To those of you who think yo0u are getting more money back from the Carbon tax perhaps my figures will illustrate that you may just be wrong. We used just over 3,000 litres of regular gas last year and the diesel used about 1500 l - $420 carbon tax plus $21 GST on that for a total of $441 on regular fuel and at least $220 on diesel (rremember that the carbon tax is higher on diesel). Next we used $38.88 in natural gas in December in Regina (and it wasn't cold) with $38.11 carbon tax plus $1.91 in GST on the carbon tax for a total of $40.02. You can argue with the next bit but it is likely really close but if we multiply the $40 for the heat by 12 we get $480 so lets round down to $400. That means that on just those two purchases we have contributed $1060 to the carbon and GST revenue stream.
We receive $940 in a 'rebate' from the feds meaning that on just those two purchases we are down $120 but wait, I haven't figured the carbon and GST on the electricity or the increased cost of the delivery of the food and other products.
We live in a 1300 square foot bungalow in Regina and don't drive excessively and we are retired so you do the math for a family with kids and driving them to activities then adjust for those who live in a rural area. In the largee cities like Toronto or Vancouver you might be ahead if you use public transit but outside the large urban areas we are driving distances and heating houses when it gets cold.
Note to thoose who parrot the line that 'you are getting more in rebates than you spend' - don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining.
I've done the math myself. The carbon tax, in my case, amounts to a penalty for living the wrong lifestyle. After all, I have to drive to a rural area that isn't served by transit for work. And it's the bad kind of work, too (blue collar, UGH). Moving closer to work or buying an EV would just drain my finances even more, so I'm stuck paying the penalty at the pump. Not everyone has the disposable cash to alter their lives in His image (Trudeau's).
I'm still a lot more curious why diesel that used to be 20-30 cents cheaper than regular is now 20-30 cents more, when diesel is a less refined fuel. But those numbers sure mesh nicely with current oil company profits.
What I don't understand is why you're bringing GST into the debate.
Don't underestimate the Liberal campaign machine. It will plumb the depths of any and all wedge issues. Liberals often compare Conservatives to the Republican party. Perhaps it is the Republicans who have learned the dark arts from the Natural Governing Party of the North. The Liberals campaigned on "Screw the West, we'll take the rest", parodied a Conservative leader's religious views using a stuffed dinosaur as a prop, and turned vaccines into not only the prime issue of the 2021 campaign, but continued pounding the wedge until it lead to the Trucker Convoy.
"Liberal Party of Canada, arguably the second-most successful political enterprise in the English-speaking world (after only the British Tories) are entirely dependent on Justin Trudeau."....and he's now an albatross. He destroyed his brand and his credibility with SNC, and has been enjoying a steady ride downhill since with the exception of his COVID response that wasn't actually his idea. The only reason he wasn't turfed sooner was the Conservatives stunning ability to shoot themselves in the foot at election time.
The only reason the next election isn't in doubt is because PP is so detestable. People having been telling the LPC for years that they have to dump Trudeau to save the party. As long as they're still not listening, I suspect an electoral message will be sent. I think Pierre will be a disaster worse than Trudeau, but Canadians traditionally vote to get rid of governments. There are no leaders in current Canadian politics. That's a problem for all of us.
That’s the same theme you wrote yesterday, and I don’t disagree on your diagnosis, just the cure (you know the definition of insanity right? Repeating the same thing and expecting different results?) so I’ll repeat what I wrote yesterday too:
Elections are a problem for all of us. That’s why they should be scrapped in favour of an election lottery. No political parties. No pork barreling. Governing becomes more participatory as more ordinary people are chosen and visualize themselves as eligible.
It’s called sortition. Google the Wikipedia entry for it, or check out Brett Hennig on YouTube.
I think what you're proposing sounds like anarchy. People today are not, for the most part, politically invested, and certainly not in the vast number of big ticket items the country has to deal with. Things are a tad more complex now than they were then. We barely get a 50% voter turnout for federal elections. Now put 300 people on the ballot all having an opinion or two on a few selected topics. And yet, the countries finances are all interwoven into every act the government takes....assuming that I understand what you're suggesting. There's 40 million people here. The challenge to just weed out the chaff is unimaginable, and who decides that? And while no political, we all have personal opinions that have a political spin; often complicated like being fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
Elections will always be a problem because no one person or party is going to give you 100% of what you want. Worse, because of the donation system, those with money are able to exert far more influence. Conservatism used to be all about small government....but the rich paid a far higher percentage of tax than they do now. Why?
I think governments need to take back control of the country from the power brokers who have co-opted them. In my mind, that means the G20 getting together and announcing that there will be no more corporate subsidies. They will all be loans at an agreed upon low rate, and the taxpayer and shareholders returns are split 50/50 until the loan is paid back. Companies that take things from the earth will be required to set aside funds; more than will be required for clean-up when extraction is complete, and at that time, whatever is left over can also be paid out to the shareholders. I don't have a problem with political parties that have a vision and a goal for the future....the problem is those don't exist right now.
