Nuanced. - 157. Kris Sims: Impact of Carbon Tax & Wealth Tax on Citizens and the Economy

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Kris Sims and Aaron Pete explore the real-life impacts of the carbon tax, scrutinize government rebates and exemptions, and evaluate the broader economic consequences, while also discussing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's financial strategies and Pierre Poilievre's perspectives on fiscal policy and accountability.Kris Sims, the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, is a BCIT journalism graduate with a rich career history in radio, Parliament Hill, and CTV, passionate about advocating for taxpayers' rights.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron P. Taxes are rarely a fun conversation, but today I'm speaking with someone who is fighting to reduce them on behalf of Canadians. I am speaking with a representative of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on the Carbon Tax, Capital Gains, Justin Trudeau, Pierre Polyev, and so much more. My guest today is Chris Sims. Chris, it is such a good. a pleasure to sit back down with you. With all these new taxes, I think there's a lot for us to catch up on, and I'd love to get your perspective on these issues. But first, would you mind

briefly introducing yourself? Yeah, for sure. So my name is Chris Sims, and I'm the Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I was born and raised in British Columbia, though, so I was very fortunate to be the BC director as well. So I'm able to span a couple of provinces and spend a long time working on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Happy to be back out west here. I I mostly like to focus on things like smaller government, more accountable government, lower taxes, and more freedom for Canadians. It wouldn't be a Canadian conversation if we didn't start with the carbon tax. It has been under assault from premiers across Canada, from the conservative leader.

Would you mind giving us a refresher on this tax and what your perspective is? For sure. So if I can start at the very beginning for the carbon tax in Canada, it actually starts near where you are there in British Columbia. Back in 2008, the then BC government brought in the very first carbon tax in all of North America. And it's important to point this out, because back then the government told British Columbians many things. They told them that the carbon tax would be revenue neutral. They said that it would stop at $30 per ton. They said that it would reduce emissions, and they said that it would create a plethora of affordable alternative energies

that people could simply switch to. Today, of course, none of that is true. It costs way more than $30 per ton. It was only revenue neutral for a couple of years or so. Emissions, unfortunately, are going up and not down, and it's really hard for the average working person. There are some people that can manage it, but for the average working person to actually find affordable reliable, abundant alternative energies. I start with BC because BC was the template for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mandatory federal carbon tax. So the federal government used British Columbia as a model, actually, and said, you know what,

that looks great. Let's impose a carbon tax on all of Canada. And so now we actually have a carbon tax that is $80 per ton. That doesn't make sense to normal people. Like, I don't know about you, but I don't pick up a ton of carbon on the way home from the grocery store. But what that means, essentially, is that it's 17 cents extra per liter for gasoline and 21 cents extra per liter for diesel. It also affects your home heating, the first federal carbon tax, and that is about 15 cents extra per cubic meter of natural gas. On average, a typical family home in Canada will wind up spending around $350 or so per heating season, just in a carbon tax on natural gas, for example.

Propane is roughly similar. Up until recently, furnace oil was a little bit more, but they recently did a car vote exemption at the federal level for home heating with furnace oil. primarily, though, all of those houses nowadays are way back east in the maritime provinces. So as we come up to today, British Columbia still technically has its own first carbon tax, but it's tied to what we call the mandatory minimum. So they wouldn't be allowed to reduce their carbon tax provincially below what Justin Trudeau wants it to be. Also, there's this weird little secret in British Columbia that there's actually a second form of a carbon tax. It doesn't hit home heating yet to don't tell them, but it hits gasoline and diesel. And it's pretty high.

It varies because it's based on an average price on the world market, but it floats around 17 or 18 cents extra per gasoline liter. Same sort of thing for diesel. That's why, for folks who've done the east-west trip, say you've driven across the prairies and you've gone through the Rockies and you go into British Columbia, you'll all of a sudden see the price jump at the pump by around. 17-ish cents per liter, that's why, because there's a hidden form of a second carbon tax. So all in all, the carbon tax, generally speaking, across Canada winds up costing families a lot of

money, even net, even with the rebates factored in. Like, for example, you probably see that sign back there. Here in Alberta, an average family, average, is going to be out to more than $900 this year, net with rebates factored in because of the carbon tax. And those were the parliamentary budget officers' numbers. I just stuck them on a poster. So that's where we're at right now when it comes to the carbon tax in Canada. There is lots of meat to this bone.

Maybe let's start with home heating oil, because this is where I think a lot of political challenges kind of started and blossomed from. And if I'm not mistaken, the argument from the government of the day under Justin Trudeau is that they were being empathetic to the challenges that existed within, individuals because homey heating oil is more expensive and they were recognizing that bringing this in was going to put pressure on people in poverty. How do you read that claim? Is there is merit to that claim? How do we process that? Well, good on you because you nailed it exactly where this path started forking when it comes to the carbon tax. And it was back when they had that

carve out for home heating oil. Now here at the Taxpayers Federation, we've been sounding the alarm on this thing for years, that it cost people too much money, that it's just a financial punishment, that doesn't actually reduce emissions, so why are we doing this? But when it really became obvious, for what I would describe as the mainstream media and kind of the main political narrative in Canada, you're exactly right. It was when the Trudeau government created this car vote for home heating oil. Now, you're right. Officially, the Trudeau government said that's why they were doing it. But of course, as you know, everything is political. So I have a lot of family. from Nova Scotia. I owned a house out there with my husband. I actually know it pretty well. So,

