Here we go again! Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, in their wisdom, have decided to impose a carbon tax on the energy consumers in Alberta effective Jan. 1, 2020.
It was only six months ago that Jason Kenney, the Alberta Premier, repealed a carbon tax that was imposed on us by Rachel Notley, the former Alberta premier.
Federal Liberal governments just cannot seem to refrain from imposing their will on issues of provincial jurisdiction.
This tax has been challenged in court but the court has not yet rendered its decision.
We are told by the government that everyone will receive rebates on the tax that will more than offset the cost of the tax so what is the point?
Do they think that the tax will motivate us to buy less gas for our vehicles, use less electricity and live in colder houses and not use the rebate to pay for higher energy prices?
All that will be achieved with this tax and rebate system is to create more government jobs.
Liberals like big government.
It is all about trying to control everything about the way you live your life. They can’t stand people having the freedom to make their own decisions.
The government, especially Trudeau, thinks he knows best what is good for you.
Bill Manske writes an occasional column in the Provost News.
Recently he wrote and discovered that Canada, through the Pension Plan Investment Board, bought shares in 21 publically traded China coal companies.
He wrote that the PPIB manages about $400 billion in Canada Pension funds, and $42 billion are invested in China in various places like banks, distilleries, breweries, airlines, film studios, shopping malls and their coal industry.
Pipelines are being built in China and Asia with Canadian tax dollars.
So here we have our governments imposing a carbon tax on us to encourage us to use less carbon fuel while they use our tax dollars to encourage the Chinese to use more carbon-based fuel.
Now if that isn’t hypocrisy at it’s extreme I don’t know what is?
Here we have a government that is penalizing its citizens for using carbon-based fuels, discouraging the development of our industries that cost jobs while using our tax dollars to develop those industries and provide jobs in another country.
As I have indicated in previous columns, if they could curtail all the emissions necessary to more than achieve their targets it would have zero effect on climate change.
When these people talk about climate change they are really talking about global warming.
The C02 and other greenhouse emissions are not the cause nor ever have been.
Another fact that these greenies vehemently deny is that the global mean temperature is actually on a cooling trend.
There may be a bit of a debate about how much it is cooling.
Someone on CHED radio in Edmonton stated recently that in the last 10 years it has cooled off by as much as ó of a degree.
A 22-page document that I received recently on the causes of climate change authored by Sacha Dobler stated that the earth’s mean temperature has not changed in the last 20 years and is actually on a cooling trend but he did not indicate by how much.
According to that document we are entering a Grand Solar Minimum, that means there will be a significant decrease in sunspots and that will have a cooling effect in our solar system.
The real purpose of a carbon tax is for the government to pick the pockets of energy consumers to achieve their ideological objectives.
They must know that they can’t change the climate and if they did reach their targets it would completely destroy our economy.
It looks to me like we are not going to see any common sense on this issue any time soon.
by Herman Schwenk
