Every week, it seems, we get another report revealing the deep thoughtlessness and fiscal recklessness of Ottawa’s electric car and electric-car battery fixation. For example, the Parliamentary Budget Officer recently asked how long it will take for the federal government to see a return on the $28.2 billion of production subsidies to EV battery-makers Stellantis and Volkswagen. The answer — about four times longer than the government originally claimed.
If the Liberal government was to abandon the carbon tax entirely, inflation in Canada would drop 16 percent, says Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem.
Mr. Macklem provided this information while testifying before the House of Commons finance committee on Oct. 30.
The federal government will not be offering any more carve-outs to the carbon pricing policy beyond the plan to pause the tax on home heating oil, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, doubling down on comments his natural resources minister made.
“There will absolutely not be any other carve-outs or suspensions of the price on pollution,” Trudeau said. “This is designed to phase out home heating oil, the way we made a decision to phase out coal… This is specifically about ending the use of home heating oil, which is more polluting, more expensive, and impacts low-income Canadians to a greater degree.”
The global boiling climate breakdown age of fire is so serious that no price is too high to pay to stop it. Except Liberal parliamentary seats in Atlantic Canada in our gravely unserious nation.
Thus we awoke recently to snow in the backyard. No wait, to news that the federal carbon tax on home heating oil will be suspended for three years because the urgent man-made climate crisis isn’t really that serious after all. Or their magnificent policies won’t actually help anyway. Or Liberal polling numbers are looking so grim that the burning Earth must wait.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says if the federal government doesn’t extend carbon tax exemption to all types of home heating fuels, his province would stop collecting the tax.
“I cannot accept the federal government giving an affordability break to people in one part of Canada, but not here,” Mr. Moe said in a video posted on X on Oct. 30.
Trudeau has provided a carbon tax exemption on home heating for families in one part of the country, but not here.
It’s unfair, it’s unacceptable, and here’s what we’re going to do about it. pic.twitter.com/7tb9ZeTf0l
— Scott Moe (@PremierScottMoe) October 30, 2023
The affordability crisis is taking its toll on Canadians. Their money problems, as a new poll tells us, are getting so bad that they’re having trouble sleeping and it’s hurting their personal relationships.
This is why it’s welcome news that the federal carbon tax, which raises the cost on pretty much all consumer products, may finally be on its way out. Anything the government can do to make life easier, they absolutely must. It’s a moral imperative at this point. And anything they’re currently doing that is driving up the price of goods—like the carbon tax—is just plain wrong.
Political desperation can be a powerful thing, as we witnessed this week in Ottawa. The capital city not only put a hold on the carbon tax applied to heating oil for a duration of three years, but it also announced a doubling of the rural supplement in the carbon tax rebate program. In mere minutes, Ottawa not only transformed the carbon tax into a negotiable political lightning rod but also lent credence to those who have voiced doubts about the narratives surrounding carbon pricing.
EVs aren’t as popular or as effective as gas vehicles.
Marching under the banner of zero emissions, the Biden administration has embarked on a great crusade. At breakneck speed, it aims to bring about a massive transition: forcing the American people — and U.S. automakers — to abandon gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks and to switch to all-electric vehicles (EVs).
EVs set a new record in the first quarter of this year. They accounted for a much-ballyhooed 7 percent of U.S. passenger car and pickup sales. Almost half of those vehicles went to consumers with an average annual income of more than $150,000, who said they were eager to jump on the environmental bandwagon. The average income of people who purchased vehicles with internal combustion engines was not even half as much. But they did account for 93 percent of the market.
We’re getting closer but we’re not there yet.
The moment when enough is enough.
“I think the prime minister needs to listen a little bit more,” says Premier Danielle Smith, clearly not happy she isn’t making any headway with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as the province and the feds continue to talk.
In its fervour to achieve net zero emissions the federal government is increasingly isolated internationally, while its influence on other countries has vanished as, through incompetence and worse, it has tarnished Canada’s brand as a country to emulate.
We are being lured into a state of passivity
What happened when Matthew Crawford, a lifelong advocate of the joys of driving and author of Why We Drive, took a ride in one of San Francisco’s driverless cars? He sounded the alarm.
Last month, he joined Freddie Sayers in Oakland to talk about the global war on motorists, the beauty of tinkering, and Silicon Valley’s threat to human freedom. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Laurence Fox has been arrested for conspiring to damage Ulez cameras and encouraging others to tear them down.
On Tuesday, in an interview broadcast on video platform Rumble, Fox, 45, declared full support for the “Blade Runners” group of Ulez vigilantes.
“I encourage them to tear down every single camera there is and I will be joining them,” the suspended GB News host said.
If the federal government is worried about grocery prices now, wait until the global sustainability and climate-related financial disclosures of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) come to Canada.
Among other things, these standards mandate the use of intrusive, burdensome, and expensive CO2 emissions accounting across a company’s entire value chain. For grocery retailers this includes explaining and accounting for emissions in the production, transport, packaging, refrigeration, consumption and disposal of everything they sell. In other words, your grocery store will need to quantify all the emissions of that hamburger meat you bought: whether in producing it (including all steps from farm to processor), transporting it to the store, packaging and refrigerating it at the store, plus your travelling to and from the store, your refrigeration and eventually your cooking of the hamburger, and your disposal of the packaging and any waste of the food.
The Alberta government’s $8-million campaign to “educate Canadians and Albertans” on the impacts of new emissions regulations proposed by the federal government has begun rolling out across the country.
The campaign, involving a wide range of television, web, social, billboard and other forms of advertising, will run just a little more than a month, until Nov. 2, when the federal government’s public input period on net-zero rules is set to conclude.
It’s running in Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, chosen because they are the regions “most impacted by the regulations,” a spokesperson with the province said.
Wardens policing Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) are wearing balaclavas after Blade Runners activists mocked them on social media, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Labour London mayor has rolled out mobile automatic number plate vans (ANPR) in an attempt to prevail over vigilantes determined to sabotage the green scheme.
The vans are being deployed on roads in outer London boroughs in the newly-expanded zone, where older vehicles are charged £12.50 a day.
