Trudeau’s dangerous, secretive carbon tax: Are Liberals ignoring “evidence”?

Remember when Trudeau and his Liberals liked to claim they were all about facts, evidence based decision making and science? I’d say “those were the days”, but it seems they never existed, especially where the oil industry, or putting a price on carbon are concerned. 

It turns out Trudeau’s government knows their carbon pricing plans will drive up costs, including for the manufacturing industry. But while they know that, while they have it in their own reports, they don’t want to dig too deeply.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s big complaint about Trudeau’s plan was that despite this being a massive tax change with potentially huge economic implications, there has not been an economic impact study.

A massive change to the tax system is being imposed by the federal government and no study on what it might do - either positive or negative - has been completed.

The federal Conservatives tried to get information by submitting order paper questions in the House of Commons, a formal way to ask the government which requires real responses in writing, not political spin.

But, I’m not sure the Liberals get that.

Watch as I show you specific questions submitted by Conservative MP’s, and the less than encouraging responses they received.

Their message to the provinces is essentially, you’ll put a price on carbon dioxide emissions and it will meet our standards or we will impose a price on you, but then they try to wash their hands of it.

A report for the feds, obtained by the Regina Leader-Post shows that last spring Trudeau’s Liberals were warned about the impact a carbon price would have on some sectors of the economy. Here is the quote.

“....because of the tax, a manufacturing firm would pay higher price for energy derived from burning fossil fuels. In turn, this firm would increase the price of its goods to reflect higher input costs for energy obtained from carbon. The tax would cascade throughout the economy and prices would increase most for goods that make intensive use of carbon-based energy.”

This was in a pro-carbon tax paper prepared for the feds and even they can see this will drive up costs and drive up prices.

Trudeau and company keep saying the tax can simply be returned to the people, and be revenue neutral. Well Ontario isn’t going that way and neither is Alberta. Premier’s Wynne and Notley want the extra money to spend on pet projects, so if you live in either province, you’re simply going to pay a lot more with no tax relief elsewhere.

But even if it were revenue neutral, what good does that do if in an export driven economy, you make everything we sell more expensive, something Trudeau’s working group on carbon pricing warned about.

“Increasing carbon prices to levels well beyond those of our trading partners could create competitiveness concerns in certain sectors.”

While they have been warned, while there have been discussions about refunding the carbon tax on exports, on using the tax from one sector to subsidize another - there is still no serious economic impact study on this sweeping change.

Or if there is, they’re hiding it from Parliament, hiding it from Canadians, hoping we won’t notice.

Thankfully, a number of Conservative leadership hopefuls have pledged to do away away with a carbon tax if elected leader and then prime minister, and you can say no as well by signing our petition.

Go to StopTheCarbonTax.com and add your name to the tens of thousands of Canadians that have already said enough is enough! Then do us and every Canadian a favour and share that website on social media, post it to Facebook, share it on Twitter, email it to family and friends. Share this video too.

Our wallets can’t afford it, our family budgets can’t afford it, our industries can’t afford it.