especially in rural areas, a lot of people, around 40-ish percent of people in the Maritimes, are still on home heating oil. So I say still, because for a long time, especially across the prairies, and a little bit in British Columbia, back in the 80s, a lot of people had oil tanks. And there these kind of big round, they look like a really big tick-tack. And they're outside of your house and you fill it up with what is listed usually as light fuel oil. When you're looking at a grid chart, what it is is furnace oil. It's kind of brownish gold, pretty smelly if you spill it, and they fill it up and it runs a furnace. For some reason, and I'm not sure why, folks in the Maritimes held on to those furnaces and oil tanks longer. So like I said, close to half of people in

some regions of the Maritimes are still on this. What's interesting here is that up until July 1st, this past Canada Day, the Maritimes weren't paying the backstop on the carbon tax. No, no, they had a special deal. So say on average you're going to the gas pump and you're in, I don't know, Dartmouth, wherever in Nova Scotia, they'd be paying around two or three cents for their version of a carbon tax in Nova Scotia, all of a sudden, on July 1st, bam, they were brought on to the federal carbon tax. All of a sudden, their price of the pump jumped by like 14 cents a liter overnight. Now, it isn't just like you said, it isn't just filling up at the pump. It's home heating oil. So this is what happened. All these members of parliament, who happened

to be liberal. We're back in their constituency offices, okay? Picture it. It's summertime. People are doing their strawberry socials and having their box picnics and stuff. Super nice stuff that happens in the Maritimes in the summertime. Just right out of a Lucy Mon Montgomery movie. All of a sudden, these voters slash constituents were coming up to their MP saying, whoa, this just jumped at the pump. You better not be taxing my home heating fuel boy when I come to September to be filling up the tank, are you? And they were lost for an answer. Now, what's interesting here is that politically speaking, the liberal MPs and the Atlantic caucus, so they separate by regions when they get together in their little clubs, all parties do it, not just the liberals, but the Atlantic regional

caucus of the liberal party has most of the old guard in it. So you're going to get MPs that have been around there for a long time, like Lawrence McCauley on Prince Edward Island, okay, like Dominic LeBlanc, okay? Long timers. They were not having this. They were suddenly getting told by their constituents, you're going to cost me what? Like $600 extra this winter on heating my home so I don't freeze to death

so my pipes don't burst? I don't think so, kid. And then they turned around and pressured the prime minister. And then the prime minister had that very hurriedly thrown together press conference saying, yeah, we're going to exempt home heating fuel. What was interesting there, did you notice, Minister Stephen Giebeau was not at that announcement. So that's where we're at right now. And you're absolutely right for nailing that to be the point where the timeline fractured when it came to the mainstream narrative on carbon tax.

It seems like all of the premiers also realized this is now a political issue. You've moved this from a claim of just about the environment and what's best because the argument is this home heating oil is actually bad for the environment. It's actually one of the worst. And so if this was just about this one idea, which is addressing climate change and addressing emissions and doing these things, then you wouldn't emit one of the worst polluters and you'd be more careful. And so once it caught wind that this is a political issue that can be politicized, it's been moved forward. How do you process Prime Minister Trudeau's decision on this? Because he must have known at the time this opens the door and you can't close the door once you've opened it. And so do you think if he could go back, he would change it?

Or did he know that there were no options and he had to do it now? He just has to live with it. That's a great question. If I can speculate, and I'm just speaking for myself here, I don't think he thought about it. I don't think he thought about it. I think he just made a knee-jerk reaction because these older MPs were probably yelling at him. And he said, oh, got to do something and made this announcement. because it's really disastrous for him politically from many different angles.

Because you're right, all of a sudden, this was an admission that this is a financial burden. So you might remember that the constant chorus, and it still hangs around now, okay, is something like this. Don't worry, folks, the carbon tax is not a financial punishment whatsoever. In fact, you're going to get more back than you pay in. Just trust us. Like, they repeat that more back than you pay in all the time. Okay, so number one, anyone with a shred of common sense knows that that's silly, that that doesn't make sense, because the government does not generate wealth. Okay, there is not some magical fountain of actual gold-backed currency wealth generation under Parliament Hill.

If you give them a $50 bill, they're not going to give you back $80. They can't do that. The cost is always out there and being born by the people at large in the larger economy. So on the very surface, people are like, that doesn't make sense. I can't give you money and get more back, like, magically. Number two, the parliamentary budget office, again, I would encourage anybody. It's really easy reading, honestly. It sounds complicated, but I promise you it's not.

It's very easy to understand. They did a report, and they showed that the average family is going to be out net anywhere between $400-something and $900-something this year. So, yeah, it's a financial punishment. And even if we were to take that logic, if it's not a financial punishment, how is it that you're supposedly sticking people off of oil and gas products, right? I mean, if it's just magically going to make us all wealthier, why not make the carbon tax? I don't know, a dollar per liter, because we'll all be rich, right?

