Doug Ford’s December 7 repeal of Ontario’s Green Energy Act—pushed by Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s strategist and WWF Canada president—undermines pipeline projects like Transmountain while favoring wind energy, despite its inefficiencies, rare-earth metal pollution, and exemptions from endangered species laws. Ford’s government canceled 750 contracts, saving $790M, and streamlined regulations, mirroring New Brunswick’s PC-led opposition to Ottawa’s carbon tax, which voters rejected despite the province already meeting 2030 emissions targets. Fracking bans in New Brunswick stifle job growth and emissions cuts, contrasting with U.S. success, while UN migration compacts risk silencing dissenting media. Repeals signal progress against overreach, but challenges remain for energy and free speech. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Doug Ford keeps a promise by repealing Ontario's hated Green Energy Act.
I confess I thought I'd never live to see the day.
It's December 7th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
You know, Gerald Butts.
That's him in a private plane flying with Dalton McGuinty, who was back then the Premier of Ontario.
Butts was his right-hand man.
And now Butts is the right-hand man to Justin Trudeau.
I've only met Gerald Butts a few times very quickly.
The first time, no surprise, was actually in an airport.
He came up and introduced himself and gave me his business card.
That's what he does.
He flies a lot, non-stop, like all the best environmentalists do, sometimes on private jets, sometimes commercial aircraft.
And he networks the business card.
He has networks in academia, especially his alma mater, McGill, where he's treated as a hero.
He was on their board for a while at the university.
I gave a speech at McGill once, and he made sure he was there to listen to what I said and see who was in the crowd.
He does that.
He's linked in globally, too, to all the big environmentalist extremists.
After he left Dalton McGuinty's office, he became president of the World Wildlife Foundation of Canada, part of this program here.
He's part of the tar sands campaign funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund out of New York, attacking Alberta's oil sands.
You can see that, really, for 10 years now, Butts has been waging war against the oil sands and pipelines.
Anyone who actually thinks he wants pipelines built should give their head a shake.
Look at this.
This was the map.
That was the map we showed there.
Blocking oil and gas is literally why he got into politics in the first place.
Do I have to play this clip again for you?
Do you really think this guy would ever allow any pipeline, including the Transmountain Pipeline Expansion, to be built?
Remember this?
We think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
I'll show that once a week forever.
Yeah, he bought the existing Transmountain pipeline positively to ensure that the expansion will never be built.
And who knows, maybe it never will be.
That's how it feels sometimes.
If you recall on that Rockefeller Brothers map, that pipeline map, do you see it says McKenzie Valley Natural Gas Pipeline?
That was proposed in the 70s.
It was delayed for a hundred reasons.
Because of Aboriginal land claims, because of environmental reasons.
It finally got the green light to proceed.
In fact, Aboriginal groups have a huge stake in the project, but guess what?
It was delayed so long the technology called fracking was developed in the meantime and perfected and combined with horizontal drilling and the shale discoveries in the United States.
So the North American price for natural gas fell by what, 80%?
90%?
So the Mackenzie Valley pipeline is no longer economically feasible.
It was delayed long enough to kill it.
I flew up to Innuvik a few years back to meet a lot of these pro-development Aboriginal folks, Inuit, Métis, Indians, and they all wanted the oil and gas.
Now they want it.
And they all spoke poorly of Greenpeace now.
And for good reason, Greenpeace first stopped the Aboriginal fur trade, didn't they?
And then they stopped forestry, which employed a lot of Aboriginal folks.
And now they're stopping oil and gas.
You'd be forgiven for thinking Greenpeace hates Aboriginals, which is a line I heard more than once when I was up in Innovik.
But my point is this.
Everyone's on side now up there for this big natural gas pipeline, except it's never going to happen.
The moment has passed.
I don't think anyone is going to pour billions of dollars into the project given how cheap U.S. fracked gas is.
And seriously, who would ever build a pipeline in Canada with Trudeau and Budson charging at all?
Who would want to go through that, right?
They'll be doing gender.
By the time they build that pipeline, they'll have to do a transgender analysis.
Now, that could be the case with all of Canada's pipelines when you think about it.
You know, a U.S. judge has delayed the Keystone XL pipeline that Donald Trump had revived.
But I'm not sure if Americans even care anymore.
I assured you this the other day.
U.S. oil production is up 20% in the past few years.
And look at this new headline.
This is just yesterday.
Just yesterday from Bloomberg.
The U.S. just became a net oil exporter for the first time in 75 years.
Crude, refined products, exports exceed imports in weekly data.
Shale boom has boosted U.S. crude oil shipments to record.
And that's especially in North Dakota, by the way.
Texas, too, they frack like crazy there.
Now that is incredible.
And by the way, it's not an anti-Canada thing.
