National
Trudeau gov’t seeks to delay election by one week, ensuring MPs pass pension threshold
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From LifeSiteNews
If the next federal election is delayed from October 20, 2025, to October 27, as the Trudeau government desires, many Liberal and NDP MPs who were elected on October 21, 2019 will just narrowly qualify for a lifetime pension by passing the six-year threshold.
The Liberal government is attempting to delay the federal election in what many see as an attempt to secure pensions for MPs who are projected to lose their seats.
According to election amendments proposed March 20, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to move the 2025 federal election to a week later than it is currently scheduled, ensuring that a number of Liberal and New Democratic Party (NDP) MPs who are unlikely to be re-elected would receive their pensions by passing the six-year threshold.
“Should a fixed date election be held in 2025, it would be held on Monday October 20th,” the amendment reads.
“However, many communities in Canada will be celebrating Diwali at this time,” it argues. “Therefore, a one-time change to the date is proposed so that the potential election would not conflict with Diwali. Instead, the election would be held the following Monday.”
The federal election is scheduled to take place on October 20, 2025, according to Canada’s Elections Act, which states a general election must be held “on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election.”
If the election is held on October 20, many Liberal and NDP MPs who were elected on October 21, 2019 will just narrowly miss the six-year threshold to qualify for a lifetime parliamentary pension.
The proposed amendment would move the federal election to October 27, 2025, allowing the MPs to receive their pensions. Those who would benefit from the delay include Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Treasury Board President Anita Anand.
The one-week delay could cost Canadian taxpayers millions to cover the extra pensions.
In 2021, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calculated that Liberal MP Adam Vaughan would receive $1.3 million in pension benefits if he reached Canadian life expectancy through the pension plan. Similarly, Conservative MP David Yurdiga was eligible for $1.5 million of lifetime benefits after serving in the House of Commons for seven years.
Notably, the delay would only be of benefit to the Trudeau government if they believe they will lose the next election. Indeed, if Trudeau thought he could win the upcoming election, there would be little reason to delay to ensure his MPs would be given pensions.
The amendments come after months of polling in favour of the Conservative Party under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre.
A recent poll found that 70 percent of Canadians believe country is “broken” as Trudeau focuses on less important issues. Similarly, in January, most Canadians reported that they’re worse off financially since Trudeau took office.
Additionally, a January poll showed that 46 percent of Canadians expressed a desire for the federal election to take place sooner rather than the latest mandated date in the fall of 2025.
Recent polls show that the scandal-plagued government has sent the Liberals into a nosedive with no end in sight. Per a recent LifeSiteNews report, according to polls, were a Canadian federal election held today, Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority in the House of Commons over Trudeau’s Liberals.
Economy
Federal government’s GHG reduction plan will impose massive costs on Canadians
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/tvrd-fi-worker-construct-employment-image-2024-07-26.jpg)
From the Fraser Institute
Many Canadians are unhappy about the carbon tax. Proponents argue it’s the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is true, but the problem for the government is that even as the tax hits the upper limit of what people are willing to pay, emissions haven’t fallen nearly enough to meet the federal target of at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Indeed, since the temporary 2020 COVID-era drop, national GHG emissions have been rising, in part due to rapid population growth.
The carbon tax, however, is only part of the federal GHG plan. In a new study published by the Fraser Institute, I present a detailed discussion of the Trudeau government’s proposed Emission Reduction Plan (ERP), including its economic impacts and the likely GHG reduction effects. The bottom line is that the package as a whole is so harmful to the economy it’s unlikely to be implemented, and it still wouldn’t reach the GHG goal even if it were.
Simply put, the government has failed to provide a detailed economic assessment of its ERP, offering instead only a superficial and flawed rationale that overstates the benefits and waives away the costs. My study presents a comprehensive analysis of the proposed policy package and uses a peer-reviewed macroeconomic model to estimate its economic and environmental effects.
The Emissions Reduction Plan can be broken down into three components: the carbon tax, the Clean Fuels Regulation (CFR) and the regulatory measures. The latter category includes a long list including the electric vehicle mandate, carbon capture system tax credits, restrictions on fertilizer use in agriculture, methane reduction targets and an overall emissions cap in the oil and gas industry, new emission limits for the electricity sector, new building and motor vehicle energy efficiency mandates and many other such instruments. The regulatory measures tend to have high upfront costs and limited short-term effects so they carry relatively high marginal costs of emission reductions.
The cheapest part of the package is the carbon tax. I estimate it will get 2030 emissions down by about 18 per cent compared to where they otherwise would be, returning them approximately to 2020 levels. The CFR brings them down a further 6 per cent relative to their base case levels and the regulatory measures bring them down another 2.5 per cent, for a cumulative reduction of 26.5 per cent below the base case 2030 level, which is just under 60 per cent of the way to the government’s target.
However, the costs of the various components are not the same.
The carbon tax reduces emissions at an initial average cost of about $290 per tonne, falling to just under $230 per tonne by 2030. This is on par with the federal government’s estimate of the social costs of GHG emissions, which rise from about $250 to $290 per tonne over the present decade. While I argue that these social cost estimates are exaggerated, even if we take them at face value, they imply that while the carbon tax policy passes a cost-benefit test the rest of the ERP does not because the per-tonne abatement costs are much higher. The CFR roughly doubles the cost per tonne of GHG reductions; adding in the regulatory measures approximately triples them.
The economic impacts are easiest to understand by translating these costs into per-worker terms. I estimate that the annual cost per worker of the carbon-pricing system net of rebates, accounting for indirect effects such as higher consumer costs and lower real wages, works out to $1,302 as of 2030. Adding in the government’s Clean Fuels Regulations more than doubles that to $3,550 and adding in the other regulatory measures increases it further to $6,700.
The policy package also reduces total employment. The carbon tax results in an estimated 57,000 fewer jobs as of 2030, the Clean Fuels Regulation increases job losses to 94,000 and the regulatory measures increases losses to 164,000 jobs. Claims by the federal government that the ERP presents new opportunities for jobs and employment in Canada are unsupported by proper analysis.
The regional impacts vary. While the energy-producing provinces (especially Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick) fare poorly, Ontario ends up bearing the largest relative costs. Ontario is a large energy user, and the CFR and other regulatory measures have strongly negative impacts on Ontario’s manufacturing base and consumer wellbeing.
Canada’s stagnant income and output levels are matters of serious policy concern. The Trudeau government has signalled it wants to fix this, but its climate plan will make the situation worse. Unfortunately, rather than seeking a proper mandate for the ERP by giving the public an honest account of the costs, the government has instead offered vague and unsupported claims that the decarbonization agenda will benefit the economy. This is untrue. And as the real costs become more and more apparent, I think it unlikely Canadians will tolerate the plan’s continued implementation.
Author:
Alberta
Alberta awash in corporate welfare
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/tvrd-fi-corporate-welfare-image-2024-07-26.jpg)
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:
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