Business
The Liberal war on our cost of living lives on
Well, the election is over, and it turns out that I was right to be sceptical of the polls. Polling which showed collapsing support for the Conservative Party, which I said over and over didn’t track with what I was seeing on the ground, was clearly wrong. In fact, the Conservative Party increased their share of the vote by more than 7 points, breaking 40% for the first time since 1988, while picking up 23 seats in parliament.
That kept the Liberals to a minority government — something the pollsters were definitely not predicting — and they only did as well as they did because the Bloc Québécois lost ground and the NDP were absolutely decimated.
For this we have Donald Trump to thank, and his unprecedented intervention in our election. Not to mention Canadian boomers, who as a group ranked Trump as the most important issue in this election, and “Making Canada a better place to live” as their least important issue, just behind “Growing the Economy” and making life more affordable.
They’ve made their money, after all. They’ve built up tremendous equity in their homes. And it just made them feel good to vote in a way that they thought would make Donald Trump mad. (Not that it did.)
We are now seeing a rising generation of younger adults who will be the first to lose ground as compared to their parents since the Great Depression. And why is that? Because the Baby Boomers decided to vote to reward those politicians whose policies have been, and will continue to be, a direct assault on the Canadian cost of living.
Carney’s government will double down on the worst policies of the Trudeau era. He is, after all, the Apostle of Net-Zero.
That means doubling down on carbon taxation, especially in the form of the Industrial Carbon Tax, which will hurt existing businesses and discourage others from getting off the ground. And if he sees an opportunity to go back to charging the Consumer Carbon Tax — remember that it remains on the books — he will do that as well.
It also means continued electric vehicle mandates. Many Canadians remain ignorant of the fact that the Trudeau Liberals banned the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, beginning in 2035, just ten years from now. It took some prodding, but the Conservatives vowed to scrap that mandate.
Now it will remain in effect, and that means higher priced gas-and-diesel driven cars in the near term, as Canadians start to process the fact that they won’t be able to buy them soon. It will mean eventually being forced to buy even more expensive EVs and, if nothing changes, without government support, as the federal EV subsidy program ran out of money months ago.
Meanwhile, prepare for every story about an auto company bailing on commitments to build electric vehicles in Canada to feel like a crisis. Those agreements were negotiated at a time when decision makers assumed that Donald Trump would lose his second bid for the White House, and Americans would have EVs forced on them as well.
In that climate, it seemed like a great idea to accept the mountains of taxpayer dollars being offered to automakers by Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford. But without the American market, doing so makes much less business sense. Even with Doug Ford bellowing that he’s going to “hold them accountable” and force them to “continue manufacturing automobiles here in Ontario!”
And it further means that the Trudeau government’s war on pipelines will now become the Carney government’s war on pipelines.
Remember, while campaigning just a few weeks ago, how Carney went to Edmonton and proclaimed his intention to:
Make Canada “the world’s leading energy superpower,”
Invest in our “natural strengths and ensure our economic sovereignty,” and
fast-track “projects of national interest,”
while acknowledging that,
“any major energy project that comes from this great province is going to pass the boundaries of other provinces?”
His clear implication was that he intended to change course from his predecessor, to facilitate the building of pipelines, perhaps to revive Energy East, and to do so even over the objections of Quebec.
Suffice it to say, we didn’t believe a word of it. And now we see we were right not to do so, as we’ve just seen two of Carney’s ministers — Steven Guilbeault and Dominic LeBlanc — throw cold water on the idea that the Carney government would support new pipeline projects.
That’s because the activists who continue to run our country would prefer the pat on the head they get from the Davos brigade than to support the backbone of our economy, the natural resource sector, upon which Canadian jobs, energy affordability, and our overall cost of living rests.
All this means, of course, is that our work is not done. Our fight to protect the Canada we all know and love, where regular people can do honest work, buy a house, raise a family and live comfortably, goes on.
As disappointing as the outcome of this election was, it is just a setback. More and more people are hearing our message. We’re already seeing signs of buyer’s remorse among Carney voters. And, to put it bluntly, if something can’t continue on one way forever, it won’t. Which is to say, we’re going to have to change course sometime. The sooner, the better.
So, to borrow a phrase, Elbows Up.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
From LifeSiteNews
By
“central bank digital currency could hand incredible power to the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor financial transactions, punish whatever behaviours the government deems undesirable, and penalize those on the wrong side of government ambitions”
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms released a new report examining how the adoption of a central bank digital currency in Canada could undermine the rights and freedoms of Canadians, including their privacy, autonomy, security, equality, and access to economic participation.
Financial transactions are increasingly conducted digitally. In 2023, a mere 11 percent of transactions were conducted with cash, according to Payments Canada.
This trend is not limited to individual consumers. Government entities, including government departments, agencies, and Crown Corporations, have rapidly digitized access to, and delivery of, their goods and services over the past decade.
READ: Mark Carney has history of supporting CBDCs, endorsed Freedom Convoy crackdown
Against this backdrop, in 2017, the Bank of Canada (a Crown Corporation) began exploring the possibility of implementing its own government-issued and government-controlled cashless currency – a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In a 2023 Bank of Canada survey on CBDCs, however, 82 percent of 89,423 respondents strongly disagreed that the Bank of Canada should be researching or building the capability to issue a CBDC. Despite these results, the Bank of Canada continues to research a CBDC for Canada.
