Taber, Alberta: Shields calls for ‘relief’ during economy debate

TABER, AB – An early-October phone call with Bow River MP Martin Shields began with pleasantries. He said, “Good morning, how’s it in Taber, or wherever you are?”

“I’m in Taber, and it’s a beautiful day. How are things in Ottawa?”

“Ahh, chaos. Pre-election chaos,” he replied, before proceeding to give a calm and collected rundown on the Impact Assessment Act, the carbon tax, and the Conservative plan.

During the debates of Nov. 1 in the House of Commons, the chaos resumed, proving once again that fact and fiction aren’t always absolutes; they’re often selective interpretations of cherry-picked data.

Shields, a Conservative, was in the thick of it again as the two sides waged a war of words about the economy. He said, “Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the NDP-Liberal government is just not worth it. Just this week, the Calgary Food Bank reported more people needed it than ever before. It has had a 200 per cent increase since 2019 and 30 per cent increase in the last year. Nearly 40 per cent of (the recipients) were employed, higher than the national average. Constituents like Kim write to me to say that the coalition will cost them their house, mode of transportation, and any semblance of quality of life that they have left. Will the prime minister give Canadians relief and call a carbon tax election?”

Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, parliamentary secretary to the deputy prime minister, minister of finance and minister of innovation, said, “Mr. Speaker, I have one word: hypocritical. That is what we call it when people say they care about something and then do the exact opposite. It is like when Conservatives say they care about people who have to use a food bank, but then want to cut a program that is going to feed 400,000 more kids per year.”

“It is like when Conservatives say they care about violent crime, but then want to make it easier for criminals to get guns,” Turnbull continued, “It is like when Conservatives say they care about foreign interference, but their leader will not even step up to get a security clearance to protect Canadians. We cannot believe anything the Conservatives say in the House.”

Branden Leslie, Conservative, MP of Portage-Lisgar, Man., weighed in, saying, “Mr. Speaker … Food Banks Canada now states that the need for its services is spiralling out of control. In Manitoba, use of food banks has increased 122 per cent since the pandemic, with over 50,000 people relying on them each month. The CEO of Harvest Manitoba said that this is ‘absolutely unprecedented’, yet the NDP-Liberal government plans to raise the cost of food further by quadrupling the carbon tax.”

Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, MP of Milton, Ont. and parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change and the minister of sport, responded by saying, “Mr. Speaker, the hunger report from Food Banks Canada is an important document, and I hope my colleague opposite actually reads it, because it made four recommendations: rebuild the social safety net, invest in truly affordable housing, support lower-income workers, and address the northern and remote food insecurity issue. It is 108 pages, but it does not mention the carbon tax once. Why? It is because Food Banks Canada knows that the Canada carbon rebate achieves those four things. It invests in lower-income Canadians. It makes sure that food insecurity is addressed for communities. If the member opposite wants to quote the food banks, he ought to read the report and make the same recommendations the poverty elimination experts do.”

The exchange is an example of how political debate often does little to persuade adherents to another party’s values. Conservatives cried foul when they discovered that Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux had been placed under a ‘gag order’ after his 2022 economic analysis of the carbon tax. Giroux responded with a confusing reply, insisting that the government was not “muzzling” him but, “I was making a reference to data that was provided to me and my office that the government or Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) in this case explicitly forbade me to disclose.” A statement like that is hardly reassuring.

By October of this year, he had corrected errors in his initial analysis and come back with a much clearer picture of the costs and benefits of the carbon tax. He broke his analysis into two categories. First was the ‘fiscal impact,’ or how much the tax costs us versus how much we get back, with ‘us’ meaning households and individuals.

There are indirect and direct costs, including the tax we pay on fuel as an example of a direct cost, and the built-in fuel charges on goods and services as an example of indirect costs. Giroux told the CBC that households are paying an aggregate of 68 per cent of the fuel charge while the rest is paid by companies, not-for-profits etc., but the government is returning 93 per cent of the fuel charge to households. “That’s why most households are better off,” he said.

The second category was the ‘fiscal and economic impact,’ which he said will affect energy-intensive industries. The fact that sectors like transportation and oil and gas are heavily taxed is likely to reduce employment, employment income, and investment income because of reduced profits.

Giroux said the tax as applied to those sectors changes its impact “quite significantly,” and individuals and households could consequently suffer lower employment or investment income.

“The average household is worse off when taking into account the economic and fiscal,” he said. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the economic impact of climate change could swing the balance back in the other direction over the long term. Unfortunately, he said it’s very difficult to assess and calculate the economic impacts of something as complex as climate change. It’s also difficult to accurately predict which trigger or inflection points could disrupt linear projections of climate change.

Giroux, given a chance to explain his findings, certainly didn’t leave any impression of being muzzled. In fact, his conclusions supported both sides of the carbon tax argument to some degree. Perhaps, the Liberal government placed him under a ‘gag order’ after discovering that his department’s original methodology produced skewed data. Perhaps it was a more deliberate cover-up. Either way, it’s beneficial for Canadians to hear from a mathematician rather than a politician on the subject.

Cal Braid is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with the Taber Times and Alta Newspaper Group. Title image: Canada Day, Calgary, Alberta, by Jude Joshua from Pixabay.