You see how that thinking is bizarre? So all of a sudden, they had to admit out loud with their faces, yeah, this costs people money. and it's a problem. And two, you nailed it. They had to make this weird climb down specifically on furnace oil, which just so happens to have heavier emissions than natural gas or propane. But they didn't give a carve out for natural gas and propane. So the vast majority of us from like Ontario West use natural gas to heat our homes. There are folks, though, I do want to give a shout out to them, especially there in B.C. where housing prices are so, so expensive. They do live in kind of an RV lifestyle, for sure. They drive around quite a bit. They still, they work jobs, right? All that jazz,

but they live in RVs and they also live in mobile homes in trailer parks. Those almost always use propane, but no carve out for them. So this was just a gigantic mess. The fact that he, like, it was like putting his foot in a political bear trap because now he's stuck both ways. He's admitting that it's a financial cost, of course, and he's also giving an exemption to one of the heavier burning fuels with no explanation. The only thing he can come up with is, oh, we're going to give money back on rebates for a heat pump. Not everybody wants a heat pump. Heat pumps can be pretty expensive to install. You have to maintain them all the time. That's usually a pretty serious personal choice when it comes to heating your home. Also, I've read several articles where some home

insurance companies won't ensure you if a heat pump is your only source of heat. You have to have a more functional primary source of heat. Or usually in most parts of Canada, they won't give you insurance. Yes, we have a community nearby, a First Nation community that tried to switch over to heat pumps and install them all outdoors and then realized that during extremely cold weather events when we hit like minus 30 for a period, that they will explode and they will fail on you. And so all of those new units had those heat pumps fail with, I guess, water running through them and stuff and that water froze. And then, yeah, there was, so they had to reorder new ones. But going back to this rebate challenge, it seems like this is one of the harder things to kind of like wrap your head around is how this rebate is working.

One, to your point, you can't take somebody's money, manage it and have administration costs of it and then give back more money. But the other thing that I feel like muddies my understanding of this is when you're taxing like gas and then you have delivery truck drivers and the food is moving around and it's hard to calculate the impact of that as well on top of this. And I think maybe I'm forgetting, but I don't think the parliamentary budget officer was able to include those costs on how that impacts the cost of food overall. They can calculate for an individual, but it's hard to calculate the net effect of this tax, am I mistaken? No, you're not mistaken at all. And that's, again, you're really

nailing it there because quite often you'll hear Prime Minister Trudeau, again, say something silly like most people get more back than they pay in. Like I said, number one, that's odd, right? Like that just defies common sense. And I don't care where you are on the political spectrum. Like, that should be making you question with the government says that. But what I think they were doing is if you open up the parliamentary budget officer's report, he's got big grids there province by province and it shows average family cost the top line is just direct cost so you know say you are laura and you're in langley and you're filling up your little honda civic this cute little hatchback of yours and it costs you around 850 extra to fill it up in the carbon tax

she's probably getting that back just dollar for dollar that one exchange but what it wasn't factoring in when Trudeau says you get more back than you pay in, is what you just said. It is not factoring in how much the trucker is paying to fill up his big rig full of diesel. By the way, it's about $200 extra every single time the trucker's filling up, not calculating how much the maintenance person has to pay on their pickup truck, not counting in how much the grocery store has to pay to keep the heat and lights and cooling and everything going on natural gas, which then you see how it layers. Oh, and farmers too. A lot of people think that farmers are exempt from all fuel taxes. So if they fill up their tractor with diesel, I think it's still purple gas out there in BC. I used to work at a gas

station and the marked gas was purple. Yeah, they get that for their tractor, but farmers actually have to pay the carbon tax on drying their grain and heating their barns. So if you've got a chicken barn and you need to keep it at a steady plus 30 degrees all year around, like good luck doing that. I know without natural gas or propane, I've seen some bills for these farmers that are thousands of dollars in the carbon tax. Guess what? That helps make food costs more. So what the parliamentary budget officer did was put in kind of a bottom line of net costs, including, I think the term he used was, I'm trying to paraphrase, it was like economic factors or wider economic implications, and that's what he was talking about, of like the trucker, the farmer, the grocery store, the

retail operator, all that crazy layering of carbon tax cost when he came up with his calculation. So again, here in Alberta, we're pretty oil and gas intensive. Like, it isn't just our home heating that we require natural gas for. Most of our electricity, like the lights are being kept on in this room right now because of natural gas. Out there in BC, you guys have hydro. And I know we have some deals going back and forth based on the cost where we can share power. But that carries carbon tax implications as well. And so that is why Alberta families, on average, are getting hit the hardest by the carbon tax with rebates factored in. How do you, what would you say to a person, I guess, that is in this circumstance where we are seeing more wildfires. We are seeing more

challenges on the planet. Like, within my own region, we have Lytton that was burnt to the ground. Like, we understand that something needs to be done to prepare us. Now, like, on the specific of Litton, And there hasn't been houses rebuilt from that. So this whole idea that all of these things are going towards addressing climate change issues, I have issues with because where I see them more direct, I don't see the investments going to where they would need to to address it. But I think people are willing to support types of initiatives like this in the hopes that they do address this broader issue, which is energy consumption, energy use, and they want to be

a part of the solution. They don't want to be a part of the problem. We have recycling programs. We're committed to doing good things. this has become a political issue and it's still so hard for me to understand what the actual impact of addressing climate change will be through all of these new taxes. Again, if it's if it's revenue neutral hypothetically, then how is this solving climate disasters and climate challenges and wildfires and and heat domes and ice cold winters? Like how is it solving these

