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Editorial: Ottawa forces province to take a strong stand

Weyburn Review editor Greg Nikkel says the Liberals and PM Justin Trudeau are showing their true colours, and forcing Saskatchewan to stand up for fair treatment with the carbon tax.
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Premier Scott Moe said the province will stop collecting the carbon tax as of Jan. 1 on SaskEnergy bills.

The true colours of our Prime Minister and the Liberal party were on display this past week, and as usual, they are  being divisive and unfair in their treatment of Canadians.

In an offhand way, Justin Trudeau admitted that his invasive and regressive carbon tax is causing extra costs to Canadians, which up until now he and his Liberals always claimed would not happen.

The problem is, he is discriminating against the West, again, by only granting an exemption to the carbon tax to Maritimers on their heating oil.

Since introducing the punitive carbon tax, he has never cared how hurtful this tax has been to Western Canadians, and in particular Saskatchewan and Alberta. 

For those who have forgotten, during the height of COVID he wrongly claimed (and lied, actually) by actually saying his government would never raise taxes during a worldwide pandemic that was causing economic hardship and devastation. Guess what? He raised the carbon tax, in the middle of COVID, and did not care one iota about the pain and suffering he caused as a result.

The Liberals wrongly claim that the rebates given to consumers offsets the extra cost of the carbon tax, but most households will tell you that is not the case. This is true also of businesses, and farms, where they have to deal with higher costs, and in the case of farmers, they cannot pass those costs on.

Farmers have to use natural gas to heat their barns and to dry grain, in addition to their fuel costs during seeding and then during harvest – and do Liberals actually think they are helping our agricultural producers in any way?

Now, Premier Scott Moe has taken the step of declaring to the federal government that it’s time to stop the discrimination against the West, and provide the same exemption for the carbon tax to the residents of this province that is being given to the residents of the Maritimes on heating costs.

He has said that as of January 1, 2024, Saskatchewan will no longer collect the carbon tax on natural gas and on SaskEnergy bills. Furthermore, the Legislature has unanimously passed support for this move, to give Ottawa the very clear message that it is not acceptable to act divisively and discriminate against the West.

The voters in Ontario and Quebec clearly do not care for the West as they keep voting for Trudeau and the Liberals, but perhaps by taking a strong stand in this way, they might begin to get the message that the Liberal-NDP coalition in Ottawa needs to be tossed out of power, because they are not acting in the best interests of Canadians.

The carbon tax has never been fair from the start, and it does nothing whatsoever to help the environment. It’s time that all Canadians act to have this regressive tax scrapped, along with the Liberals.