The News Rundown

Poilievre-led attempt to bring down Trudeau minority over carbon tax fails

The federal carbon tax administered in 8 provinces across the country will be going up to $80/tonne on April 1. It presently sits at $65/tonne.
7 of 8 Premiers where the tax is collected have urged Trudeau to pause the increase.
MPs also debated the increase in the House of Commons this week and the opposition even went as far as tabling a motion of non-confidence in the government.
The Conservatives were the only party to support the motion with the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc all voting to effectively press on with the carbon tax increase.
In tabling the motion Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said, "After eight years, it is clear that this NDP-Liberal prime minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. We cannot in good conscience stand by while this prime minister imposes more misery and suffering on the Canadian people."
The final vote was 116 in favour of the motion with 204 against.
The recent weeks have seen a doubling down on the carbon tax by the Liberal government.
Steven Guilbeault poked Danielle Smith on X in effect, antagonizing her in relation to the carbon tax.
Justin Trudeau last week in his own words called out “short term thinker” politicians who wanted a pause on the carbon tax.
This led to a rather interesting exchange where Trudeau said his job wasn’t to be popular but to do the right thing. He also said that he considers leaving the job everyday but this wasn’t talked about in Canadian media.
It was interestingly talked about in international media. We have a link to that framing of Trudeau’s interview in the show notes.
The general vibe was that Trudeau and his government feel that they must act now to provide a better environmental experience two generations down the road.
There has also been posturing in relation to Saskatchewan’s stance where Saskatchewan has said they will not remit the carbon tax to the federal government raising the spectre of whether or not we could see the day Scott Moe is arrested.
Now of course that won’t happen but in the usual sensationalizing that happens, that’s a logical question for many.
The practical question though is that when you factor in the carbon tax increase, the price on housing, the price of fuel, and the price of food, are things going to get easier in the short to mid term? The answer is probably no.
The media coverage this week on February’s inflation numbers could be described by the media and pundits as taking nothing but a victory lap.
The reason being: inflation was down to 2.8% in February.
The media very clearly showed either their ineptitude or loyalty to the Trudeau government because inflation measures the rate of increase.
After years and years of inflation just because the inflation rate is down to 2.8% doesn’t mean things will automagically become cheaper.
This week if anything there is a sense that the collective establishment of Canada will be moving on from cost of living, inflation, and the carbon tax. But at the end of the day it won’t be so easy for Canadians to move on.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that the tax will have a negative impact on the economy, leading to a loss of employment and investment income for some families while the federal rebates won’t be enough to offset both the tax and lower incomes some Canadians will collect as a result of the carbon tax.
Poilievre has been encouraging Canadians to phone their local Liberal or NDP MP, protest peacefully outside their offices, and has been holding “Axe the Tax” rallies across the country drawing attendance reminiscent of Calgary or Saskatoon in places like Toronto and the Maritimes.
Time will tell of course if Canadians accept the new framing that is seemingly on the way from the media and government officials.
Supplementals:

A controversial Liberal bill, though which of those aren't controversial these days, would see the fixed election date moved from October 20th to October 27th 2025. Minister of Democratic Institutions among other things Dominic Leblanc said the move has to do with strengthening democracy, but we'll take a look and see what that actually means.
LeBlanc unveiled a suite of changes to the Elections Act on Wednesday, including expanded days for advance voting and an easier process for mail-in ballots, but it would also move the current proposed fixed election day.
The extra week would move the election away from Diwali, a Hindu religious festival starting on Oct. 20 and lasting several days, as well as municipal elections in Alberta on Oct. 20, although the Liberal government would have still been free to call an election before that day.
Leblanc said: “Our government believes that a strong democracy begins with enabling all Canadians to freely exercise their fundamental right to choose their representatives and we’ll always be there to defend that right.”
The main change with the new bill is not actually about democracy, it's about MP pensions. MPs receive a pension, but in order to be vested in the plan they must have at least six years of service. Any MP elected in 2019 would not have reached that six-year mark if the election was held on Oct. 20, 2025, but will have reached that cut-off on Oct. 27, the new proposed date.
The Liberals lost seats in the 2019 election, as they moved from a majority to the first of now two minority governments. As a result the primary beneficiary of this change would be Conservative MPs, 32 of whom won their seats for the first time in 2019. The second largest number of MPs to benefit are Liberals, with 22 MPs who would qualify under the proposed change. The NDP have six MPs elected in 2019, and the Bloc Québécois have 20.
Still, while more of the Conservatives are set to benefit from the Liberals' bill, it's clear that they aren't too concerned about keeping this government intact so they can get their pensions, as a recent attempt to vote no confidence in the Liberals shows.
The government isn’t bound by the fixed election date and in a minority the Liberals could lose the confidence of the House of Commons at any point, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he expects the election to take place in 2025, since the NDP are continuing to vote with the government and keep them in power.
MPs who don’t serve six years are refunded their pension contributions and the ones the government makes on their behalf, but are not entitled to a pension. MPs can start receiving pension payments on a reduced basis as early as age 55 and qualify for a full pension at 65. While six years of service is the minimum, pension amounts grow with more years in Parliament.
Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said the election day change seems suspicious: “I think Canadians are … just going to ask the obvious question: ‘Why do we have to bump it a week back and not a week early?’ Canadians have every right to believe that this looks like the government is pushing back the election so more MPs can take a very lucrative taxpayer-funded pension.”
While MPs are already paid generously, with almost $200k base salary, the dream is to have a taxpayer funded pension to secure more money in their retirement. It's hard to not see this election date change as anything more than the Liberals trying to siphon more money away from Canadians.
Supplementals:

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/elections-act-changes-mp-pensions

Court says Alberta NDP does not exist

This week in Alberta we are providing an update to one of the stories we have followed since the 2019 election.
In 2019 Caylan Ford, a candidate for the UCP in Calgary Mountain View was forced to end her campaign after documents emerged alleging she was a white supremacist.
She was defamed by her former friend Karim Jivraj who provided the information to the left-leaning news outlet Press Progress.
Press Progress has ties to the NDP so naturally along with many other stories in that cycle this story turned out to be nothing but fake news.
In the end the conversations given to Press Progress turned out to be edited which led to the NDP and others branding Ford as a white supremacist.
It was thought that Calgary Mountain View could have been competitive but with Ford removed that seat was guaranteed to go to the NDP.
The last time this case surfaced was last year when Ford was granted a restraining order towards Jivraj.
Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Robert A. Graesser said, “Ultimately, I am satisfied on the evidence that Mr. Jivraj embarked on a campaign to cause emotional and financial harm to Ms. Ford by damaging her reputation.”
Now the question comes up, what was the NDPs role?
Ford named the federal NDP in her lawsuit and the federal NDP responded by saying it wasn’t liable for provincial sanctions and sought dismissal in the case.
The Alberta NDP tried to name and indemnify a person as a litigation representative but as it turns out the entity known as the Alberta NDP does not exist.
The NDPs registration as a political party dates back to an invalid 1977 trust deed where the trustee does not exist.
And with the trustee not existing, Ford has no one to sue.
The Alberta Court of King’s Bench has ruled that the Alberta NDP has 30 days to get its house in order and following that the defamation case against the NDP can move forward.
This story was only published in the Western Standard and on Caylan Ford’s X account.
For the vast majority of listeners and definitely all Albertans this story will seem as though it’s in the legal weeds.
While Western Standard points out correctly that the Alberta NDP may not officially exist and that should raise eyebrows into how the organization operates, the big thing we’re seeing out of this story now is that people are finally being held accountable for the spreading of fake news.
Fake news is something that was initially thrown about with regards to news a politician did not like but when you have a story where someone is the subject of a restraining order and now the Alberta NDP are on the edge of being sued, it’s clear that the entire media establishment and NDP in Alberta engaged in the spreading of fake news in the 2019 election.
The Alberta NDP has not commented on the story yet this week but given how deeply involved they were in the initial story, it’s likely that they won’t.
To sum it up nicely, Ford has been successful in her lawsuit against Jivraj and is moving to sue the NDP on the same issue but hasn’t been able to because the entity doesn’t legally exist.
With the NDP being given 30 days to get their affairs in order it’s safe to say that it’s more likely than not we’ll see action against some part of the NDP proving that this story in the 2019 cycle was very fake.
The most important though is that in one story out of all these years we’re finally seeing some accountability on the fake news front.
Supplementals:

https://twitter.com/caylanford/status/1771024080961151392
https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abkb/doc/2024/2024abkb141/2024abkb141.html