But if you don't vote; if you aren't part of the process, I feel that you've also given up your right to complain about what you get.
Anarchy?? No government?? All I’m proposing is that parliamentarians be selected by lottery, perhaps after filtering for education, age, capability (some sort of test?) and whether they are actually willing. Term lengths are an open question too.
Elections will always be a problem because no one person or party is going to give you 100% of what you want? The complication of everyone having a mix of opinions is exactly the point. People who aren’t beholden or tied to a party can deliberate and vote with their own conscience.
Get enough people on board and we can make this the process and vote it in when it’s ready.
No functional government, no. Pick 400 random people out of the population and ask them what we should be doing about our military, and the reality that about $50 billion needs to be invested in it. How do you see that playing based on the average persons knowledge of our military needs, responsibilities, and alliances?
The do the same for immigration.
We have 3 Canadian political parties and can't come close to a consensus on much of anything. Do you really think 400 random people who pass a screening test created by whom....is going to do any better? And what direction is given to the Privy Council whose job is implementing the governments ideas?
It's all just sounds way to easy and completely ignores the realities of today. Or I'm an old fart stuck in my ways.
People can be serious when they have to be. Never been on a jury? A large group is also going to have natural leaders in it to help shepherd deliberations. Test created by who? Seriously, you don’t think a minor detail like that could be solved? Your own lack of vision is ironic, given your objections.
Maybe. But the idea sounds a little to much like the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
But I suspect your natural leaders would devolve into cliques that would end up being little different than the system we have now. And you completely ignored the questions. Because how can you be serious about something when you know nothing of the subject matter? I'm an air traffic controller by trade. I have lots of ideas. Whether any are realistic is a completely different story, as my knowledge of complex finance can be written in foot high letters on the head of a pin. I just think we're better off fixing what we have rather than reinventing the wheel. But it's an interesting debate.
Yes, the recipe is definitely the problem. Turns out most people don't want a cynical and useless sales tax on energy that raises the cost of everything, mass immigration where fewer than one in three new immigrants is of working age and wasteful government deficit spending and inflation. All lead by an arrogant and divisive leader leaving one scandal after another in his wake.
I am not a Trudeau fan, but the carbon price does *not* "raise the cost of everything", certainly not in the relative terms that matter to economics. Higher-emitting industrial activities will become more relatively expensive, and when the rebate is taken into account consumers of low-emitting products become financially further ahead than they would be without the price/tax.
Of course the carbon tax raises the price of everything.
A manufacturer that heats the premises with natural gas is paying a carbon tax on that gas burnt, as is the trucking company that purchases fuel and freights the goods around, as is the warehouse and final distribution system that is purchasing fuel or natural gas. The chain reaction of additional costs built into a profitable sale is no small thing. The BoC report that studied the rebate to households admitted that it didn’t even analyze the hidden price increases through the supply chain to cover the carbon tax.
And we haven’t even talked about the GST that the Government applies to the carbon tax.
Whether the carbon tax raises the price of "everything", it certainly does not raise the price of everything *equally*. There is a discriminatory impact on some industries relative to others.
"A manufacturer that heats the premises with natural gas is paying a carbon tax on that gas burnt, as is the trucking company that purchases fuel and freights the goods around, as is the warehouse and final distribution system that is purchasing fuel or natural gas."
That's all true, but as long as all those costs are all factored into the consumer end product, the resulting price increase is measurable rather than "hidden".
The Bank of Canada report that you mention does not consider or take into account the rebates that are funded by the carbon price. A huge number of households, if not the majority, are gaining more money from the carbon tax revenue than they are paying into the tax. And that revenue allows consumers to spend more money on industries that have reduced emissions to the lowest extent possible.
Very few products are not made more expensive as a result of higher energy costs and there is no way to quantify the overall effect on prices beyond the effect on products directly taxed. Further, there is no evidence that the carbon tax has had any effect on the climate at all, one way or the other. This is why it is losing support and rightfully so.
The carbon tax absolutely has an effect on carbon dioxide emissions, there is a long lineup of studies confirming that: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joes.12531 Or are you denying that carbon dioxide emissions affect global temperatures and climate?
Whether the products not affected by carbon pricing as "very few" or otherwise, they do become more competitive against other industries with rising costs. Where costs are imposed, human ingenuity will inevitably come up with solutions to cut down on the sources of those costs.
I said the carbon tax makes everything more expensive and has no effect on the climate, nothing more. Canada's contribution to global CO2 emissions is very small and the reduction as a result of the carbon tax is vanishingly small. I am not disputing the effect of CO2 on global temperatures, simply that the carbon tax is not helping and amounts to pointless self-sacrifice.
Your point that "Canada's contribution to global CO2 emissions is very small" is a red herring. No country anywhere accounts for more than a minority of emissions. We should maintain and increase a carbon tax rate because doing so gives a hint to other more consequential countries that they should do the same. And Canada's contribution to emissions would no longer be small if every other country but our own took serious action.