problems? What do you say to the person that wants to address climate change, wants to protect their families in future generations and are being given this tax as a potential solution. I love all of those questions. And to start off with, I'm not a climate scientist. So I can't promise that the solutions I'm about to offer will work on these things. However, I am a tax fighter and I do analyze data and numbers all day. I'm also a British Columbian. I was in hope when Lytton burnt down. It was awful. Lytton was really special. Where the two rivers meet, I mean, that's just a spiritual place. And to know that it's gone and that the homes still haven't been rebuilt, it's my understanding that there's still actually some investigations ongoing up in that

region, if you can believe it. So, yeah, that was deeply upsetting. When it comes to this, though, specifically Canada and specifically the carbon tax. So this is, is going to sound harsh, but even if Canada didn't exist, God forbid, pretend we blinked out of existence. It wouldn't make a dent in global emissions. That's just the cold, hard mathematical fact. In fact, you don't need to believe me if you don't want to. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said exactly the same thing in French on this really special program a few years ago, probably 2017, 2018, around there. It was in Quebec, and it was on a program called Tulement-en-en-Paul. And he said in French, basically, what I just said, even if we shut down everything tomorrow,

so everybody stays in their home, stop eating, stop driving, stop heating, like you'd not exist, right? It wouldn't make a dent in global emissions, because we're less than, I think, 1.2 or 1.3 percent. It varies based on the calculation. So even if you, want to get up in the morning and dramatically reduce global emissions, making the carbon tax a hundred bucks a liter in Canada wouldn't move that needle. What we could do, though, is sell natural gas to a place like India. Okay? And the reason why I use India is because they were part of the Commonwealth for a long time. They're a democracy. We have a lot of folks living, especially in British Columbia, whose ancestors come from there. There's a lot of relatability.

to India. And India also has asked to purchase our natural gas. And the reason why we would suggest this as an alternative is because India is responsible for a huge part of global emissions. Like, picture Canada being this much, India is responsible for this much. And that's because they have between 2 and 300 million people, okay? Like, close your eyes and picture it. Like close to 10 times the amount of people. It's a staggering amount of people that burn wood and animal dung every day.

I'm not even touching coal. Like, forget about the power plants, okay? Just think about personal cooking and home heating. So, and this is the India government's numbers, okay? You can look it up. They burn that every single day, wood and dried animal dung. So number one, women and children need to gather that every day. Two, it is horrendous indoor air quality. I can't imagine living in that sort of a situation. Three, it creates really heavy emissions, both particulate and CO2 emissions. So what they're actually trying to do, they're trying to change. They're asking other countries to sell them natural gas, which would drastically reduce their global emissions.

So we've got really good environmental protection here, really good labor laws. It employs people from all walks of life here in Canada, the oil and gas industry, and they're asking to buy it. So it just kind of seems like a win-win situation, whereas no matter what, even if you wanted to pay a syntax, like I said, of, you know, $10 a liter extra on your carbon tax in Vancouver, it's still not going to reduce global emissions, okay? And so that's why we would encourage people to kind of drop the carbon tax element when you're thinking about global emissions and try to tackle the big end of the arithmetic problem. I will also point out that generally speaking, okay, in British Columbia, and I use BC as an example, because number one, you're there. Number two, I really miss it. And number three, it was the first place to have a carbon tax. So we have a long data trend.

If you take a look at the 10-year-long amount of data that we have for BC emissions, they're going up, not down. So outside of being, like, forget about 2020, okay? Even outside of being locked in your homes and businesses being shut down, obviously there is almost nobody on the road. Outside of those years, it's gone up and up and up. I think it's gone up over 7% for the 10-year window that I was just talking about. And even during the lockdowns, emissions still managed to squeak up.

I was surprised to see that. It didn't drop off of a cliff. And so this is what we're saying is that people are backed into a corner. And this is what I wanted to raise to. I hope I'm not taking too long to explain it. But there's so many good people like you just described, okay, who think that they're doing the right thing or they want to do the right thing and they're worried about the environment.

They're worried about emissions. But they don't have an affordable, abundant alternative energy. that they can switch to. It's not like a paper or plastic grocery shopping bag, or even sewing your own from home, from like recycled blue jeans or something, depending on how far you want to go. A lot of people don't have that. Let's make a switch to different energy option. Otherwise, they would have, which is why you see this as an inelastic demand in BC. That's why you're seeing it, generally speaking, emissions keep on going up. And this is where it really gets me mad because this is now just a financial punishment. So you've got working people backed into a

corner, especially in places like British Columbia. Often they have to commute long distances. Are you still near Chilliwack there in the Fraser Valley? Yeah. Yeah. So you know there's tons of people who drive into the city. Like every day, they have to commute on the highway. And so I remember it was one of the last things that happened when I was in BC before I moved. This lady called me, She was in her 60s. Her and her adult son were living together in a basement suite in Chilliwack. Their rent was $2,600 a month in this basement suite. Back then, I think it's around the same price now,

but back then gas was $2 a liter or a little bit more. She was crying because her tradesman's son couldn't afford to fill up his pickup truck because his job site was over in Poco. He had to drive there every day from Chilawak. You know what kind of commute that would be. and at more than two bucks a liter and so she just

kept asking, what do I do? What do I do? This is where this is really frustrating because we're getting all this financial pain without the environmental game. So yeah, that's what I would say is yeah, I feel it and I know that people really take this seriously. The problem is, is the carbon tax in Canada is not the

solution. Pierre Pauliev says acts the tax. Is it as simple as that? Yeah, it can be. He can get this done before lunch. Another quick little thing because you're in BC and I know you love it. The first, you'll be, might be surprised. I might not be telling you something you don't know, actually.

