It has now been a month since the Trudeau Government reached into our pockets again for tax money, this time for the first hit of their carbon taxes. This tax is now going to climb every year, by 50% in 2020 alone. And don’t forget that Trudeau and co. have several other taxes coming.
A new immigrant driving an Uber said to a friend mid-week (having filled his car at the new price): “Why do I have to pay more to try to make a living in this country?” The guy didn’t know the tax was as big as it was until he got to the pump, and he had no sense of how much the tax was going to rise or the other carbon taxes coming. Welcome to Canada…..
But don’t worry. To help explain it to new Canadians and old, the same Trudeau government told us something else this week. They released a series of studies telling us that Canada was warming at twice the rate of other countries, that water supplies were threatened, and that children’s lives have been shortened by….right, of course…..climate change.
I’m sure there is no coincidence that these studies came out just as the carbon tax arrived. Only a cynic would assume this was staged. And certainly not by a government that, in an effort to convince Jody Wilson Raybould that she should change her stand on a deal for SNC Lavalin, told her it could get friendly media coverage. Why would anyone be cynical about a government that subsidizes the media, has been exposed as willing to solicit friendly media coverage to back its policies, and that releases a raft of studies (to friendly media acclaim) lending credence to its argument for carbon taxes??
So forgot government. The private sector is more sensible. Well maybe not the whole private sector….
This week energy company Shell made it clear it supports carbon taxes, and would be distancing itself from associations and others that don’t agree. The suggestion is this is in response to shareholder demands. Really? People who own shares in an oil and gas company want it to do things to kill its business? Sorry. I don’t buy it. I don’t doubt that green activists own shares and create grief – they are doing it all over the place – but surely Shell has brighter minds who can see through this?
I have no sympathy for Shell executives – my guess is they like virtue-signaling, while they pass costs off to others. I do feel for the Canadian Shell retailers along the US border who watch their customers fill up stateside, where there are no carbon taxes (so much for revenue neutrality). Sorry guys: I won’t buy from you any more though. I can’t buy from a company that plays with our country’s future like this, that hurts every day Canadians, that seems in bed with a disturbingly ideological government hurting our future, and that threatens small and medium businesses.