If Canada were to offer even less leadership on reducing emissions than it already does, then that would give a hint to more consequential countries that they should do nothing on carbon emissions either. And then we all pay a price from the resulting global warming.
No one cares what Canada does on this file so virtue signalling is just pointless background noise on the world stage. Again, the carbon tax is not affecting global climate. Its sole effect is to make Canada poorer than it would otherwise be.
That logic only works if there are economically viable alternatives to the current processes. With some activities (steel making, for example), the short- and medium-term solution is simply suck up the cost of the tax and raise prices or stop doing it if it's no longer economic.
At a smaller scale, there's a lot of people and businesses who will have to absorb extra costs for some time. If your business involves a lot of driving around, there may not be a ZEV or hybrid electric alternative that meets your requirements or is even affordable. If there is, you're looking at a big outlay to replace what might be a perfectly adequate vehicle pre-carbon tax.
So yes, the theory works on the macro scale. The transition is not trivial, not obvious, and will be expensive.
Human ingenuity does have its limits, of course. But without a consistent price on carbon dioxide emissions that applies to virtually all emissions everywhere, there is minimal incentive to even try reducing emissions.
Economic transitions in response to the tax will of course be expensive. So will all of the policy alternatives, from the more economically-disruptive regulatory approaches to doing nothing and absorbing the consequent costs of global warming.
These are critical practical details that must be addressed, or this plan is doomed to political failure. I'm an engineer. I'm not saying any of this is impossible, but good intentions and a big concept will only get you so far.
The advantage of a carbon price/tax is that the planning decisions to reduce emissions are made within the affected firms, not under the bureaucratic control of a distant and uninformed government. The government simply sets the price, and industry plans on its own accordingly.
Like you say, in some industries and firms emissions will not really go down, but in other firms emissions will inevitably be cut.
What’s in the can is worms. A BIG can of worms that in the not too distant past, when we had a properly functioning Parliament and Parliamentary Press Gallery would have brought the Trudeau Liberals to their knees. Years ago.
Every week is a fresh harvest of worms to stuff in the can. The Free Vacation worms have cannibalized their Israel-Gaza worms and lets stuff in a new batch for the ArriveCan app or $25 million in Gaza funding worms that the Liberals don’t want to account for, just yet.
It’s too late for Food Safety inspectors to deal with the rot, but an election sure will.
Who could have predicted that a legacy kid, an inherited successor, a lineage-based appointee — the quintessential "Good Times Guy" and literal personification of the "Because it's 2015" mindset — might do okay in times of prosperity, but become utterly useless in tougher times?
So surprising that such an archetypal embodiment of the epitome of luxury beliefs could lack the resilience often forged through personal struggles, and fundamentally fail to grasp, on a visceral level, that the economic woes of the average person are very real!
What a shock to discover that his biggest problem isn't that the plebs don't understand his grand, idealistic ideas; but that he doesn't understand what they experience and feel — at all.
Agree...and the can has gone past its expiry date and should be dumped, never to be consumed again lest we suffer the “disease of Trudeau Progressivism” 🆘🇨🇦
I'm not sure there is a Liberal Party without Justin Trudeau. They were in something of a death spiral before Trudeau became their leader: pick a new leader, obtain worse results the following election, repeat. Trudeau injected a dose of star power and slick messaging that helped them win in 2015, but he's led a pretty hollow government. Trudeau has pushed out or marginalized anybody who seems like a rival or threat, which has included those few cabinet ministers who'd really shown some talent or would push back against Trudeau policies they identified as flawed.
Historically, the Liberal Party has been seen as the route to power for a lot of ambitious and talented people. That calculation started to change after the collapse of the PET Liberals in 1984, revived somewhat during the Chretien years before the great Liberal civil war that led to Martin, and rapidly evaporated after Martin. Now Justin Trudeau is actively driving away those people, leaving a party built around Trudeau as leader. Remove him, and what's left to rebuild with? I think it's likely that the Liberals return to the trend to oblivion they were following before the 2015 outlier.
Removing Trudeau as party leader would not be sufficient to revive the Liberal Party. But if the party were to remove him and engage in a serious return to grassroots consultation like the kind that helped Trudeau to power in 2015, the party would have a good chance of a comeback.
Too many successful politicians don't know when its time to quit. Trudeau bought life to the Liberals when he took over. But now after 8 years its time for him to step aside . AND he cannot be replaced by some like thinking clone, if the Liberals want to succeed.
If Poilievre's Conservatives have any leverage on this issue, it's because they have been fostering confusion about the redistribution effects of the policy, and they would lose this debate if the Liberals' messaging was firmer and more consistent here.
It does, but "axe the tax" is simple and doesn't require anyone to pay attention to get on board. The lack of understanding is voter laziness....as election turnout continues to prove.
The slogan is easy for understand for people who already oppose the tax/price. But if voters see two parties/sides disputing the outcomes of the policy, they will inevitably notice when one side completely ignores the supporting information of the other side. The Conservatives rely entirely on one-sided (mis)information to justify their opposition, so they are vulnerable to basic fact-checking if the Liberals make such it a priority.
