The Green Scam Is Exactly That - A Scam

But don't take my word for it:

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says Ottawa has decided to stop investing in new roads and highways, saying the country’s existing network is “perfectly adequate.” Amid questioning and criticism by premiers, Mr. Guilbeault later said he specifically meant “large” road projects.

 

The idiots in Ottawa should, ideally, have one job: to keep the roads in working order.

Hans won't even do that because then the proles would expect to drive everywhere on them.

It must fill him with impotent rage:

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, even by his own insufferable standards, had quite a week. It was as rough as the road network that he knows all too well as a Montreal MP.

Addressing a group of transit advocates on Monday, Guilbeault felt himself amongst fellow radicals and announced that the Trudeau government “has made the decision to stop investing at the federal level in new road infrastructure” because “the analysis we have done is that the network is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have.”

That earned a rebuke from the premiers of Alberta and Ontario — the latter professing himself “gobsmacked,” which is a good sign that an excellent British word may be returning to common usage. Also dismayed was that proportion of the population that are not professional transit advocates, but drive cars and wish to get around on roads suitable for an affluent country.

Guilbeault quickly walked — or bicycled, as he is an ostentatious cyclist — that back, saying that while new mega-projects were out, “we still have funds, obviously, to maintain and enhance our road network across the country.”

While others took issue with Guilbeault’s moralizing climate extremism, too little attention was paid to the sheer delusion of his comments. Who in his right mind — let alone a Montrealer! — considers our roads to be “perfectly adequate” and thinks it “obvious” that there are funds “to maintain and enhance” the network?

We are so accustomed to distressingly inadequate roads, we assume it is normal that there is no highway connecting our two largest cities. Driving from Toronto to Montreal takes you along the 401, which, even when built in the 1960s, was a comparatively modest conduit by international standards.

The typical state — not interstate — highway south of the border has greater capacity. In much of eastern Ontario, the 401 is only a serviceable secondary route by American or European standards. In more densely populated western Ontario, it still is often only two lanes in each direction, instead of four, as you might have elsewhere.

Upon entering Quebec from the 401, Autoroute 20 is not a highway. It has traffic lights. It passes right through the city of Dorion. That’s convenient should you wish to pick up a few things at the Carrefour or Dollarama, but it’s not a highway.

Any modestly sized American city — Syracuse, N.Y., Knoxville, Tenn. — that lies on an interstate has multiple ring roads so that it’s not necessary, Toronto-style, to drive through the heart of city if you only desire to pass by. Calgary only got its ring road recently. ...

That Guilbeault made his remarks before a transit audience is also noteworthy. Canadians need their roads because their transit is poor, even in the great conurbations. Both New York City and London have recently built new underground subway lines — in densely populated areas near rivers — while Toronto’s Eglinton LRT, which is only partially underground, is moving into its second decade of construction with no actual passengers being transported.

Montreal may have the worst roads of any city of similar size and importance in North America or western Europe. International visitors are prepared for that by arriving at an airport that evokes memories of the old, cramped, dingy and decrepit LaGuardia Airport. New Yorkers, of course, now have a new LaGuardia. Montrealers don’t and never will.

A Montreal minister should know better than anyone how poor our transportation infrastructure is. Perhaps he is proud of it. After all, the most climate-friendly way to travel is to stay home, as it is too difficult to go anywhere.

 

 

Whether they explode, are made with child labour, will ultimately pollute the planet, or are merely unwanted, they are worth billions of taxpayer dollars:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday awarded a $2.1 billion tax break to electric auto battery manufacturers already receiving billions in subsidies. Only the companies were told of the 10-year tax holiday: “There are no other stakeholders to consult.”

Also:

Thousands of abandoned cars show the dark side to China's EV boom.

A subsidy-fueled boom helped turn China into an electric-car giant. But these auto graveyards reveal the dark side of the shift https://t.co/ql5WRu6KP9

— Bloomberg (@business) August 25, 2023

 

Virtue-signalling is fine when people don't have to pay too much for it:

Inflation has dampened public support for costly climate programs, says confidential in-house Privy Council research. Canadians are willing to pay no more than a 10 percent premium for green products and services, figures show: “69 percent strongly or somewhat agree environmentally friendly options are too expensive.”

Principles are hard.

It's as though people know that it will not work:

An ideologically charged Canadian federal government “green” program offering homeowners government money to switch their reliable heating oil furnaces for less reliable electric heat pumps has been a dismal failure, according to recently released records. 

A recent Inquiry Of Ministry, as per Blacklock’s Reporter, tabled in the House of Commons showed that only 80 homeowners have thus far opted into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government heat pump program. 

Conservative Party of Canada MP Shannon Stubbs had requested from the federal government, in her Inquiry Of Ministry, an answer to the question, “How many applications for funding through the Oil To Heat Pump Affordability Program have been received?” 

The original scheme was to allow $10,000 to eligible homeowners to convert from their oil-fired furnaces to an electric heat pump. Trudeau’s cabinet last October expanded the grants to $15,000 along with a $250 “one-time bonus payment.”   

Cabinet wrote in the Inquiry Of Ministry that the purchase and “installation of a new electric cold climate heat pump, save thousands of dollars annually on heating bills and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”  

In total, some 286,000 Atlantic Canadians currently use furnaces fired by heating oil, and since the original program was introduced in February of last year, of 1,241 homeowners who asked for a subsidy, some 361 were denied, a rejection rate of 29 percent.

The inquiry confirmed that only 80 oil-fired furnaces have been replaced by heat pumps nationwide.  

Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that the “green” heat pump program is set to cost nearly four times as much as originally thought, from $750 million to $2.7 billion.   

In October of last year, amid dismal polling numbers that showed his government would be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election, Trudeau announced he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canadian provinces for three years.