You probably already know this. But the first political party in Canada to run a campaign against the carbon tax that even said acts the tax was the British Columbia NDP. That's right. So back when Carol James, the former finance minister, was leader of the NDP, she called Gordon Campbell's idea do you have a revenue-neutral carbon tax? Lipstick on a pig. I agree. That was a really good quote.

And then she ran an entire election campaign on axing the tax because she thought it would be unfairer to punish people for heating their homes and driving to work and eating food. She was right then. And I can't for the life of me explain to you why the provincial New Democrats in British Columbia have lost sight of that. In fact, there's footage of John Horgan, before he became premier, in the opposition benches, railing against the carbon tax in BC. And that was back when it was about five cents a liter.

You guys are more than 30 cents a liter right now with your two carbon taxes. So my point of all this is is politicians can change their minds and the NDP really reverse course on the carbon tax, unfortunately. and we want them to see them go back to axing the tax. So Pierre Pahliav, he has promised to ax the tax. I think he has said on day one, we expect him to have it done before lunchtime if he ever becomes prime minister. Fascinating. Now we have to talk about taxing the ultra rich. I'm interested to see if you're going to be able to convince me that they don't deserve it,

that they don't deserve this punishment. I have a firm belief that people care less about poor. people, but they do really hate the rich. It offends them more. Like when you start talking about Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, people just get like, how dare they be that wealthy? We can't look at their accomplishments and that we rely on Amazon or that we love Tesla's or any of those things. It's just, it offends us that somebody could be so wealthy and have so much and we can have so little at time. So I'm curious as to what your position is on this new tax on the ultra-rich, and if you could explain it for people.

Yeah, for sure. So I wanted to differentiate. There was a proposal that was floating around hard. I mean, there were so many trial balloons, it blocked out the sun. Like, people said it was an eclipse, but like we know that what it was. So there was a proposal for a wealth tax, and that was to go after, like you just described, like the super-duper ultra-rich. And even to that argument, I would say, okay, but you're eventually going to run out of Galen Westons and Jimmy Patterson's as your boogeyman slash scapegoat, right? Because it seems so simple.

And hey, I don't think a wealth tax would affect anybody on this chat right now. But if we look at it practically, it seems so simple, right? Find the guy with the top hat and the monocle and the bag with the money print on it and go take it, right? The problem is number one, like you can't do that because that's stealing. Number two, even as government, one, you'll run out of those. people. So there's only so many super duper uber wealthy people. Three, they already pay a lot of tax, like a heck of a lot of tax. In fact, that's often why this is a dirty little secret in the NHL. That's often why we lose hockey players to the states. I know because they pay way less income tax down there in the states than they do up here because we have a pretty aggressive

pay scale when it comes to income taxes in Canada across the country. So, Basically, it doesn't work. A wealth tax doesn't work. And we can even look at France. France tried a wealth tax. So people who are that filthy rich, they're pretty smart. And they want to keep their money. So they have a team of lawyers and accountants and like tax specialists who move their money around the world, like way smarter than me. They figure out a way to keep that money out of government's hands anyway. Two, they'll just leave. So that's what happened in France. So all these super-duper wealthy people said, you know what, this isn't really worth it. We're going to leave.

So much so that they had to reverse course. The French government had to make an announcement, tail-tucked between its legs. You know what? No more wealth tax. Please come home. We're so sorry. And apparently I can't remember if it was Macron or who it was. And I'm paraphrasing in French.

He said, we became Cuba, but without the sunshine. So they tried that and it didn't work. So what they did do, though, is they increased what's called the capital gains tax. So capital gain, if I'm a little bit murky, but say you've got a lot of stocks and investments and you sell those investments or stocks, you pay tax on that, of course. Even though you're investing it with after tax money, by the way, like you're taking your income after it's been income taxed and sales tax and what's left and you're investing it, if you make money on it, guess what?

the government takes some of that too. It's kind of mind-numbing. Only on the profits, though, correct? On the profits, correct, correct. And so what they did is they increased that percentage. I forget to what. I think it's... 50 to 66.6%. Holy smokes, it's even higher than I thought. I thought it was up to 50. Yeah, so that's a lot. Now, again, that may not affect people directly right now, but here's how it will affect them. Number one, if you own a secondary property, say you have a condo that's in a city, say you're living in like a secondary city or the country, and you have a condo in a major city that, you know, your kid uses for university or you rent it out and you're counting on it as your nest egg, that's a secondary property and you pay capital gains tax on that.