Trump has gone full-tail with energy production as a jobs thing, as a trade thing, as a way to take power away from Russia and Iran, which are very dependent on oil for their wealth.
And it gives him leverage even over Saudi Arabia, his ally.
If the U.S. is a huge oil producer, if the U.S. floods the world market with oil, if it becomes independent of OPEC, both strategically and economically, it can actually boss around OPEC, or at least not be bossed around by OPEC.
And America can even export oil to countries who could buy from America instead of from Saudi Arabia or Iran.
There's win-win-win all around.
Canada could have been a part of that.
But we undid ourselves.
I'm sure there will still be markets for our oil somewhere at some price someday.
I mean, oil will always be used, I think, but we missed the big moment, didn't we?
Because of Gerald Butts.
And we may never get that moment back.
Like my friends in Innovik just won't.
They are waiting.
That whole town is waiting.
I was up in Tuck Tayuktuk on the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic.
They are waiting for the big thing to come.
Ain't going to come.
They were waiting when I visited them.
I'm trying to think.
I think it was back in 2014, if I recall.
I think they're still waiting.
And they're going to wait a while.
Endangered Wind Turbines00:09:39
But don't be completely sad.
I mentioned that Donald Trump revived the dead and buried Keystone XL pipeline, or at least he tried.
I think it'll live again.
You know, there's some judge who's blocking it, but Donald Trump always seems to win in court after some activist judge stops him on something.
Donald Trump wins on appeal.
And remember the Dakota Access Pipeline?
We've talked about this before.
It was up there in North Dakota.
Huge protests, like thousands of protesters.
Obama let the protesters block it.
It looked like a huge showdown was coming.
It was massive.
But only because Obama let it be that way, Trump said, get it done.
He issued an order, and the whole place was cleared, and the pipeline was built in months.
It's operational, in case you're missing my point.
And my bigger point is sometimes it is possible to return from the dead.
Sometimes, that Dakota Access Pipeline, Return from the Dead, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Drilling there was banned decades ago.
I thought once you ban drilling, you're never going to unban it.
Donald Trump unbanned it.
Keystone XL was unbanned.
And today is one of those days in Canada.
Today is the day the Dalton McGuinty's Green Energy Act, Gerald Butts, architect, was repealed.
For nearly 10 years it was on the books.
Its roots went deep into the province, but it was rooted out like a weed.
Let me read from Doug Ford's press release.
It really should be sung.
This should be sung in a ballad, a great victory song.
I'll just read it.
Ontario Scraps the Green Energy Acts will protect consumers, restore municipal authority over energy projects.
So this is a press release.
I'm going to read some of it.
Ontario's government for the people, I love that, keep saying that, guys.
Ontario's government for the people is delivering on its promise to repeal the Green Energy Act 2009 that led to the disastrous feed-in tariff program and skyrocketing electricity rates for Ontario families.
The Green Energy Repeal Act eliminates a piece of legislation that introduced disastrous changes to Ontario's energy system that led to rising electricity rates for families and businesses, said Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines Greg Rickford.
By repealing this act, we're restoring planning decisions to municipalities that were stripped by previous government and ensuring local voices have the final say on energy projects in their communities.
Unquote.
One more quote.
The Green Energy Repeal Act gives government the authority to stop approvals for wasteful energy projects where the need for electricity has not been clearly demonstrated.
This will put the brakes on additional projects that will add additional cost to electricity bills that the people of Ontario simply cannot afford.
Along with repealing the Green Energy Act, the new legislation gives municipalities the final say over the siting of future energy projects in their communities.
You know, that's a big part of it.
You can't build a pipeline in Canada without endless consultations.
We know that.
Everyone knows that now.
Even people thousands of miles away from a pipeline were allowed to weigh in on the pipeline.
I'm not kidding.
The Northern Gateway pipeline took input, took testimony from all across the country and even from foreign citizens.
Even Hugo Chavez oil company Citco was allowed to make a presentation.
Endless consultations.
But not so for building massive wind turbines on a Dalton McGinnis Kathleen Wind.
The Green Energy Act did not allow towns to have a say.
Let me phrase that the other way.
It banned towns from having a say.
Can you believe that?
Those things are as high as a skyscraper.
Have you ever been up close?
I've been right up close to those.
They are 30, 40 stories high.
It's like downtown Toronto skyscrapers.
They are hideous from afar.
They are noisy.
They are vibrating.
They're destroying a rural aesthetic.
And most of them don't, I don't know if you even noticed it.
Spot wind turbines, most of them aren't even spinning, by the way.
They're awful, and they're foisted on the local people.
No local people want those.
No environmental impact assessments either.
No plans for remediation after the life of the wind turbine is over.
Here's what I mean by that.
Oil sands companies and other mines, they often have to set aside real money, not like a promise, but actual shove the cash over, for cleanup in advance in case they go out of business.