I have been thinking about the central theme of this good article, which I see to be the messaging that is being telegraphed from the Liberals to Canadians.
The Liberals have been the messaging sweepstakes winners since the 2015 election campaign. Always driving the narrative, bobbing, weaving and spinning their way from one crisis to another. If we objectively piled up the scandals over these past eight years, it is pretty impressive that Justin Trudeau has stayed as high in the polls for so long. (Albeit with a declining share of the popular vote over time and barely a pulse of support west of Ontario right through to the west coast.)
As Mr. Heimpel points out, the Liberals feel that they just need to send the messaging to dry dock for a refit, and look out Conservatives. Fair enough, but what is the next move if the Liberals finally figure out that Canadians have tuned them out and no longer care what they have to say?
It depends who is moderating the debate. The Liberals used wedge issues very effectively from the moment the campaign started with MSM homing in on the slightest missteps by the Conservatives. I do not expect Pierre Poillievre will fall into the same trap. They have tried several times already and it hasn't worked. The Liberals need to come up with something other than creating wedge issues and attacking the opposition.
That non-25 percent - AKA people with half a brain who can get one eye open - have long ago come to the realization that this government is incapable of solving big problems, or of rolling out any size of solution in a non-disastrous way. It's all comms, all the time. Outcomes matter little; the announcement and media coverage is all that counts to these guys.
Justin Trudeau himself is a human brand - a lifelike, carefully curated amalgam of progressive principles and untouchable morals that are immediately swept aside each and every time he sees an opportunity to help the party, the party's friends-in-high-places, or score a point against the opposition. It's been blatantly obvious for years to anyone willing to watch. Yet he almost surely believes that he stands for something. After all, the power he's been able to achieve by leveraging his father's last name and party/donor connections must mean he's right, all the time. Birthright, and all that.
And this is why there's almost never any policy backtracking in the face of outrage, as seen with the Ford government. If the public doesn't like something, the Liberals under Trudeau simply double down. They. Can't Be. Wrong. And if a policy leads to disastrous and widespread Bad Outcomes, it's treated like a PR issue to be ignored.
In other words, peoples' hard-earned tax dollars are flowing to this government in aid of a PR strategy, not fixes. Until it hurts them in the polls, there's no glaring issue large enough that can't be ignored by this government as it chases its own niche hobby horses that appeal only to the very comfortable, urban upper-middle class.
Future in doubt due to lack of affordable housing anywhere? Easily ignored for 8 years as Trudeau and his ministers work night and day to regulate the internet and ban hunting rifles and grow the civil service by 40 percent and ensure every friendly consultant and NGO in the country is well-stocked with public cash. Red meat to the comfortable, erudite base must be served fresh, and often. It's sickening. Precious time and dollars wasted to help a vanity project that ignores the reality of anyone making less than six figures.
Decimate this party and salt the earth where it once stood. Then rebuild with human beings.
"It's doomed for failure because the best version of what the Liberals are trying to sell is a load of perfectly nutritious horse meat that makes people think they're contributing tax dollars to help the environment."
Unfortunately the meat has been put through the horse already.
The federal NDP still hasn't figured out who they are since the outcome of the 2015 election, can't really articulate how they're an alternative to the Liberals, and have an exceptionally weak leader who should've been replaced years ago. Right now, they're poised to slide back into the place where they were in the '90s under Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough, and that isn't good.
I think they're still too poor to run an election. Otherwise I can't think of a reason to keep tying themselves to the LPC. Jagmeet is fond of saying that the deal let's him get results for the NDP but I'm just not seeing it. A half assed dental deal isn't something to brag about.
"It's the government that never hesitated to categorize concerns about the immigration system as racist. That’s the recipe. That mostly worked for them..."
Really? How? Who thinks this way? No one I've spoken with lately. People don't need to have studied logic to know that racial matters and immigration concerns aren't conceptually connected at all. Bailing out and talking about race to someone who's expressed immigration policy grievances is tantamount to admitting you can make no relevant response to the grievances, which is why you want to change the subject. From a conviction that we're letting too many people into the country too quickly we can deduce neither somebody's feelings about race, nor even the race of the person holding the conviction.
We ALL have a Justin Trudeau problem, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.
To those of you who think yo0u are getting more money back from the Carbon tax perhaps my figures will illustrate that you may just be wrong. We used just over 3,000 litres of regular gas last year and the diesel used about 1500 l - $420 carbon tax plus $21 GST on that for a total of $441 on regular fuel and at least $220 on diesel (rremember that the carbon tax is higher on diesel). Next we used $38.88 in natural gas in December in Regina (and it wasn't cold) with $38.11 carbon tax plus $1.91 in GST on the carbon tax for a total of $40.02. You can argue with the next bit but it is likely really close but if we multiply the $40 for the heat by 12 we get $480 so lets round down to $400. That means that on just those two purchases we have contributed $1060 to the carbon and GST revenue stream.