So this will mean that some of those properties, I think people are going to hold off on selling them. So that could become a problem because that means that that will slow down the supply of housing. Number two, this is actually now affecting doctors so much so that even anecdotally. So I was in Foothills Hospital in Calgary recently with a friend of mine and two doctors totally unprompted, like saw my jacket. And they said, yeah, I've got a bunch of people I went to med school with and they're all thinking of moving to the states. Because of this capital gains tax increase. And that's because doctors, the way that their pay is structured, they're a private company, basically, and they have to pay staff if they have an office and the way it's structured,

they were going to get nailed with higher taxes because of this move. Now, I don't know actually if the federal government thought this one through, because I sure don't think that they were expecting doctors coming up and saying, you know what, I'm out of here. And it wasn't just me hearing this in Calgary. This was raised so often that a report, Porter asked a minister in Trudeau's government about this. Hey, what about all these doctors saying, you know what? I've had it. I'm leaving. I already pay a ton of money in taxes and I'm going to head south. The minister's response was so glib. She said something to the effect of, oh, that's okay. We'll just go hire doctors from other countries. Like, as if there's some

ready-made doctor store and we can just go shopping at the doctor store and that doctor shortages are not like a global problem, especially for the West. So that makes me think that they didn't think this through. So by and large, wealth taxes are a little bit different from capital gains taxes. But the capital gains taxes, even if you don't think like, you're not a wheeler dealer on the stock market or whatever, it will probably affect you in the case that we're going to have employers and people like doctors, unfortunately, taking themselves in their money elsewhere. And keep in mind that we're not just losing then that vital requirement of having

a doctor in your town. They're taking that wealth with them. So the income tax that they're already paying like today that the government is counting on will then be gone. That leaves a big hole, especially if you get a lot of people who will have a lot of money who already pay a lot of income tax and capital gains taxes leaving. Now we're getting into some serious deficit territory. So this was not a smart move. And I'll leave you one with this, which blew my mind. So the amount that they're increasing it by, like how much they're going to collect in this big, you know, let's balance the budget on the backs of the rich. One, they're never going to balance the budget. They have no plans whatsoever to balance the budget. Their deficit is more than

$40 billion. Two, the Trudeau government is going to spend this tax increase money in four days. I have lunch meat in my fridge that is going to last longer than how much money they're taking in at this tax. So it's pretty astonishing. For the amount of damage it's doing versus the amount of money that they're going to be able to spend for how many days, it's a head scratcher. I don't know why they did this. There's two pieces I should follow up on. One, I think it's after the first $200 or $250,000. It goes up to the 66%. It stays at the 50 below that. Tim, feel free to fact check me on that. It's a lot. I know it's a lot. Yeah.

And then two, the other thing that I was hearing Vasi Keplos talk about on her show was that doctors were told and encouraged to use the business structure that you just described for the past 20 years as the mechanism to support them. And so government changing course on this all of a sudden without any consultation or discussion is also, I think, quite frustrating to them because they were told and encouraged to use the system that they use in order to plan for retirement. And again, it comes back to this. I think people often, they say they love the poor and they want to do things for the poor, but they really just hate the rich because your doctor should be financially

comfortable. Like we don't want doctors to be just getting by. They provide an essential service in our society. They help people get through things. But I think the challenge and a lot of different things are coming to a head is I can't get more than maybe 10 minutes with my doctor. And there's a sign that I used to see in the doctor's office that said one problem per meeting. And so I think people are looking at doctors right now and going, I'm not getting the best care from you to begin with. So maybe you do deserve a punishment that would ideally encourage you to act as a better actor in this medical system. And I know we lack doctors and I know they're stretched too thin, but so many things it feels like are colliding on our health care system

that are causing challenges. And one of them is this one issue per visit kind of approach. Yeah, it's a great question. Are you getting good value for money? Right? And I think, unfortunately, most of the things that the government controls, including things like health care, the answer is no. Like, these guys can't run a passport office. Like, they're really bad at most things. And that's interesting because I had heard that whole, the government has encouraged us to do this for a long time, like do their structure this way. And one of the doctors I was speaking with at the hospital, yeah, he said something like, you can't change the rules midgame. Like this feels like it's a betrayal. And so I didn't quite, I was trying to focus on my friend. But I didn't quite know exactly what he meant. And then I went back and researched it. And you're absolutely right that they were encouraged to do it this way for this long. The same way, you know, a lot of Canadians. have put all of their nest egg into one basket in owning a home for folks who are able, who are fortunate enough to be able to own a home going back a few years. And now the government is sniffing around home equity. And maybe we're going to try to take wealth out of your home.

Like that's been a verboten no-go zone since the 1970s, like well over a generation. And now they're scared that the government is going to change the rules mid-game. Very, very similar. I'm going to see, how do you feel about the Alberta government reneging on its promise in regards to reducing taxes? Which one? The income tax or putting the fuel tax back up? Whichever one you like. So two things. One, the income tax cut. Now, they campaigned on, if I can recall correctly, tax cuts for all Albertans. I have not yet been able to find, and I've been going through tape, if they said when. when are they going to reduce the base income tax rate from 10% down to 8%?

Because I'd really like to know. So I'm trying to find that. But it was a big promise. Like it was one of those forefront window type promises during the campaign where they would do this. So for folks, especially who moved from British Columbia to Alberta, you notice, actually, that your paycheck does go down because the Alberta income tax at the lowest rate is higher than BC's. So as of right now, you pay 10% as the lowest base rate all the way up to like $147,000 a year or something. So you're hitting a huge chunk of people there.