So in Alberta, you want to start an oil signs mine, you have the oil sands mine, you have to put money into escrow.
Like a billion dollars you have to set aside in case you go out of business.
It's a cleanup fund.
It's an interesting idea.
No such thing for these 40-story monsters.
And it's a real issue because of course wind turbines only work if there are massive subsidies.
So the moment the subsidies are cut off, they become money losers and the companies either go bankrupt or they just abandon the wind turbines because they were really just a lobbying tool and they're hideous and they rust.
No one takes them down.
There's no escrow fund to take them down.
They just rust and rot, and sometimes they burn.
I tell you, quite, and you can't put them out.
Those things are 40 stories high.
You can't put those things out.
It's incredible.
Look at that.
I won't lie, I'm enjoying this.
Look at that.
Yeah, baby.
Green energy with a little bit of black smoked timber.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry, this is too good.
That's too good.
That's too good.
Oh, yeah.
I have seen dilapidated wind turbines on three continents.
It's a real thing.
It's extremely unenvironmental.
And Gerald Butts and Dalton McGuinty brought that to Ontario along with huge power prices.
I'm sure it's a coincidence that so many of the major players in the Canadian wind turbine industry just happen to be liberal insiders, like Mike Crawley.
He was the Liberal Party president, first in Ontario, and then under Justin Trudeau federally.
He was the CEO of major wind turbine companies, the beneficiary of tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from the Liberal government.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
Just like I'm sure it's a coincidence that so many of the major marijuana companies that have become billionaires under Trudeau in the past year are run by Liberal Party insiders.
It's a coincidence.
That's the liberal way, people.
Which is why I am so happy today.
Read this line from the same press release.
Canceling more than 750 wasteful energy contracts to save $790 million for Ontario electricity customers.
Those are sweetheart deals to power companies, like the ones that Mike Crawley had.
Paying grossly inflated rates for solar and wind power.
Now, some of those awful contracts remain in place and will for years to come, but at least it's a start, and I'm thrilled.
I want to tell you one last thing about the Green Energy Act, which is a lie, of course, to call it green energy.
Wind turbines are enormously inefficient, of course.
It takes an enormous amount of steel and concrete and rare earth metals.
Have you heard of those?
You need iron mines for the steel.
But have you ever seen a Chinese rare earth metal mine?
These are the pretty pictures, but the effluent, the pollution, it is perhaps the most polluted place on earth is a Chinese rare earth metal mine slag pile.
Yeah, non-environmental.
But more to the point, wind and solar energy, they're unreliable.
So they all need a reliable backup source of energy, natural gas, nuclear, whatever.
So it's not like the Green Energy Act actually reduced fossil fuel use.
It just added a whole second layer of cost and waste.
And then there's the obvious.
And I don't want to gross you out, but take a look at this.
This is the reality of green energy.
Oh, he'll be fine.
So it was never green energy.
You know what?
If you don't know this, wind turbines are exempt from endangered species laws in Ontario under the Green Energy Act.
Did you know that?
And let me just digress for a second.
The whole world knows that one disastrous day in Alberta, a bunch of ducks sat down in the tailings pond when the electric scarecrow wasn't working and they died.
Like there was like a few hundred of them.
And the whole world knows that there's a prosecution and like a $2 million fine because in the oil pads you heard a duck, a duck.
It's not endangered.
I mean, some good old boys will go shoot 20 ducks in an afternoon and then, I don't know, go for wings or something.
But what was that bird?
Did that look like a bald eagle or some condor to you?
Wind turbines are specifically exempted from the Endangered Species Act because everyone knows they're bird blenders.
Don't call the Green Energy Act.
Premiers and Carbon Tax00:14:42
That's a line.
But today, that law was repealed.
Today, let us make this a celebration day.
And more good news, a whole fleet of regulations are being repealed.
Gerald Butts, Dalton McGuindie, Kathleen Wynne, they did do terrible damage, but it is over.
It's been undone.
It's like taking your hand off a hot stove.
It don't undo the damage, but it stops more of the damage.
Look at this.
Again, from an Ontario press release, I wish I had a better singing voice, because this should be sung.
The package, part of the Ontario Open for Business Action Plan, includes actions that would give businesses more flexibility to create jobs right here at home.
I should read the headline.
Proposed changes to create jobs and reduce regulatory burden in specific sectors.
So this is another press release.
It would also take major steps to make it easier for businesses to locate or expand in Ontario and to protect industrial lands.
As well, it reduces regulatory burden in specific sectors.
Okay, so what does that mean?
Well, there are literally dozens of things they've done, and they have a ton of examples.
I'm just going to pick a couple of really random examples.
Here's one.
