The New Boss Is the Same As the Old Boss

Perhaps worse:

Mark Carney’s first act as a prime minister of Canada was to lie to the Canadian people. That may seem like a bold allegation, but there are no two ways about it.

Carney held a cabinet meeting, invited the TV cameras in and held a Trump-style executive order signing that was nothing but a charade.

TV cameras aren’t normally allowed into Canadian cabinet meetings, but Carney — just hours after being sworn in as PM — invited the media to watch him sign away the consumer carbon tax.

“Based on the discussion we’ve had, and consistent with the promise that I made and others supported, we will be eliminating the Canada Fuel Charge, the consumer fuel charge, immediately,” Carney said.

Immediately after that, Carney signed a document as if his signature wiped away the hated tax.

To actually do away with the consumer portion of the carbon tax, but not the carbon tax completely, would require an act of Parliament. The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act was passed in 2018 and allows the Governor in Council, meaning cabinet advising the Governor General, to adjust the tax rate, but not do away with it.

 

Now, about that:

Liberal leader and prime-minister designate Mark Carney, having been the world’s leading corporate lobbyist for global carbon taxes for years, now says he’s scrapping outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “consumer carbon tax.”

But what he’s doing is folding it into Trudeau’s industrial carbon tax and adding a second carbon tax — a tariff that Canadians will pay on many imported goods — misleadingly described as a “border adjustment mechanism.”

But that’s just one example of how the Liberals have misled Canadians not only about carbon taxes but about what they have accomplished.

Trudeau said he favoured a carbon tax to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions because it’s more efficient and effective than government subsidies and regulations.

What he failed to mention is that his climate change plan includes government subsidies and regulations in addition to the carbon tax, earmarking more than $200 billion of federal taxpayers’ money to pay for them. ...

For years, the Trudeau Liberals misleadingly cited only the finding of independent, non-partisan parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux that most families receive more in rebates than they pay in climate taxes when considering only its fiscal impact.

But they ignored and later tried to discredit his additional finding that when factoring in the damage the carbon tax does to the Canadian economy, most families pay more in carbon taxes than they receive in rebates.

For years the Trudeau Liberals have insisted their carbon tax is “revenue neutral,” meaning all the money raised was returned to Canadians when in fact it was not revenue neutral, because the federal government did not rebate the GST Canadians pay on top of the carbon tax.

 

 Oh, there's more:

But in reality, Carney’s plan is an exercise in misdirection. Instead of paying the “consumer carbon tax” directly and receiving carbon rebates, Canadians will pay more via higher prices for products that flow from Canada’s “large industrial emitters,” who Carney plans to saddle with higher carbon taxes, indirectly imposing the consumer carbon tax by passing those costs onto Canadians. ...

What Carney does not mention is that much of the costs imposed on “those companies” will also be folded into the costs of the products consumers buy, while the cause of rising prices will be less distinguishable and attributable to government action.

Moreover, Carney says he wants to make Canada a “clean energy superpower” and “expand and modernize our energy infrastructure so that we are less dependent on foreign suppliers, and the United States as a customer.” But this too is absurd. Far from being in any way poised to become a “clean energy superpower,” Canada likely won’t meet its own projected electricity demand by 2050 under existing environmental regulations.

For example, to generate the electricity needed through 2050 solely with solar power,

Canada would need to build 840 solar-power generation stations the size of Alberta’s Travers Solar Project, which would take about 1,700 construction years to accomplish.

 

In short, Canadians will pay more for a tax that has NOT been eliminated (why not eliminate the industrial carbon tax, Carney?) and for Carney's vanity green projects. The same man who doesn't think you need to know his personal wealth and who jet-sets across the globe begging the weakened European Union for help against the Orange Menace.

Enjoy the decline, Canada. 

Also:

Carney has long been linked with left-wing environmental ideas and policies that are both costly and unattainable. “Climate change is an existential threat,” he said in 2021. “We all recognize that, and there’s increasing urgency around it.” He previously served as the United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance, chaired COP26, supported the concept of net-zero climate solutions and founded a financial alliance for net-zero emissions.