We receive $940 in a 'rebate' from the feds meaning that on just those two purchases we are down $120 but wait, I haven't figured the carbon and GST on the electricity or the increased cost of the delivery of the food and other products.
We live in a 1300 square foot bungalow in Regina and don't drive excessively and we are retired so you do the math for a family with kids and driving them to activities then adjust for those who live in a rural area. In the largee cities like Toronto or Vancouver you might be ahead if you use public transit but outside the large urban areas we are driving distances and heating houses when it gets cold.
Note to thoose who parrot the line that 'you are getting more in rebates than you spend' - don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining.
I've done the math myself. The carbon tax, in my case, amounts to a penalty for living the wrong lifestyle. After all, I have to drive to a rural area that isn't served by transit for work. And it's the bad kind of work, too (blue collar, UGH). Moving closer to work or buying an EV would just drain my finances even more, so I'm stuck paying the penalty at the pump. Not everyone has the disposable cash to alter their lives in His image (Trudeau's).
I'm still a lot more curious why diesel that used to be 20-30 cents cheaper than regular is now 20-30 cents more, when diesel is a less refined fuel. But those numbers sure mesh nicely with current oil company profits.
What I don't understand is why you're bringing GST into the debate.
Because it is applied to the carbon tax soooo a tax on a tax. The total collected is over 500 million dollars by the by and you don't get THAT back.
Don't underestimate the Liberal campaign machine. It will plumb the depths of any and all wedge issues. Liberals often compare Conservatives to the Republican party. Perhaps it is the Republicans who have learned the dark arts from the Natural Governing Party of the North. The Liberals campaigned on "Screw the West, we'll take the rest", parodied a Conservative leader's religious views using a stuffed dinosaur as a prop, and turned vaccines into not only the prime issue of the 2021 campaign, but continued pounding the wedge until it lead to the Trucker Convoy.
“Hidden agenda”. Which was so well hidden we haven’t seen it after a decade.
Or as my very elderly Mum said often, the agenda was so well hidden even the the Lord himself couldn’t find it!
"Liberal Party of Canada, arguably the second-most successful political enterprise in the English-speaking world (after only the British Tories) are entirely dependent on Justin Trudeau."....and he's now an albatross. He destroyed his brand and his credibility with SNC, and has been enjoying a steady ride downhill since with the exception of his COVID response that wasn't actually his idea. The only reason he wasn't turfed sooner was the Conservatives stunning ability to shoot themselves in the foot at election time.
The only reason the next election isn't in doubt is because PP is so detestable. People having been telling the LPC for years that they have to dump Trudeau to save the party. As long as they're still not listening, I suspect an electoral message will be sent. I think Pierre will be a disaster worse than Trudeau, but Canadians traditionally vote to get rid of governments. There are no leaders in current Canadian politics. That's a problem for all of us.
That’s the same theme you wrote yesterday, and I don’t disagree on your diagnosis, just the cure (you know the definition of insanity right? Repeating the same thing and expecting different results?) so I’ll repeat what I wrote yesterday too:
Elections are a problem for all of us. That’s why they should be scrapped in favour of an election lottery. No political parties. No pork barreling. Governing becomes more participatory as more ordinary people are chosen and visualize themselves as eligible.
It’s called sortition. Google the Wikipedia entry for it, or check out Brett Hennig on YouTube.
True; my opinion hasn't changed since yesterday.
I think what you're proposing sounds like anarchy. People today are not, for the most part, politically invested, and certainly not in the vast number of big ticket items the country has to deal with. Things are a tad more complex now than they were then. We barely get a 50% voter turnout for federal elections. Now put 300 people on the ballot all having an opinion or two on a few selected topics. And yet, the countries finances are all interwoven into every act the government takes....assuming that I understand what you're suggesting. There's 40 million people here. The challenge to just weed out the chaff is unimaginable, and who decides that? And while no political, we all have personal opinions that have a political spin; often complicated like being fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
Elections will always be a problem because no one person or party is going to give you 100% of what you want. Worse, because of the donation system, those with money are able to exert far more influence. Conservatism used to be all about small government....but the rich paid a far higher percentage of tax than they do now. Why?
I think governments need to take back control of the country from the power brokers who have co-opted them. In my mind, that means the G20 getting together and announcing that there will be no more corporate subsidies. They will all be loans at an agreed upon low rate, and the taxpayer and shareholders returns are split 50/50 until the loan is paid back. Companies that take things from the earth will be required to set aside funds; more than will be required for clean-up when extraction is complete, and at that time, whatever is left over can also be paid out to the shareholders. I don't have a problem with political parties that have a vision and a goal for the future....the problem is those don't exist right now.
But if you don't vote; if you aren't part of the process, I feel that you've also given up your right to complain about what you get.
Anarchy?? No government?? All I’m proposing is that parliamentarians be selected by lottery, perhaps after filtering for education, age, capability (some sort of test?) and whether they are actually willing. Term lengths are an open question too.