Ministry of Government and Consumer Services eliminated regulatory and licensing requirements for upholstered and stuffed articles.
Removing all Ontario-specific licensing and regulatory requirements for upholstered and stuffed articles will reduce a long-standing burden on business, save businesses $4 million annually, and eliminate trade barriers.
These items will continue to be subject to the federal government's health and safety and labeling requirements, as is the case of other provinces.
That's one, and it's sort of obscure, right?
But yeah, why you have extra provincial regs when you already have federal regs for upholstered products?
Think about how many little obscure, weird, niche regulations there are in every single aspect of life.
Here's another, here's another little one, right?
This is from the Ministry of Attorney General.
It's called Repeal the Pawnbrokers Act.
Oh, why?
What do they have to say?
Would repeal an outdated act that duplicates municipalities' existing bylawmaking and licensing authority.
This change would remove a layer of red tape and make pawnbroker businesses subject to local bylaws, just like any other businesses.
Yeah, I mean, why not?
Why would you have to do a city license and a province license?
You're just a pawnbroker.
How many other outdated dumb laws are there on the books that benefited some insider, maybe, but maybe that's even obsolete?
It's just a burden for everyone now.
Some of these changes are tiny.
Some are huge, like this.
This is a change to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing called Make It Easier to Locate or Expand in Ontario.
Introduce a new economic development tool and remove planning barriers to expedite major business investments and speed up approvals so they would be completed within one year, as opposed to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline or the Northern Gateway Pipeline or the Energy East Pipeline or the Trans-Mountain Pipeline.
These proposals to streamline provincial development approvals under the Planning Act would cut red tape and shorten the time it takes to build projects that create jobs.
Municipalities would have the option to use the streamlined process so they could act quickly to attract major employers.
The aim is to have all provincial approvals in place within one year so qualifying businesses can begin construction.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Wouldn't that be, I mean, I used to know a condo builder here in town.
Six years to get the planning through?
Six years.
The pyramids were built faster.
Maybe not quite.
The green, let me just read a little bit more here.
The green belt is, I just want to tell you what the green belt is.
I mentioned the green belt.
The greenbelt is just another way of saying a huge no-development zone that pretty much circles Toronto.
It's a reason why housing is so expensive in Toronto, because you can't build in all those green areas.
So you either pay artificially high prices to live in Toronto proper, or you commute in for hours.
It is awful, and it's pure Gerald Butts, Dahl, McKinney, Kathleen Wynne, social engineering.
That got a big change today, too.
Here's a complaining government journalist with the left-wing TV Ontario.
For those of you outside Ontario, you may not know that there is a provincial version of the CBC owned by the government of Ontario called TV Ontario.
And here's how this TV Ontario liberal describes this change.
He starts off by making a barking sound.
Woof.
This is huge.
The changes to the Planning Act would allow municipalities, with the minister's consent, to pass open for business zoning bylaws.
These zoning bylaws would not need to comply with.
And then he lists all sorts of busybody laws that are now obsolete.
And he's saying this is a bad thing.
An open for business law is a bad thing.
That's his point of view.
That's a Dalton McGinnis, Gerald Butts, Kathleen Wynne point of view.
I love that this provincial version of the CBC hates it.
I love that Gerald Butts can't contain his rage about this.
He's lashing out at Doug Ford every way he knows how.
You know, there's a federal provincial meeting going on between Trudeau and the Premiers right now, First Ministers, meaning it's not going well because so many premiers want to talk about real problems, like the punishing costs of the carbon tax, or oil and gas pipelines not getting built, or the auto industry shutting down.
But Trudeau wants to talk about feminism or something like that.
It's not going well at all, and Trudeau doesn't do well other than in a few shallow talking points.
He wouldn't do well in a deep conference where he has to talk for more than like 60 seconds.
He's not as well briefed on oil and gas as say Saskatchewan's Premier is.
He doesn't know business as well as Ontario's Doug Ford actually did business.
Trudeau wants to make, this is incredible, he wants to make all the provincial premiers sit through lectures from his cabinet.
Why don't they, I'd like Doug Ford to make Justin Trudeau sit through a lecture.
Because Trudeau doesn't want to talk about real things, so he wants to have lectures.
Let me quote you from a CBC story on the subject.
Now, I'm recording this video before the day is done, so I'm not sure how it all went down at the end of the day.
But look at this, from the government broadcaster.
They said, Friday's agenda, as it stands, is supposed to begin with a meeting between all the premiers and Indigenous leaders, followed by talks between the premiers, Trudeau, and three of his members of cabinet.
Bill Mourneau, Dominic LeBlanc, and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who was meeting with her Ontario counterpart, Rod Phillips, earlier Thursday.
Here's my favorite part.
The premiers have said they don't want to hear the ministers make formal presentations regarding a session on trade scheduled with Canada's ambassador in Washington, David McNaughton.