He’s also backed a sustainable world economy or values-led economy. “I’m optimistic about sustainability and the road to net zero in the sense that it provides an opportunity to realign our social values and value in the market,” he said in a 2021 interview with Strategy+Business. He supported instilling “values-based leadership, to drive this transformation” as well as “effective governance and policy, by leveraging the social solidarity we saw develop over the pandemic.”

Who does this sound like? Trudeau.

In a June 2024 statement for World Environment Day, Trudeau, then the prime minister, said that climate change was impacting the population at “an alarming rate.”

“It is our collective responsibility to protect, restore, and preserve the environment for our children and grandchildren. From combatting unprecedented wildfires to ensuring clean air and fresh water, we remain steadfast in doing whatever it takes to protect our planet.”

This helps explain why the environment has been Trudeau’s biggest pet project: over $100 billion in taxpayer dollars have been spent on climate change policies, and he’s focused relentlessly on — you guessed it — working towards a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. ...

What about Carney’s proposal to scrap Trudeau’s hated carbon tax during the leadership race? Things aren’t quite what they seem. The new prime minister has long supported carbon offsets, and told the Senate banking committee in May 2024 that the carbon tax “served a purpose up until now.” We can safely say he’s changed his tune because Trudeau made this issue unviable. Plus, Carney is planning to replace it with an incentive system that rewards Canadians “for making greener choices.” That’s hardly an improvement.

Well, what about Carney’s proposal to eliminate Trudeau’s capital gains tax increase and support a middle class tax cut? It sounds positive, but he’s also planning to follow Trudeau’s lead and spend the taxpayers’ money like a drunken sailor. This reportedly includes running a deficit “to invest and grow” the Canadian economy, penalizing “high-polluting foreign imports,” doubling the amount of new housing construction over a decade and supporting retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. Same old story, alas.

The proof is in the pudding, ladies and gentlemen. Carney and Trudeau are virtually two sides of the same political coin, with only small differences at best.

 

Taxes will only climb higher, along with the cost of living, while the standard of living goes lower.

Enjoy the decline.

 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 

For some reason, people think that Saint Patrick's Day is all about drinking.

 (Some of it is.)

What would anyone say if they knew that Saint Patrick was a victim of human trafficking, yet STILL returned to his former captors because he cared about them?

Quite a different meaning.

 

OMG

 Give this woman a Kewpie doll!:

America VS Canada Tariff War.

This Canadian woman totally gets it!
You have to hear this 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZaRNMRGKgq

— Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 (@FarmGirlCarrie) March 12, 2025

Feel the scorch as she points out the insecure and insincere feeling of camaraderie from the very people who have forgotten the past nine years of ruinous governance in this country, the lockdowns they supported, the willingness to attack even one's own flesh and blood, and collective attention deficit disorder.

Enjoy the decline.

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week singularity ...

Mark Carney set to resume Justin’s work of ruining Canada on Friday:

Justin Trudeau’s last day as prime minister will be Friday, the day Mark Carney and a new cabinet are reportedly set to be sworn in by Governor General Mary Simon.

A senior source confirmed reports that Canada will visit Rideau Hall Friday morning to officially be appointed Canada’s twenty-fourth prime minister on Friday, simultaneously marking the end of Trudeau’s nine year run in the job.

He will not call an election then, or ever, because he cannot trust the voting public to not be wooed by lower or repealed taxes, or a sane adult to deal with the American situation the Liberals have been avoiding since January.

 

Also – what are you hiding, Mark?:

Incoming prime minister Mark Carney says he has put all his assets other than his “personal real estate” into a blind trust after months of Conservative questions about his potential conflicts of interest.

In a statement Tuesday, spokesperson Audrey Champoux confirmed that Carney had set up a blind trust and provided the confirmation document to the federal ethics commissioner when the Liberal leadership results were announced Sunday evening.

“We have been actively working with the Ethics Commissioner and we have delivered a full and robust conflict of interest management plan,” she added.

The statement did not detail the plan nor who would administer the blind trust. It also did not detail which assets he may have divested.

 

 

But we don’t need to worry about Chinese electoral interference, right?:

The RCMP in an internal report predict more “stalking and harassment” of politicians this election year due to anti-Israel street demonstrations. “Flash protests present a significant challenge,” said a police report: “The number and complexity of threats and violence targeting protected persons in Canada has continually increased.”

