived the transition to the Carney government, as the finance minister earlier this year triumphantly tweeted that Canada’s economic growth was “among the strongest in the G7.”

But here’s the problem. Canada’s rate of economic growth relative to the rest of the G7 is almost completely irrelevant as an indicator of economic strength because it’s heavily influenced by Canada’s much faster rate of population growth. In other words, Canada’s faster pace of overall economic growth (measured by GDP) compared to most other developed countries has not been due to Canadians becoming more productive and generating more income for their families, but rather primarily because there are more people in Canada working and producing things.

In reality, if you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, if you simply look at total economic growth in the G7 in recent years (2020-24) without reference to population, Canada does indeed look good. Canada’s economy has had the second-most total economic growth in the G7 behind only the United States.

However, if you make a simple adjustment for differences in population change over this same time, a completely different picture emerges. Canada’s per-person GDP actually declined by 2 per cent from 2020 to 2024. This is the worst five-year decline since the Great Depression nearly a century ago. And on this much more important measure of wellbeing, Canada goes from second in the G7 to dead last.

Due to Canada’s rapid population growth in recent years, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration, aggregate GDP growth is quite simply a misleading economic indicator for comparing our performance to other countries that aren’t experiencing similar increases in the size of their labour markets. As such, it’s long past time for politicians to retire misleading talking points about Canada’s “strong” growth performance in the G7.

After making a simple adjustment to account for Canada’s rapidly growing population, it becomes clear that the government has nothing to brag about. In fact, Canada is a growth laggard and has been for a long time, with living standards that have actually declined appreciably over the last half-decade.

Ben Eisen

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Milagros Palacios

Director, Addington Centre for Measurement, Fraser Institute
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Justice

A Justice System That Hates Punishment Can’t Protect the Innocent

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The Opposition with Dan Knight

Dan Knight's avatar Dan Knight

Five judges decided that child exploitation isn’t worth a year in prison

What the hell is going on in Canada?

Quebec (Attorney General) v. Senneville – SCC Cases

This isn’t a legal debate. This isn’t a constitutional nuance. This is a collapse. A collapse of morality, of justice, of basic human decency.

This week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled—by a 5-4 vote—that handing a child pornographer a one-year prison sentence is cruel and unusual punishment. Yes, really. According to the highest court in the land, asking a man who hoarded videos of children—actual children—being raped… to serve twelve months behind bars… is too much to ask. It’s excessive. It’s unfair.

ARE YOU HEARING THIS?!!!!?!!!!?

Let’s talk about the two men at the center of this decision. Not hypotheticals. Not academic theories. Real men. Real crimes. Real victims.

Louis-Pier Senneville—a former soldier, no less—pleaded guilty to possessing over 470 files, 90 percent of which featured young girls aged 3 to 6. Think about that. Three years old. These weren’t gray-area images. These were children, babies, being sodomized, penetrated, used like objects. And he didn’t stumble across them—he looked for them, on specialized sites, and kept them for over a year.

Mathieu Naud? He went even further. 531 images, 274 videos, kids aged 5 to 10. Anal, vaginal, oral rape. These are things no human being should even have to read about—let alone sit in front of a computer and download, categorize, and distribute. Which he did. For months. With software designed to erase his tracks.

This isn’t some “first-time slip-up.” This is deliberate, targeted, depraved behavior. And now?

90 days.

9 to 11 months.

That’s the punishment.

That’s what the Canadian justice system thinks these crimes are worth.

Because five justices decided that asking a pedophile to spend one year in prison might be too harsh for a hypothetical offender. Not these offenders. Not the ones with troves of abuse files saved on hard drives. No… some imaginary guy who maybe clicked the wrong link.

This is what liberalism does to a justice system. It corrupts it beyond repair. It starts with empathy for criminals, and ends with judges protecting predators from consequences. Because in the upside-down world of progressive legal theory, the offender is always the victim. And the actual victims—the kids in those videos—are reduced to footnotes. Inconvenient collateral damage.

This decision—this revolting, disgraceful ruling—is not some fluke. It’s not an isolated misfire by a rogue court. It is the natural conclusion of a liberal worldview that refuses to see evil for what it is. A worldview that sees punishment as outdated, that sees moral judgment as offensive, and that sees child predators as victims of circumstance who just need counseling and compassion.

You want to know what happens when you erase right and wrong?

When your leaders worship “inclusivity” more than innocence?

When your courts protect predators more than children?

This happens.

Five judges decided that a man hoarding child rape videos should be treated with mercy.

Not the children in the videos—no. Not the parents whose lives were shattered.

Not the society that expects its institutions to defend the weak and punish the wicked.

No, mercy for the predator. ALWAYS FOR THE PREDATOR!!!

And now these men—Senneville and Naud—will be out walking the streets. Free men. Maybe shopping next to you at the grocery store. Maybe living near a school. Because Canada’s highest court decided that a year in prison was just too mean.

This isn’t policy failure. This is moral treason.

It’s going to take more than reform to fix this. It’s going to take an entirely new political order—one that puts children before criminals, justice before hypotheticals, and truth before ideology.

Until then, this isn’t a justice system.

It’s a disgrace.

And every decent person in Canada should be outraged.

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