The premiers have said they want to talk not only about NAFTA, but about other trade irritants, such as the metals tariff and softwood lumber.
So there's a few things in there.
The first is the premiers, especially Doug Ford, aren't willing to be doormats anymore, as the Liberal Premiers were for three years.
And no one wants to hear a lecture on, I don't know, business from Trudeau or how to get things done from Catherine McKenna.
Catherine McKenna's never run a business.
She's only run businesses into the ground.
No one wants to hear a lecture.
So they want solutions to problems.
They want to talk about problems like the tariffs that Trump has put on because Trudeau fumbled that Trudeau doesn't have any solutions to problems.
So I love the fact that Doug Ford now says he just won't attend the lecture.
Catherine McKenna can delight Trudeau with her TED Talk style PowerPoint presentation.
He's got other things to do.
You know, the same thing actually happened when Trudeau hosted the G7 leaders earlier this year.
By the way, Trudeau was set to give a lecture himself on feminism.
Could you imagine listening to him with his sexy voice?
And then I said, en français, ladies, you know, can you imagine him giving a lecture on feminism, the kokane groper?
But Donald Trump just didn't attend.
He didn't want to listen to that guy.
Trump was focused on grown-up stuff.
He was about to go to North Korea for negotiations, or even go to Singapore for negotiations with North Korea.
Okay, so what is my point today?
My first thing is I wanted to show you that burning wind turbine.
Okay, check, Mark.
But a few things I think link to government.
There's a pattern here.
There's a theme here, I promise.
First of all, my message is don't lose hope.
If Ontario can undo the Green Energy Act and roll back the green belt and 100 tiny little regulations from the upholstery rules to the pawnbroker rules, that's a sign that things can get better.
Like the carbon tax in Alberta.
It can be undone.
The pendulum can swing back.
I'm not saying always, but it can.
And things look better when you've got a few friends and allies, don't they?
A year ago, it was just tiny Saskatchewan standing up to Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax.
Now half the premiers are.
Oh, and though I don't recommend riots, France shows that the people can win, even against a pretentious, narcissistic, globalist carbon taxer who loves to pout for the camera.
I'm talking about Macron, not Trudeau.
Macron backed down on the carbon tax.
And you know what?
Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna think they're dazzling, think they're well-loved, because they only surround themselves with flatterers, including at the CBC, including their own caucus.
And it can be depressing for the rest of us because you start to think, am I the only person who thinks Trudeau's an idiot and McKenna's a kook?
But then you have friends and allies.
You see Doug Ford saying, yeah, no, I don't need to sit through you giving your kooky PowerPoint about carbon taxes.
And you realize, okay, maybe we're going to be okay after all.
Not for sure that Mackenzie Valley pipeline cancellation, that ain't coming back, not in our lifetime.
I don't know if the oil sands pipelines will either, to be candid.
I don't know if America needs them.
I don't think, I don't know, maybe the moment's passed.
But it is possible.
I never thought I'd live to see the day when the wind turbine mania was officially killed.
I did live to see that day.
That day is today.
Sometimes, my friends, we can actually win.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, what a difference a year makes.
It wasn't long ago that the only people in Canada resisting the carbon tax, well, you could count them on Three Fingers, the Premier of Saskatchewan, a great little province, but a little province.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
And well, little old us here at the Rebel.
Well, now it is almost 2019 and it seems like half the country is opposing the carbon tax.
Doug Ford, the Premier of the biggest province of Ontario, is taking him to court.
And now we have news that the new Conservative Premier of New Brunswick, once a liberal stronghold, is joining that court battle.
Here to talk with us about that is one of the people who's been fighting against the carbon tax since the beginning, our dear friends of the Canadian Tax Raiders Federation, Paige McPherson, the Atlantic Canada Director for the Federation.
Paige, it's so nice to see you again.
Thanks for joining us from Halifax.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
You know, I got to salute you guys.
I remember when it was pretty much just you and us and at the time, Brad Wall in Saskatchewan, and it was pretty lonely.
And even some fashionable conservatives like my old friend Preston Manning said, oh, a carbon tax is the way to go.
You just got to suck it up.
But I think the tide is reversing.
Would you say that's true?
Yeah, definitely.
I remember you're right.
We've been fighting the carbon tax from day one.
And particularly in Ontario, people said, look, Ontario is never going to change.
You've got both the Liberals and the PCs in Ontario saying that the carbon tax is the way to go and that is a carbon tax stronghold and you're never going to break it down.
Well, how the tide has changed there in Ontario.
You see now Premier Doug Ford there fighting against it, launching a court challenge against Ottawa's carbon tax.
The tables have completely turned and I think that that's just a reflection of what the people in Ontario wanted because you had a lot of the sort of elite academic types and politicians saying, no, the carbon tax is good.