The Justice Centre’s report critically evaluates the impact a CBDC could have on Canadians’ fundamental rights and freedoms. Absent robust legislative protections and oversight, a CBDC could allow the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor Canadians’ purchases, donations, investments and other financial transactions.
A CBDC has the potential to empower government to reward and punish the behaviours and lifestyle choices of individual Canadians, as Communist China does with its “social credit” system. Allowing the government to peer into and influence Canadians’ purchasing behaviours could have a profoundly damaging impact on their privacy and autonomy, cautions the report.
READ: Financial expert warns all-digital monetary system would enable ‘complete control’ of citizens
Canada is not the first jurisdiction to explore a CBDC. This report evaluates the Bank of Canada’s exploration within a global context, applying lessons learned from jurisdictions like Nigeria, the Caribbean, and others.
After analyzing negative outcomes of “going cashless” in jurisdictions such as Australia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, this report advocates for the value of cash and the need for robust institutional and legislative protections for the use of cash.
Ben Klassen, Education Programs Coordinator at the Justice Centre and lead author of the report, stated, “Many Canadian politicians and policy designers would have us participate in a frantic (and global) race to digitize goods and services, including our dollar. The finish line, we are told, promises heightened profitability, convenience, and security. While the pursuit of innovation and efficiency can deliver worthwhile rewards, we must always remember the values of privacy, autonomy, security, equality, and access to economic participation. Adopting a central bank digital currency risks excluding the homeless, the elderly, the ‘internetless,’ the technologically illiterate, and the conscientious objector.”
“Most seriously, a central bank digital currency could hand incredible power to the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor financial transactions, punish whatever behaviours the government deems undesirable, and penalize those on the wrong side of government ambitions,” continued Mr. Klassen. “This issue should be framed as a contrast between a ‘digital dollar’ and a ‘human dollar’ – our currency cannot be designed without regard for the humans and human values that will be profoundly impacted by its design.”
READ: RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established
This report was produced in collaboration with Sharon Polsky – President of AMINAcorp.ca, President of the Privacy & Access Council of Canada, and a Privacy by Design Ambassador with more than 30 years’ experience in advising governments and policy designers on privacy and access matters.
Reprinted with permission from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
From the Fraser Institute
Prime Minister Carney recently unveiled his new cabinet, and he made some changes in some key policy areas including Energy and Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change, and Transport and Internal Trade. What do these cabinet picks tell us about the potential policy focus of Carney’s government moving forward?
At the helm of the Energy and Natural Resource portfolio, Carney appointed Timothy Hodgson, a former banker and chair of Ontario’s massive Hydro One electricity utility. A quick search of Hodgson’s previous experience and opinions on matters of energy and natural resource policy comes up rather dry—he is something of a cypher. Acquaintances are quoted in several articles suggesting he has a pragmatic, pro-business orientation, but that is about all we can glean.
Still, what we do know is that Hodgson is replacing Jonathan Wilkinson, previously a supporter of highly aggressive greenhouse gas emission reductions, and aggressive regulation in the energy and natural resource policy spaces when part of Trudeau’s cabinet. So, with a mostly blank slate to stand on, and an ostensibly pragmatic “banker” mentality, we can expect (hope?) that Minister Hodgson blazes a less extreme path forward on energy and natural resource issues, balancing in a more even-handed fashion protection of the environment and natural resources with Canada’s need for economic productivity.
Hodgson’s partner on the energy, natural resource environmental policy front will be Julie Dabrusin, new Minister of Environment and Climate Change, replacing Uber-environmentalist Steven Guilbeault. Dabrusin was previously Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources in the Trudeau government. The most logical expectation would be to expect she will continue to champion Trudeau-esque policies, tempering any hopes we might have for the potentially more moderate Minister Hodgson as bellwether of Canada’s energy, natural resource and environmental policies.
Finally, Carney appointed Chrystia Freeland as Minister of Transport and Internal Trade. Freeland is a strong believer in the climate crisis, an intense regulator thereof, and seems to believe that transportation must be electrified, pedalized and mass-transificated (okay, I made that last term up) to save the planet. So, anyone hoping for a move away from the green-transportation agenda, away from an all electric-car, mass-transit oriented future, and back to something favouring (or at least not-demonizing) an automobile-centric lifestyle might want to rein in their expectations.
Unfortunately, in Carney’s cavalcade of cabinet officials, he did not create a new Minister of Regulatory Reform and Right-Sizing (again, my term). One of Canada’s biggest public policy illnesses is its plague of regulations. Canada is drowning under a mountain of regulatory red-tape and badly needs a minister with scissors. Canada wants no part of a U.S.-style Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but a Minister of Regulatory Reform and Right-Sizing, akin to what British Columbia had briefly in 2001, would be a policy tonic Canada needs badly.
Little is known about exactly where the bulk of Prime Minister Carney’s new cabinet will take us, but the safe betting—in areas of environment, natural resources, climate change and transportation—is that we’re likely to see a continuance of Trudeau-era policies, though promulgated by somewhat more bland less-obviously-zealous eco-warriors. Time will tell.
Kenneth P. Green
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