Elections will always be a problem because no one person or party is going to give you 100% of what you want? The complication of everyone having a mix of opinions is exactly the point. People who aren’t beholden or tied to a party can deliberate and vote with their own conscience.
Get enough people on board and we can make this the process and vote it in when it’s ready.
No functional government, no. Pick 400 random people out of the population and ask them what we should be doing about our military, and the reality that about $50 billion needs to be invested in it. How do you see that playing based on the average persons knowledge of our military needs, responsibilities, and alliances?
The do the same for immigration.
We have 3 Canadian political parties and can't come close to a consensus on much of anything. Do you really think 400 random people who pass a screening test created by whom....is going to do any better? And what direction is given to the Privy Council whose job is implementing the governments ideas?
It's all just sounds way to easy and completely ignores the realities of today. Or I'm an old fart stuck in my ways.
You’re conflating government with parliament.
People can be serious when they have to be. Never been on a jury? A large group is also going to have natural leaders in it to help shepherd deliberations. Test created by who? Seriously, you don’t think a minor detail like that could be solved? Your own lack of vision is ironic, given your objections.
Maybe. But the idea sounds a little to much like the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
But I suspect your natural leaders would devolve into cliques that would end up being little different than the system we have now. And you completely ignored the questions. Because how can you be serious about something when you know nothing of the subject matter? I'm an air traffic controller by trade. I have lots of ideas. Whether any are realistic is a completely different story, as my knowledge of complex finance can be written in foot high letters on the head of a pin. I just think we're better off fixing what we have rather than reinventing the wheel. But it's an interesting debate.
Yes, the recipe is definitely the problem. Turns out most people don't want a cynical and useless sales tax on energy that raises the cost of everything, mass immigration where fewer than one in three new immigrants is of working age and wasteful government deficit spending and inflation. All lead by an arrogant and divisive leader leaving one scandal after another in his wake.
I am not a Trudeau fan, but the carbon price does *not* "raise the cost of everything", certainly not in the relative terms that matter to economics. Higher-emitting industrial activities will become more relatively expensive, and when the rebate is taken into account consumers of low-emitting products become financially further ahead than they would be without the price/tax.
Of course the carbon tax raises the price of everything.
A manufacturer that heats the premises with natural gas is paying a carbon tax on that gas burnt, as is the trucking company that purchases fuel and freights the goods around, as is the warehouse and final distribution system that is purchasing fuel or natural gas. The chain reaction of additional costs built into a profitable sale is no small thing. The BoC report that studied the rebate to households admitted that it didn’t even analyze the hidden price increases through the supply chain to cover the carbon tax.
And we haven’t even talked about the GST that the Government applies to the carbon tax.
Whether the carbon tax raises the price of "everything", it certainly does not raise the price of everything *equally*. There is a discriminatory impact on some industries relative to others.
"A manufacturer that heats the premises with natural gas is paying a carbon tax on that gas burnt, as is the trucking company that purchases fuel and freights the goods around, as is the warehouse and final distribution system that is purchasing fuel or natural gas."
That's all true, but as long as all those costs are all factored into the consumer end product, the resulting price increase is measurable rather than "hidden".
The Bank of Canada report that you mention does not consider or take into account the rebates that are funded by the carbon price. A huge number of households, if not the majority, are gaining more money from the carbon tax revenue than they are paying into the tax. And that revenue allows consumers to spend more money on industries that have reduced emissions to the lowest extent possible.
Very few products are not made more expensive as a result of higher energy costs and there is no way to quantify the overall effect on prices beyond the effect on products directly taxed. Further, there is no evidence that the carbon tax has had any effect on the climate at all, one way or the other. This is why it is losing support and rightfully so.
The carbon tax absolutely has an effect on carbon dioxide emissions, there is a long lineup of studies confirming that: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joes.12531 Or are you denying that carbon dioxide emissions affect global temperatures and climate?
Whether the products not affected by carbon pricing as "very few" or otherwise, they do become more competitive against other industries with rising costs. Where costs are imposed, human ingenuity will inevitably come up with solutions to cut down on the sources of those costs.
I said the carbon tax makes everything more expensive and has no effect on the climate, nothing more. Canada's contribution to global CO2 emissions is very small and the reduction as a result of the carbon tax is vanishingly small. I am not disputing the effect of CO2 on global temperatures, simply that the carbon tax is not helping and amounts to pointless self-sacrifice.
Your point that "Canada's contribution to global CO2 emissions is very small" is a red herring. No country anywhere accounts for more than a minority of emissions. We should maintain and increase a carbon tax rate because doing so gives a hint to other more consequential countries that they should do the same. And Canada's contribution to emissions would no longer be small if every other country but our own took serious action.
If Canada were to offer even less leadership on reducing emissions than it already does, then that would give a hint to more consequential countries that they should do nothing on carbon emissions either. And then we all pay a price from the resulting global warming.
No one cares what Canada does on this file so virtue signalling is just pointless background noise on the world stage. Again, the carbon tax is not affecting global climate. Its sole effect is to make Canada poorer than it would otherwise be.