And of course, it does generate more revenue for governments.
So no surprise that politicians like it.
But I think when it comes down to what voters want, it certainly, I think, the tide is turning against the carbon tax.
You're so right.
Well, give us the news from New Brunswick.
I haven't had the pleasure of speaking yet with the new Premier Blaine Higgs, but I did have a very interesting interview with the leader of the People's Party out there, which is no relation to Maxime Bernier's party of a similar name.
Libertarian, smaller government type.
I mean, a little bit unusual.
So I was excited when they formed a coalition to boot the Liberals.
Tell us a little bit about Blaine Higgs and what's he saying about the carbon tax?
I think a lot of our viewers in the West and in Ontario might not be that familiar with him.
Sure.
So Blaine Higgs, the PC Premier of New Brunswick, it was definitely an interesting situation, similar to what you saw in BC, where there was a time where people weren't exactly sure who was going to form the government.
So now, as you said, the Liberals have been defeated.
The PCs formed government.
They're being propped up by the sort of right-leaning People's Alliance.
And it was a very interesting election.
But now, Blaine Higgs, the PC Premier of New Brunswick, characterized the election as a referendum against the carbon tax or a referendum on the carbon tax.
He's being against the carbon tax.
But to be honest with you, the New Brunswick Liberals, even their plan was to simply rename a portion of their existing gas tax, the carbon tax, and then take that revenue and put it into a climate fund, which we know is code for corporate welfare.
But even that liberal position was not even strongly in support of the federal liberal carbon tax.
And indeed, Ottawa said to the liberal premier at the time in New Brunswick, that plan is not going to fly.
New Brunswick's Carbon Tax Challenge00:14:11
We won't accept that.
Now, with PC Premier Blaine Higgs coming to the forefront here and saying we are going to take this a step further, New Brunswick is actually now launching its own independent court challenge against Ottawa's carbon tax.
So that's now the third province that is actually launching an independent court challenge against that carbon tax.
So I think that's really good news for taxpayers in New Brunswick.
But it's good news for taxpayers right across Canada because the more that we fight this tax in Ottawa, I think the better.
Yeah, you're so right.
You know, you raise a great point.
I'm no fan of the Liberals, as you know, but it is true that a tax on gasoline, well, I mean, that's a hydrocarbon.
And I mean, we're carbon-based life forms.
Almost everything is carbon.
Look at the word carbs.
It's a carbohydrate.
I mean, to be against the periodical table of the elements is nutty to begin with.
But if that's the weird game we're playing, it's completely legit for even a liberal premier, like the late liberal premier of New Brunswick, to say, look, we're already carbon taxing our people to death through gasoline taxes.
A gasoline tax is a carbon tax.
I mean, I don't like it, and I don't like the games, but there is a legitimate point there.
And I mean, that's sort of a Weasley way of saying we don't like it, but it is a way of saying we don't like it.
It's interesting to me that that wasn't enough for New Brunswick voters.
And that gives me great hope that people want the full repeal, the full no here.
Yeah, well, absolutely.
And so it was a really close vote in New Brunswick.
And so I think that what we can confidently say is that voters right across the spectrum didn't want Ottawa's carbon tax, at least, you know, when it comes to that issue and which parties they were supporting, because the Liberals were not fully in support of Ottawa's carbon tax.
Like you say, I think they sort of scooted around it, but they definitely were fighting the federal government on that issue.
And then the PC is taking that even a step further, fighting them more with their own independent court challenge.
And I'll add to that as well, that the PC government has said that they are also going to join on to Saskatchewan's court challenge against Ottawa's carbon tax and Ontario's court challenge as interveners on both of those cases.
So New Brunswick is actually fighting the carbon tax, you know, that sort of joining that united provincial front against Ottawa's carbon tax in three different court challenges, sending a very clear, clear, clear message, I think, to Ottawa that, look, provincial taxpayers have had enough.
And in New Brunswick, where they've already met their 2030 emissions reductions target, and they already are some of the most taxed Canadians when it comes to the gas taxes, which was the former Liberal Premier, Brian Gallant's point, but also income taxes, business taxes, you name it, sales taxes, they're the highest across the board in Canada, in New Brunswick.
So when you're, or at least among the highest.
So when you take that into account, New Brunswickers, A, have already reduced their emissions.
They've already done their part when it comes to the climate change issue.
But on top of that, they're already heavily, heavily taxed.
How much more uncompetitive can you force a province to be?
And I think that's the point that's really getting across, and that's what taxpayers in New Brunswick care about.
Yeah, I mean, New Brunswick is a very interesting province.
And for a while there, it had net outflow of migration.
It was so poor.
It was also for a while there the statistically the oldest population because all the young folks just left because the economy was so slow.