Like that is nurses, that is police officers, plumbers, teachers, truck drivers, like, that's a big swath of human beings here in Alberta. And they're taking 10%. What they promised to do is to reduce the first $59,900, up to $60,000 worth of earnings, down to $8. Now, that sounds a little wobbly, but essentially what it would do, the government says, is save you around 760 bucks each per year. That's nothing to sneeze at because if you're in a two-person working family, you're now saving $1,500. And now they're kicking the can on this. They haven't said no, but they're saying they're going to wait till 2026 and they're going to phase it in at 9% instead of 8. I will flag this, though. I was in the budget lockup, and they're not. accounting for it in 2026. Like, the way that their math goes for their revenue intake is staying at 10% from what I could calculate. So we're pretty concerned about this. They made very many intimations during the election campaign that this was going to happen relatively quickly, but I'm still trying to find out if a reporter asked them when, and then things will be

kind of on like Donkey Kong. The other one is the gas tax or the fuel tax. Now, to be fair, Premier Daniel Smith did get rid of it for an entire calendar year. Boom, 13 cents gone per liter of gasoline diesel. We paid zero provincial fuel taxes here for more than a year. It was awesome. We had the lowest fuel taxes in all of Canada, lowest fuel prices in all of Canada. It was a really good thing. And yes, it was initially announced as a formula based on the price of a barrel of oil.

But when the Premier reduced it all the way down to zero, she said it was for affordability reasons, because we weren't at the threshold. Like, it wouldn't have automatically kicked in, but she dropped it anyway because people were in so tough. And so now I would argue that people are still in really dire financial situations,

many people here in Alberta. And that's why, again, we're trying to appreciate what they already did do, to be fair. It was gone for a year. Yes, it was announced as part of a formula

with the price of a barrel of oil fluctuates. So when the price of a barrel of oil goes up really high, they're going to take off the tax, but they examine it quarterly. But based on what Manitoba is doing, for example, the NDP premier there, Wob Canoe, has completely gotten rid of his fuel tax. It's fully suspended. They're saving 14 cents a liter. So how is it that the UCP government in Alberta is getting beat out by the NDP government in Manitoba when it comes to fuel taxes? And again, I can hear them yelling from Edmonton. We do have a balanced

budget where Manitoba does have a big deficit. So again, we're trying to be fair, but we really want them working hard on this. We want to see a reduction in fuel taxes again here in Alberta, because I get calls all the time from people who are still struggling with affordability. How

did you feel about the video that Daniel Smith made in regards to this? Because kudos to her for at least trying to explain herself in a way that I often don't see other politicians willing to look into the camera. So, to be personal and kind of taking my CTF hat off, I've known the Premier professionally

for 20-something years because I was in radio for a long time and she was in radio for a long time. And so we'd meet each other at conferences and stuff and so we're friendly. I like her. And a lot of people in Alberta like her. She's a likable person. You've probably seen the funny bets going back and forth between her and Premier Eby. There might be some sort of a hockey thing going on here.

Not sure. They've got this bet between themselves of wearing jerseys of each other and all that jazz. So, like, she's fun to be around, and she's pretty personable, and she's a good communicator. So I thought it was smart for her to do a direct video communication to people. And it did need an explanation. But again, I have to hold her feet professionally to the fire here, because when she did fully reduce it, we weren't at more than, I think, the threshold is $80 per barrel for West Texas International. we weren't there then. It was lower then,

but she still removed it because people were struggling with affordability. And so that is where I would urge her, yes, Premier, we know that you had it gone for a year. Yes, we know that it is technically tied to a formula. You did very good things balancing the budget

and keeping spending reduced below the rate of inflation plus population growth. Those are all really good things. But we would really like to see this fuel tax come back down, especially when the Alberta taxpayer is giving hundreds of millions of dollars to build the Calgary Flames a new NHL rank. Why are taxpayers paying money into a big mega sports complex in Calgary

where millionaires get to play a hockey game? I love hockey. Most Albertans do. I know most British Columbians do too. But the NHL and the team should pay for that themselves. That should not be coming out of taxpayers' pockets. And again, we don't care what jersey you're wearing. If it's blue or orange, that should not be.

coming from taxpayers' pockets, also, we're still handing out millions of dollars every year in corporate welfare here in Alberta. They're spending, I forget how many million right now, writing up a plan as to how much a train system would cost, like a bullet train system across Alberta? Like, I don't know why. Every government does it. I'm not picking on the UCP, but it seems that when a party comes to power, give them a few months, and all of a sudden they have that monorail episode from the Simpsons stuck in their head. They're just like, hey, let's build a train. Let's have a study as to how much it's going to cost to build a train. Don't. No, don't. Stop doing that. If a private company wants to build one, if there's a market

for it and a demand, like, fill your boots. That sounds awesome. I'd love to take the bullet train to Banff. But we don't think that average workers in Medicine Hat and Red Deer should be putting money into something that isn't really necessary. So all in all, like, she's bang on with messaging. She's a very good communicator, very friendly person. But we still need to hold her to account when she makes promises. And that includes reducing income taxes. And that includes providing affordability for Albertans when needed. And so again, we would respectfully urge her to take a look at that. I'm betting that on July 1st, when the next quarterly update happens, that we will see a pretty dramatic reduction in fuel taxes and maybe even a bit of a payback, a bit of a rebate,

because right now the price of oil is pretty high and it stayed high for the last several weeks. Can you give me your brief thoughts on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? You've seen where he's at in the polls. I know that your organization isn't one-sided for one political organization or the other. I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? Pretty disastrous. To be really blunt.