“No country anywhere accounts for more than a minority of emissions.”
China. India. Russia. California. LOL.
That logic only works if there are economically viable alternatives to the current processes. With some activities (steel making, for example), the short- and medium-term solution is simply suck up the cost of the tax and raise prices or stop doing it if it's no longer economic.
At a smaller scale, there's a lot of people and businesses who will have to absorb extra costs for some time. If your business involves a lot of driving around, there may not be a ZEV or hybrid electric alternative that meets your requirements or is even affordable. If there is, you're looking at a big outlay to replace what might be a perfectly adequate vehicle pre-carbon tax.
So yes, the theory works on the macro scale. The transition is not trivial, not obvious, and will be expensive.
Human ingenuity does have its limits, of course. But without a consistent price on carbon dioxide emissions that applies to virtually all emissions everywhere, there is minimal incentive to even try reducing emissions.
Economic transitions in response to the tax will of course be expensive. So will all of the policy alternatives, from the more economically-disruptive regulatory approaches to doing nothing and absorbing the consequent costs of global warming.
These are critical practical details that must be addressed, or this plan is doomed to political failure. I'm an engineer. I'm not saying any of this is impossible, but good intentions and a big concept will only get you so far.
The advantage of a carbon price/tax is that the planning decisions to reduce emissions are made within the affected firms, not under the bureaucratic control of a distant and uninformed government. The government simply sets the price, and industry plans on its own accordingly.
Like you say, in some industries and firms emissions will not really go down, but in other firms emissions will inevitably be cut.
You're obviously not hearing or perceiving the many practical problems and barriers people are identifying for you, so good luck.
What’s in the can is worms. A BIG can of worms that in the not too distant past, when we had a properly functioning Parliament and Parliamentary Press Gallery would have brought the Trudeau Liberals to their knees. Years ago.
Every week is a fresh harvest of worms to stuff in the can. The Free Vacation worms have cannibalized their Israel-Gaza worms and lets stuff in a new batch for the ArriveCan app or $25 million in Gaza funding worms that the Liberals don’t want to account for, just yet.
It’s too late for Food Safety inspectors to deal with the rot, but an election sure will.
Who could have predicted that a legacy kid, an inherited successor, a lineage-based appointee — the quintessential "Good Times Guy" and literal personification of the "Because it's 2015" mindset — might do okay in times of prosperity, but become utterly useless in tougher times?
So surprising that such an archetypal embodiment of the epitome of luxury beliefs could lack the resilience often forged through personal struggles, and fundamentally fail to grasp, on a visceral level, that the economic woes of the average person are very real!
What a shock to discover that his biggest problem isn't that the plebs don't understand his grand, idealistic ideas; but that he doesn't understand what they experience and feel — at all.
Agree...and the can has gone past its expiry date and should be dumped, never to be consumed again lest we suffer the “disease of Trudeau Progressivism” 🆘🇨🇦
I'm not sure there is a Liberal Party without Justin Trudeau. They were in something of a death spiral before Trudeau became their leader: pick a new leader, obtain worse results the following election, repeat. Trudeau injected a dose of star power and slick messaging that helped them win in 2015, but he's led a pretty hollow government. Trudeau has pushed out or marginalized anybody who seems like a rival or threat, which has included those few cabinet ministers who'd really shown some talent or would push back against Trudeau policies they identified as flawed.
Historically, the Liberal Party has been seen as the route to power for a lot of ambitious and talented people. That calculation started to change after the collapse of the PET Liberals in 1984, revived somewhat during the Chretien years before the great Liberal civil war that led to Martin, and rapidly evaporated after Martin. Now Justin Trudeau is actively driving away those people, leaving a party built around Trudeau as leader. Remove him, and what's left to rebuild with? I think it's likely that the Liberals return to the trend to oblivion they were following before the 2015 outlier.
Removing Trudeau as party leader would not be sufficient to revive the Liberal Party. But if the party were to remove him and engage in a serious return to grassroots consultation like the kind that helped Trudeau to power in 2015, the party would have a good chance of a comeback.
An overlooked cause of the Liberal Party's current weak position is the constitutional change that Trudeau brought to the party in 2016, which did away with the kind of front-line strength that helped bring him to power in the first place: https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/liberal-convention-2016-proposed-constitution-creating-rifts-th_n_10156072
Too many successful politicians don't know when its time to quit. Trudeau bought life to the Liberals when he took over. But now after 8 years its time for him to step aside . AND he cannot be replaced by some like thinking clone, if the Liberals want to succeed.
I do not disagree with the thesis of this argument, but the carbon price/tax is actually an example of a policy where communications *is* the problem, not the policy itself. Most households are getting more money from the carbon rebates than they are paying through the tax/price: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-no-that-pbo-study-doesnt-prove-the-carbon-tax-is-a-stealth-cash-grab/
If Poilievre's Conservatives have any leverage on this issue, it's because they have been fostering confusion about the redistribution effects of the policy, and they would lose this debate if the Liberals' messaging was firmer and more consistent here.