I mean, there's a lot of things that make me sad about New Brunswick, the cancellation of the energy ease pipeline, which would have been such an enormous benefit.
I want to ask you about one last thing, because I love New Brunswick, even though I've only been there a handful of times.
They have natural gas under their feet.
And natural gas, it is a hydrocarbon.
It is a fossil fuel, as they say, but it has a lower carbon intensity than coal.
Now, I don't really care about these things because I'm aware that carbon dioxide is what plants need for photosynthesis.
I know carbon dioxide is harmless.
But for those who care, fracked natural gas is the reason why the United States, their emissions have actually fallen more than all other countries in the world combined.
Not because of some law that Obama passed or some law that Trump passed, but because they're fracking natural gas.
It's so cheap, it's so clean, it's so plentiful that private companies are saying, wow, this natural gas is so cheap, let's burn it instead of coal.
I've got nothing against coal, but I'm just explaining what happened in America in places like Pennsylvania that were economically hurt, and now they're booming.
That's a very long preamble, Paige, but my question is, is there any chance that under Premier Higgs, who seems to be against the carbon tax, that New Brunswick might revisit its ban on fracking for natural gas?
Because talk about an economic opportunity and talk about a way, if you care about that sort of thing, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because natural gas is the cleanest burning fossil fuel there is.
Yeah, so yeah, I have good news on that front.
I would say partial good news.
So Premier Higgs has committed, he committed in his platform to revisit the ban on the fracking of shale gas.
And they are.
They've announced that they're going to partially remove the ban.
Now, the problem is with this policy is that it's kind of, they have a selective approach.
So in communities that have the demand for it, they're saying that they're going to remove the fracking ban.
And then in communities that want the ban to stay, they're going to keep the ban on.
Now, how that plays out, I think it'll be interesting to watch because if the communities that want to maintain the ban are communities that don't really have natural gas reserves anyway, well, then no big deal.
So I think it'll be positive to see that there will be probably going forward some more fracking in New Brunswick than we've seen in the past.
And, you know, we've commended the PCs for having that as part of their platform.
Of course, there are still those in New Brunswick, political operatives that are still trying to maintain the ban on fracking, and that's to be expected.
But we've called for them to completely remove the ban.
And look, I've lived in Alberta.
I've lived in New Brunswick for a short period when I was covering the election there.
And what you can see so clearly, it's the same in Nova Scotia.
You see people leaving Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to go work on safe fracking projects in Western Canada or even Ontario, wherever it might be.
And they're leaving their home provinces in order to do that.
And it just makes absolutely no sense.
I mean, why not, when you have these great reserves in New Brunswick, why not have those jobs take place here at home?
And I think that's the New Brunswick government's argument.
And so I'm glad to see them moving forward on that.
We do hope that it results in a complete removal of the fracking ban in the province.
But at the very least, we are making some positive progress.
Yeah.
You know, I used to fly east and west quite a bit, and there were always New Brunswickers and other Atlantic Canadians.
And I thought to myself, New Brunswickers are working on fracking.
They're just doing it halfway across the country and commuting, and that's tough on the families, and it's inconvenient and stressful.
Wouldn't it be nice if they could go home every night for dinner?
The same thing with Newfoundlanders.
They jetted all the way out to Fort McMurray.
Like, people would actually commute that far to work in oil and gas because there are bans, some bans in place in Newfoundland too.
Well, listen, we started talking about carbon taxes.
We ended talking about fracking, but I think they are related.
Let me ask you one last question, Faith.
Sorry, Paige, just because I got you here.
The protests in Paris, France, that turned violent, some of them, but they were mainly peaceful.
I saw up to 75,000 protesters, Paige, and they were protesting against a fuel tax.
Their yellow vests were a symbol of the new anti-car laws of Mecon.
Did that resonate at all in Atlantic Canada?
Because I know a lot of the international coverage has downplayed the carbon tax aspect of that.
Do you think that that inspired any Canadians or was it just not covered clearly enough?
Well, I don't know if it's inspired any Canadians to go that far, but I think that what it shows is a reflection of that discontent with these policies that are making the necessities of life more expensive or more difficult to access or banning them completely, whatever the policy might be.
I think that that same discontent is shared in Canada, in provinces that are fighting the federal government on the carbon tax, saying we don't want this carbon tax.
Stop pushing it onto us.
We've now voted in a government that doesn't want it, that said that it's going to fight against it.
Stop pushing this carbon tax on us.
I think that that sentiment is shared.
Now, I haven't seen anything like the protests that have happened in France.
I know, obviously, don't condone any of the violence that's been happening there, but you can understand where a lot of the people there are coming from on the discontent, which I do think is shared.
And in Atlantic Canada, there is a particular strength to the necessities of life angle because we don't have fancy transit systems.