And again, you're right, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we don't care if it's a red jersey or a blue jersey. Like, for example, we gave former liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin an award for slaying the deficit, like, with an actual ceremony and everything. Because he balanced the budget. Like, we didn't care that he was a liberal prime minister. He did it. Like, his work as finance minister was really difficult. And he managed to actually slay the deficit, which was one of the reasons that taxpayers' federation exists. We started in 1990, opposing the GST and opposing big deficits.

And so then we saw leaders like Jean Cretchen and Paul Martin and John Manley really take that bowl by the horns and balance the budget. That was remarkable and good. And we have said so. Trudeau is a completely different kettle of fish. I've been studying politics my whole life. He has doubled the debt. when he went in it was more than 600 billion it's now 1.2 trillion dollars and he has no plans to ever balance the budget i think he doesn't quite understand it because i'm just guessing here

someone who grew up never having to worry about making rent or affording a car payment or paying a bill he doesn't seem to have a concept of money and balancing it and makes no apologies for it To really quickly, to leave you with this, we're $1.2 trillion in debt. That is an enormous number. If you started counting loonies like Scrooge McDuck and you started counting them up, it would take you 30,000 years to count to $1 trillion. That is how, I know my skin's crawling. That's how much debt we're in right now with no plans to ever balance it. So yeah, really bad, like failing grade fiscally from this prime minister. Yeah, Pollyev, he has his talking points right, but do you think he's going to be able to deliver on a lot of the promises he's making? We sure hope so. So some of the main ones we're looking for from him. We've spoken to him about this many times. And again, we don't force politicians to sign pledges or whatever, but we do listen to their promises. And then we hold them accountable afterwards. And some of the things that he has promised are things like scrapping the carbon tax. That sounds like it's going to be right away. Scrapping the gun confiscation. So for, legal law-abiding firearms owners, he said he's going to reverse that. He has said that he wants to stop funding the media with taxpayers' money. So we're expecting him to do that. So there's a few pretty major promises that we're expecting him to keep. How fast he's going to be able to balance

the budget? We're not sure. But I'll give you this, and it gave me a bit of hope. Our federal director, great guy, Franco Tarasano, he went through the budget line by line. And Trudeau could balance his budget if he just stuck to 2021 levels of spending. So I know, this was a huge bloated budget back in 2021, right? We're not talking about like, you know, austerity, you know, trying to recover from a war or something. No, 2021 budget was huge. If he simply scaled back to that level of spending, we'd have a balanced budget. And so we're hoping that if he's elected prime minister,

and that's a big if, because you never know what's going to happen. We're hoping he'll be able to balance the budget really rapidly. Fascinating. In 21-22, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation raised $5.2 million with the strength of 55,653 donations. Your donations aren't charitable, and you do not accept foreign funding. I'm just wondering if you're able to talk a little bit more very briefly about the organization and why people should support. Oh, that means a lot to me. So I was a radio producer and a host for a long time, and I always liked the Taxpayers Federation for those reasons you just described. And because we are nonpartisan and we stand for lower taxes, less waste and accountable government. Okay? Those three things are pretty fundamental. And if you have those three things, we think you could live a better life. And so we do all sorts of stuff. We give media interviews. We do long-form podcasts like yours. We do press conferences. And we do a big email reach. So we have around 200 or so thousand supporters across Canada, lots of folks there very generously

donate. The vast majority of them donate around 100 bucks or less. So these are retired police officers, they're small businesses, they're farmers, right? They're retirees who ran shops their whole lives. So we respond to our own emails from our supporters every day. And so I hear from them directly all the time, and we're really grateful for them. And so what they do is they keep us going. They keep these lights on. They paid for this sign. They paid for this jacket so that I can talk to you. And so we rely wholly on donations. We don't take foreign money. And to your point, we're not a charity. We're a not for profit. And because we're not a charity, we don't even give you a tax receipt because we don't want to incur any cost to the public purse. So if you make us a donation,

we really thank you, but you're not going to be getting one of those big fat tax receipts from it. Fascinating. Chris, it's always a pleasure to sit down with you. These issues are so complex, but I always appreciate that you're able to break them down so we understand what's going to impact us at the pump and give those approximations because that's where people get lost in the bureaucratic process. And you're passionate about these issues. You always bring it back to the individuals who are directly impacted, the families, putting food on the table. And I think that's always where we need to bring our political discussions back to. We can get lost in grandiose ideas of fixing the world and solving all these problems, but it does impact the day-to-day person. And I think you're very good

at that. So thank you, as always, for being willing to help on. Oh, thank you so much. I'll leave you with this anecdote. If you're filling up your minivan, it's $13 extra just in the carbon tax. If you've got a light-duty pickup truck, it's $20 extra per fill-up just in the carbon tax. And you do an excellent job on your podcast, explaining things in such a great way. And thank you for covering them. It's my pleasure. Go check it out. Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I highly recommend following their work as they're helping shine the light on a very complicated topic. Thank you.