It does, but "axe the tax" is simple and doesn't require anyone to pay attention to get on board. The lack of understanding is voter laziness....as election turnout continues to prove.
The slogan is easy for understand for people who already oppose the tax/price. But if voters see two parties/sides disputing the outcomes of the policy, they will inevitably notice when one side completely ignores the supporting information of the other side. The Conservatives rely entirely on one-sided (mis)information to justify their opposition, so they are vulnerable to basic fact-checking if the Liberals make such it a priority.
I was never this innocent.
You win this comment thread.
Basic fact-checking undermines messaging from every political party. Welcome to the fantasy world of partisan politics!
I have been thinking about the central theme of this good article, which I see to be the messaging that is being telegraphed from the Liberals to Canadians.
The Liberals have been the messaging sweepstakes winners since the 2015 election campaign. Always driving the narrative, bobbing, weaving and spinning their way from one crisis to another. If we objectively piled up the scandals over these past eight years, it is pretty impressive that Justin Trudeau has stayed as high in the polls for so long. (Albeit with a declining share of the popular vote over time and barely a pulse of support west of Ontario right through to the west coast.)
As Mr. Heimpel points out, the Liberals feel that they just need to send the messaging to dry dock for a refit, and look out Conservatives. Fair enough, but what is the next move if the Liberals finally figure out that Canadians have tuned them out and no longer care what they have to say?
Wait for Poilievre to self destruct in the first moderated T.V. debate. Look at history: what has become of Trudeau's opponents?
It depends who is moderating the debate. The Liberals used wedge issues very effectively from the moment the campaign started with MSM homing in on the slightest missteps by the Conservatives. I do not expect Pierre Poillievre will fall into the same trap. They have tried several times already and it hasn't worked. The Liberals need to come up with something other than creating wedge issues and attacking the opposition.
That non-25 percent - AKA people with half a brain who can get one eye open - have long ago come to the realization that this government is incapable of solving big problems, or of rolling out any size of solution in a non-disastrous way. It's all comms, all the time. Outcomes matter little; the announcement and media coverage is all that counts to these guys.
Justin Trudeau himself is a human brand - a lifelike, carefully curated amalgam of progressive principles and untouchable morals that are immediately swept aside each and every time he sees an opportunity to help the party, the party's friends-in-high-places, or score a point against the opposition. It's been blatantly obvious for years to anyone willing to watch. Yet he almost surely believes that he stands for something. After all, the power he's been able to achieve by leveraging his father's last name and party/donor connections must mean he's right, all the time. Birthright, and all that.
And this is why there's almost never any policy backtracking in the face of outrage, as seen with the Ford government. If the public doesn't like something, the Liberals under Trudeau simply double down. They. Can't Be. Wrong. And if a policy leads to disastrous and widespread Bad Outcomes, it's treated like a PR issue to be ignored.
In other words, peoples' hard-earned tax dollars are flowing to this government in aid of a PR strategy, not fixes. Until it hurts them in the polls, there's no glaring issue large enough that can't be ignored by this government as it chases its own niche hobby horses that appeal only to the very comfortable, urban upper-middle class.
Future in doubt due to lack of affordable housing anywhere? Easily ignored for 8 years as Trudeau and his ministers work night and day to regulate the internet and ban hunting rifles and grow the civil service by 40 percent and ensure every friendly consultant and NGO in the country is well-stocked with public cash. Red meat to the comfortable, erudite base must be served fresh, and often. It's sickening. Precious time and dollars wasted to help a vanity project that ignores the reality of anyone making less than six figures.
Decimate this party and salt the earth where it once stood. Then rebuild with human beings.
"It's doomed for failure because the best version of what the Liberals are trying to sell is a load of perfectly nutritious horse meat that makes people think they're contributing tax dollars to help the environment."
Unfortunately the meat has been put through the horse already.
Can someone explain to me why the NDP haven’t read this and are still propping him up? It’s an honest question, what’s in it for them?
The federal NDP still hasn't figured out who they are since the outcome of the 2015 election, can't really articulate how they're an alternative to the Liberals, and have an exceptionally weak leader who should've been replaced years ago. Right now, they're poised to slide back into the place where they were in the '90s under Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough, and that isn't good.
I think they're still too poor to run an election. Otherwise I can't think of a reason to keep tying themselves to the LPC. Jagmeet is fond of saying that the deal let's him get results for the NDP but I'm just not seeing it. A half assed dental deal isn't something to brag about.
"It's the government that never hesitated to categorize concerns about the immigration system as racist. That’s the recipe. That mostly worked for them..."
Really? How? Who thinks this way? No one I've spoken with lately. People don't need to have studied logic to know that racial matters and immigration concerns aren't conceptually connected at all. Bailing out and talking about race to someone who's expressed immigration policy grievances is tantamount to admitting you can make no relevant response to the grievances, which is why you want to change the subject. From a conviction that we're letting too many people into the country too quickly we can deduce neither somebody's feelings about race, nor even the race of the person holding the conviction.