Firing Line

Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are

A 'secret' RCMP report warns that Canadians may fall into civil unrest if they realize just how terrible Canada's economic situation is. The report, labelled secret, is intended as a piece of “special operational information” to be distributed only within the RCMP and among “decision-makers” in the federal government.
A heavily redacted version was made public as a result of an access to information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant professor of law at British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, and an expert in government secrecy.
The report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada, says: “The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations. For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” it adds.
Describing itself in an introduction as a “scanning exercise,” the report is intended to highlight trends in both Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”
Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”
In addition to worsening living standards, the RCMP also warns of a future increasingly defined by unpredictable weather and seasonal catastrophes, such as wildfires and flooding. Most notably, report authors warn of Canada facing “increasing pressure to cede Arctic territory.”
These are all events that we've covered on Western Context before, and are all topics that we feel the federal government has not taken seriously or addressed adequately. The weather disasters have not been averted by the carbon tax, the Arctic has seen worsening military conditions, and the standard of living has fallen off a cliff.
The full redacted report is in the National Post supplemental we have included with the show notes on WesternContext.ca
A large part of the issue is the fact that most people under 35 will never own their own home anymore. Canada may have seen a pandemic economic boom, but it was largely related to rapidly appreciating real estate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to young adults who saw housing get further out of reach. Wealth disparity is bad enough, but what happens when that wealth disparity is driven by shelter disparity? It’s a problem not typically seen in advanced economies at scale.
In other words, in a climate where young people may never own a home or car, the government is being told they should fear its citizens’ response.
“Is this a bad dream?” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre posted to X just hours before his motion of non-confidence trying to force a “carbon tax” election.
The Conservative Leader made the point that “after eight years of Trudeau, the national police force warns Canadians are so broke they might revolt. Enough. Sign here to push non-confidence and fire Trudeau.”
The RCMP report also says that Canadians are set to become increasingly disillusioned with their government, which authors mostly chalk up to “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “paranoia” leading to a mistrust in democratic institutions.
Once these buzz words showed up, it was clear this exercise is nothing more than a trojan horse to justify over policing and Orwellian measures and even spying on citizens.
This is the same language used around the Freedom Convoy that resulted in arrests and jail time in Ottawa and at border points in what was sold as a coup attempt but was really nothing more than loud protesting in which law enforcement has shown itself to police differently depending on who is protesting.
When the RCMP start pushing the ‘residents are restless’ narrative, soon after comes requests for more power, more freezing of freedoms and even bank accounts. And more police horse tramplings.
While the RCMP and Liberal government may believe Canadians are dangerous, nasty people ready to stage an uprising, they don’t offer evidence – just more of the same fear mongering that led to the enacting of the Emergencies Act and the quashing of rights and freedoms.
Other than in this report, there’s no one saying Canadians could violently overthrow their government. These are the same Canadians, after all, who did what the government told them to do during the pandemic, including adhering to the mask mandates, lockdown protocols in malls and restaurants, social distancing, cancellation of funerals and weddings, and the bizarre mixing and matching of vaccine brands. Ultimately, Canadians generally do what they are told to do.
So, this report seems more like a false flag pushing a bizarre plot line that the government should be frightened of peaceful citizens when all they should be afraid of is what voters will do at the ballot box. And thanks to there still being parliamentary confidence in Trudeau, Canadians wanting peaceful change will have to wait for another year and a half.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“I think Canadians are … just going to ask the obvious question: ‘Why do we have to bump it a week back and not a week early?’ Canadians have every right to believe that this looks like the government is pushing back the election so more MPs can take a very lucrative taxpayer-funded pension.” - Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation on the ‘suspicious’ election day change.

Word of the Week

Antagonize - to cause (someone) to become hostile or angry.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Antagonizing Antics

Teaser: The Conservative non confidence motion against Trudeau fails, the Liberals want to move the election date, and the Alberta NDP does not legally exist. Also, the RCMP warns that Canadians may revolt against the government.

Recorded Date: March 23, 2024

Release Date: March 24, 2024

Duration: 49:33

Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX