The federal carbon tax was a bad word in Saskatchewan from the beginning, and it is becoming more apparent as time goes on that this is a really bad idea whose time has not come. Moreover, the Liberal government is acting in bad faith with Canadians, when they will not allow information about what it’s really costing people to be made public.
The carbon tax issue was at the forefront of a town hall meeting held on Friday in Weyburn by Souris-Moose Mountain MP Dr. Robert Kitchen, who brought along the Conservatives’ finance critic, MP Pierre Poilievre, who shared some of the information he’s been able to glean about this insidious tax that, up until now, Saskatchewan has been alone among the provinces in fighting its implementation upon her citizens.
Poilievre told the meeting that he had submitted an information request to the government, as a report had been compiled about the cost of the carbon tax to Canadians — and the numbers were redacted. Perhaps it is not so surprising that the Liberals are not very forthcoming about what this tax is costing people, but it nonetheless is not acceptable that the federal government will not admit to how their tax is actually impacting people’s wallets.
As the visiting MP commented, if Canadians knew what the “sticker shock” really was, they would be in revolt, and perhaps that is the real reason the government is hiding the numbers.
The prospect that this tax is sucking out a lot of dollars from the wallets and bank accounts of Canadians raises another question, namely, what is all this money is going towards? This has never been clear from the outset, and goes to one of the objections that Saskatchewan has raised: just how is this tax supposed to address its supposed target, namely to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming?
Realistically, there is no way this tax will address that issue, as only the reduction of harmful emissions can accomplish that. The tax is nothing more than a cash grab by the Liberals, maybe in the hopes of offsetting the incredibly high debt they are building by over-spending Canadian tax dollars.
What is perhaps most offensive is that this was a “politically correct” tax to implement, in the name of helping the environment, when in fact causing people to fork over large amounts of their hard-earned money will not benefit the environment in any way.
