There is an all-out “green war” on the Western provinces. Trudeau’s federal government has not only moved the goalposts for their “net zero” goals from 2050 to 2035 — a target Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith calls “dangerous” and impossible1 — but now the Liberal-NDP coalition has announced a pause on carbon taxes on home heating oil, used widely in Atlantic Canada — but not on natural gas, used primarily in the West.
Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe immediately rejected the plan, posting on X:
I cannot accept the federal government giving an affordability break to people in one part of Canada, but not here.
October 30, 2023, ici.radio-canada.ca
Moe warned that starting Jan. 1, 2024, the provincial gas utility SaskEnergy won’t collect or submit the carbon tax on natural gas to the federal government — unless Ottawa provides the province an exemption as well. But Trudeau responded the next day, “There will absolutely not be any other carve-outs or suspensions of the price on pollution.”2
It’s hard to know if Trudeau’s most recent actions are simply a petty response to the Supreme Court’s humiliating blow to the Prime Minister’s Green Dreams when they ruled that the feds have overreached into provincial jurisdiction,3 or if the Liberals really are this inept. Premier Smith pointed out that heating oil actually releases more carbon emissions than natural gas, so where is the logic?
Of course, there hasn’t been logic for quite some time. And as if there isn’t enough heating fuel on the fire, one of Trudeau’s ministers, Gudie Hutchings, suddenly lost self-awareness:
If Western and prairie provinces want to secure carve-outs in the Federal Goverment’s carbon pricing, they should elect more Liberal ministers.
October 28, 2023, CTV News
Not since Quebec held a referendum on separation has Confederation felt so fragile, undermined by the Leader of the country no less, whose contempt for the literal safety and economic security of the West is on full display. No one is so daft as to believe that carbon taxes actually reduce emissions — they don’t. They reduce income, most notably, for the poor who still have to drive to work and heat their homes on an increasingly smaller paycheck.
Trudeau – A Radical Ideologist
Trudeau is driven by an ideology — not science, not sound environmentalism,4 and certainly not decency, if you are willing to literally leave someone in the cold (indeed, he appears as indifferent about freezing your bank account as he does your family).5 His ideology is based on the wobbly claim that the planet is going to soon self-destruct, and therefore, the wealth of the world must be redistributed. If you just read that sentence and wondered how the two concepts are related, if at all, congratulations — you are among the increasingly few in the country still employing critical thinking. But this is precisely the ideology that Trudeau signed onto with the Paris Agreement:
But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…
Ottmar Edenhofer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), dailysignal.com, November 19th, 2011
Just pause for a moment and let that sink in: this never was about the environment. And Trudeau knows it.
This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution… It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.
Christine Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, November 2nd, 2015; europa.eu
A former Liberal Environment Minister was at least honest about it all:
No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.
Former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Christine Stewart; quoted by Terence Corcoran, “Global Warming: The Real Agenda,” Financial Post, December 26th, 1998; from the Calgary Herald, December, 14, 1998
And there is no one more suited, more capable, more assigned by destiny to bring about “justice and equality” — in his own mind, that is — than Justin Trudeau, the champion of all things politically correct.
But Premiers Moe and Smith are standing up to Trudeau in wild west fashion — Smith even threatening to use her Sovereignty Act to protect the citizens of this province6 from what is increasingly political recklessness on Trudeau’s part (with the quiet but crucial support of the NDP’s Singh). It’s the same ideology and recklessness behind the drive to erect industrial-sized wind turbines that eradicate migratory birds and alarming numbers of bats in order to “save the planet.”
When the young Prime-Minister-want-to-be once quipped how much he admired the “basic dictatorship” of China,7 an electorate mesmerized by his twinkling eyes and brown curls gave him a pass. They shouldn’t have.
Trudeau wasn’t musing but planning. And now Canadians are literally paying for it.
- cf. Premier Smith, Schulz: Fed Pan is “Dangerous”[↩]
- ici.radio-canada.ca[↩]
- cf. edmontonjournal.com[↩]
- cf. Hot Air Behind the Wind[↩]
- cf. Alberta’s Warning: Who Wants to Freeze in the Dark?[↩]
- cf. CPAC[↩]
- Nov. 9, 2013; cbc.ca[↩]
Mark Mallett is a former award-winning reporter with CTV Edmonton and an independent researcher and author. His family homesteaded between Vermilion and Cold Lake, Alberta, and now resides in the Lakeland region. Mark is Editor in Chief of Wind Concerns.