The environment minister tried to make the case that the plan is working and ruled out slowing down scheduled increases to the carbon tax
OTTAWA — Low in the polls and staring down the barrel of an election, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault tried to make a case.
That case, which the minister outlined before reporters gathered on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, was a simple one: The Liberals’ plan to tackle climate change is working and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wants to cut it.
Monday evening, at the Port of Montreal, a fire broke out in a container that was storing 15,000 kilograms of lithium batteries. The city issued a lockdown notice at 7:06 PM. Residents of the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough were told that it was “important to stay indoors, close doors, windows and ventilation systems for (their) safety.” The notice remained in effect until 10:57 PM when they ended the lockdown, assuring the public it was issued as a “precaution,” that the fire was now “under control,” even though the “operation could still take a few more hours,” and that “tests (had) confirmed that any danger to public health and safety (had) been ruled out.”
Ottawa’s tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) offer only a “short reprieve” for Canada’s EV industry, the Commons trade committee was told at a recent meeting about a month after the tariffs were announced in late August.
“This is basically a short reprieve—a temporary reprieve for Canadian manufacturers in the EV supply chain to basically step up to the plate and build the things that they have promised to build with investments from a lot of public dollars, and to actually get it started,” said Elizabeth Kwan, a senior researcher with the Canadian Labour Congress, on Sept. 16.
This sounds like an attempt to warn of the coming blow to Trudeau’s Soviet style EV investment strategy.
Heading into the next federal election, it’s important to understand that maintaining and increasing the federal carbon tax (Liberals) or killing it (Conservatives), accounts for only a fraction of the total costs Canadians are paying when it comes to addressing climate change.
Another day, another government report proves carbon taxes are a drag on our economy that Canadians can’t afford.
In 2030, the second carbon tax “will result in an overall (Gross Domestic Product) decrease of up to $9 billion.” That’s according to government documents tabled in the House of Commons in response to an order paper question filed by Conservative MP John Barlow (Foothills).
Taxpayers better brace themselves for the bruising impact of the Trudeau government’s carbon tax on home heating bills this winter.
If you heat your home with natural gas, like more than 75% of Ontario households, you will be paying a lot more to stay warm.
The carbon tax increases the cost of natural gas by 15 cents per cubic metre.
With both the federal NDP and B.C.’s NDP government backing away from support for the carbon tax, it is time to pronounce the tax politically dead in Canada, with precise funeral arrangements to be made after the next federal election. Conservative governments across Canada have long opposed a carbon tax, and federal leader Pierre Poilievre is anxious to fight the next election on the issue. But now even Liberal support is flagging, with Newfoundland’s Liberal government attacking the tax as too costly for households. The federal Liberals themselves acknowledged the tax was a problem when they provided a carve-out for home heating oil, which is heavily used in Atlantic Canada.
OTTAWA — The Liberals say the House of Commons exceeded its powers when MPs ordered the government to hand over all documents related to the so-called “green slush fund” so they can be sent to the RCMP.
On Wednesday, Government House Leader Karina Gould called on Speaker Greg Fergus to reject opposition parties’ claim that the government violated MPs’ parliamentary privilege by refusing to provide them with unfettered access to thousands of documents regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC).
University researchers have been branded “hypocrites” for condemning air travel as bad for the planet but then flying to conferences anyway.
A study found that about a third of the academics at a leading UK university had flown to at least one meeting in the previous year, despite a large majority expressing concerns about aviation emissions.
“There is a level of hypocrisy: academics know that flying is bad for the environment,” said Professor Jonas De Vos of UCL, the lead author of the study. “But still, we often fly to international conferences, often to [make the argument] that society should be more sustainable.”
LOYALIST TOWNSHIP, ONTARIO, CANADA – The plant was expected to produce batteries for a million electric vehicles a year. Once up and running, it was supposed to create hundreds of permanent jobs in a small southeastern Ontario municipality.
It was, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time, “big news” that Belgium-based Umicore chose Loyalist Township for its battery component production facility — evidence, the federal and provincial governments said, of success in the quest to make Canada a global electric-vehicle production hotspot.
But two years later, spending on the construction of the Umicore plant has been delayed in what the company calls a “significant worsening of the EV market context.”
Pierre Poilievre poisoned Canadians against the most effective tool we have for fighting climate change. Why on earth is the NDP going along?
If the federal carbon tax is not yet dead, it has suffered a mortal wound.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, enjoying a 20-point lead in the polls, have a kid-on-Christmas-morning enthusiasm for repealing it as their first order of business. The Tory position is hardly new, but last Thursday federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh signalled his intention to disavow the carbon tax that his party has consistently supported in Parliament. The NDP says they will propose an alternative climate plan, details TBD, but stressed that the Liberal carbon tax puts too much of a burden on working people. Which is exactly the Conservatives’ argument against it.
All eco-whinging is an attack on the poor, it’s just another form of control exercised by the elite who can afford such luxury values.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s department was cited by federal auditors for poor oversight of millions spent on green subsidies, per Blacklock’s Reporter.
Auditors noted spending on subsidies had risen sharply since 2016, by $625 million, with little corresponding scrutiny of where the money went or why.
That’s because it’s a great big Liberal slush fund.
Watched by a global audience, last month’s opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris featured an obscene mockery of the Christian Last Supper. Everyone is entitled to their view was a liberal response and some even suggested it was a ‘celebration’ of diverse religious belief. Just days before, the French state fined the second largest rolling news channel CNews €20,000 (£17,000) for failing to question a contributor’s view that human-caused global warming was a scam. Welcome to free speech, French style.
OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre signaled the Liberals’ carbon price and the economy will remain his prime target when Parliament resumes this week.
He painted a dystopian picture during a Sunday morning speech to his caucus, saying the Liberal government’s plans to increase the price would cause a “nuclear winter” for the economy.
So according to David Eby, the NDP premier of British Columbia, the best carbon tax in the world is bad for British Columbians.
Meanwhile, according to federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national carbon tax, which borrowed heavily from B.C.’s model, is bad for Canadians.