Most of Atlantic Canada is relatively rural.
It gets quite cold and snowy.
We need to heat our homes in the winter.
We need to drive our cars to get ourselves to work or to get our kids to daycare, whatever it might be.
And there's no way that we're going to do less of that if you simply make it more expensive.
All you're going to do is make it more expensive and make life more difficult.
And so I think that is a message that does strongly resonate in Atlantic Canada because that's just the reality of life here.
Yeah.
Well, I tell you, it's a pleasure to talk with you for once about good news.
So many times when we talk with our friends at the Taxpayers Federation, it's degrees of bad news.
And I will agree that the pendulum is swinging back at least a little bit.
And I don't want violent protests either.
But wouldn't it be nice to see a thousand people gathering against the carbon tax, maybe in Yellow Vest, peacefully in Canada?
I think that would send a strong signal.
Maybe we should team up with the Taxpayers Federation and do something like that.
Paige, great to see you again.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it.
Our friend Paige McPherson.
She's the Atlantic Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and she joined us via Skype from Halifax.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about the UN Global Compact on Migration.
Kayrick writes, Ezra, if they have singled you out for attack, then you are effective at punching holes in the liberal lives and propaganda.
Kayrick, you're right.
I don't mind them being mean to us rhetorically.
I think it's a feather in our cap.
I think it distinguishes us from the Me Toos, the think-alikes, the Justin's Journos, taking the $595 million in Trudeau bailout money.
So if that's all it was, I wouldn't mind.
But what worries me is if you read section 33 C and D of the Global Compact for Migration, it specifically talks about recalcitrant media like us.
It talks about punishing media like us.
It talks about having resources cut off.
It talks about having monitoring and detecting and responding by governments to us.
So I don't mind if Justin Trudeau and Ahmed Hassan and Kent Hare and the Liberal Party are mean rhetorically.
I don't care.
I'm worried that they're going to take steps to ban us, sue us, regulate us, have Facebook shut us down, YouTube shut us down.
That's what I'm worried about.
Daniel writes, George Soros is writing Canadian policy.
I would laugh my head off if it weren't so scary.
Yeah, Daniel, you know what's so frustrating to me about that is that was not hidden.
I showed you, and I've showed it probably half a dozen times over the years.
That is a press release from the government of Canada.
They were boasting about it.
They put it out on the internet.
You can search for it in, you can find it in 60 seconds on Google.
And yet, have you ever seen a single story in the mainstream media about that?
Just about it at all.
I mean, George Soros is a newsworthy billionaire.
He's what, the world's 14th richest man, last I checked.
He's got an enormous amount of money.
It's just interesting.
Just whether or not you agree with it or not, it's just an interesting piece of news.
It has not been reported.
And it's not just interesting, it's controversial.
Can you imagine a Canadian prime minister outsourcing policy to a foreign country, to a lobbyist?
I can't even think of an example where it's ever happened.
Don't you think that's newsworthy?
And yet it has not been reported as news.
And yet it's not a speculative theory.
That is a fact.
Where is the rest of the media?
Andrew writes, if you're so fringe and untrustworthy, why are they so worried about you?
Yeah, I think they've got to pick a lane.
Either the rebel is obscure and fringe and, you know, marginal, or the rebel is dangerous and big.
Well, which one is it?
I think you've got to pick a lane.
I think the answer is we are filling the gap left by the mainstream media and on some issues left by a timid conservative opposition.
I know how to kill the rebel.
Don't tell anybody.
Let's just keep this between you and me.
But you know how to kill the rebel?
If Post Media, Toronto Star, CBC, CTV, and Global News covered the other side of the story, then why would you need the rebel?
Filling the Media Gap00:01:22
You could just flick on your telly and watch it in a million-dollar studio with billion-dollar budgets.
Then there would be no news for the rebel.
If you heard the other side of the story on everything from the carbon tax to open borders, immigration to Omar Cotter and terrorism to any of those issues, that's how you kill the rebel.
Don't tell anyone.
Okay, you can tell them.
You can tell them.
Because I think the chances of the CBC telling the other side of the story are, well, it would be easier for a camel to go through that eye of an eagle than for the CBC to tell the truth.
Folks, that's it for today.
Good luck to our friends.
David Menzies is off to Morocco, unless Ahmed Hassan has him arrested.
And Sheila Gunreed is off to Poland.
They're both covering their respective UN conferences.
Isn't that cool?
And all of those videos will be on YouTube for free to the world to see.
If you want to see them, we've collected, we've set up a special website, rebelun.com, where we will have all of the videos from both David and Sheila.
And if you want to help us cover their airframe, you can chip in there too.
Until Monday, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, and I can say World Headquarters, if we've got folks in Morocco and Poland, yeah, you're darn tootin.