Rather, anyone pointing out that the current oligarchy is a fraud and obscenity will be as silenced as certain big-rig motorists were one frosty February morn.

 

 

Another by-product of the Trudeau government, the absolute failure that it was:

Urban crime is so alarming householders …

 

I’m going to stop right there.

Householders?

Why not say homeowners, or is that too bourgeoisie?

Moving on:

… may start to arm themselves, says pre-election Privy Council research. Federal focus groups targeted crime fears in the Greater Toronto Area where Liberals elected 49 MPs in the last campaign: “A number reported no longer traveling to certain parts of the GTA that they viewed as being dangerous.”

But that crime is the result of failed governance.

Why not own it?

 

 

The tax is not going anywhere:

Cabinet will attempt to cancel a 19 percent hike in the carbon tax due April 1, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. It was unclear whether Parliament must be recalled to pass legislation, he said: “What are the options? I don’t have the answers for you.”

 

Also – the new boss is the same as the old boss, perhaps worse:

Mark Carney, our next prime minister, has floated a climate policy plan that he says will be better for Canadians than the “divisive (read: widely hated) consumer carbon tax.”

But in reality, Carney’s plan is an exercise in misdirection. Instead of paying the “consumer carbon tax” directly and receiving carbon rebates, Canadians will pay more via higher prices for products that flow from Canada’s “large industrial emitters,” who Carney plans to saddle with higher carbon taxes, indirectly imposing the consumer carbon tax by passing those costs onto Canadians.

Carney also wants to shift government subsidies to consumer products of so-called “clean technologies.”

As Carney told the National Observer, “We’re introducing changes so that if you decide to insulate your home, install a heat pump, or switch to a fuel-efficient car, those companies will pay you — not the taxpayer, not the government, but those companies.”

What Carney does not mention is that much of the costs imposed on “those companies” will also be folded into the costs of the products consumers buy, while the cause of rising prices will be less distinguishable and attributable to government action.

Moreover, Carney says he wants to make Canada a “clean energy superpower” and “expand and modernize our energy infrastructure so that we are less dependent on foreign suppliers, and the United States as a customer.” But this too is absurd. Far from being in any way poised to become a “clean energy superpower,” Canada likely won’t meet its own projected electricity demand by 2050 under existing environmental regulations.

For example, to generate the electricity needed through 2050 solely with solar power, Canada would need to build 840 solar-power generation stations the size of Alberta’s Travers Solar Project, which would take about 1,700 construction years to accomplish.

If we went with wind power to meet future demand, Canada would need to build 574 wind power installations the size of Quebec’s Seigneurie de Beaupre wind-power station, which would take about 1,150 construction years to accomplish. And if we relied solely on hydropower, we’d need to build 134 hydro-power facilities the size of the Site C power station in British Columbia, which would take 938 construction years to accomplish.

Finally, if we relied solely on nuclear power, we’d need to construct 16 new nuclear plants the size of Ontario’s Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, taking “only” 112 construction years to accomplish.

Again, Mark Carney’s climate plan is an exercise in misdirection — a rhetorical sleight of hand to convince Canadians that he’ll lighten the burden on taxpayers and shift away from the Trudeau government’s overzealous climate policies of the past decade. But scratch the surface of the Carney plan and you’ll see climate policies that will hit Canadian consumers harder, with likely higher prices for goods and services.

 

 

Self-reflection is not what Canada does:

“Trudeauism,” the Canadian policy intellectual Sean Speer writes, “came to be marked by massive deficit spending, large-scale industrial policy, an unprecedented use of the federal spending power, a major increase in immigration in general and temporary migration in particular, and a significant expansion of the federal government itself.”

It didn’t work. Government spending nearly doubled, but business investment fell by a third and productivity plunged. Canada is now 30% less productive than America, and Canadian GDP per capita is no higher than it was in late 2014. This has been Canada’s lost decade.

The Trudeau carbon tax flopped, and even Mr. Carney now pledges to junk its consumer end. He’d replace it with a more complex scheme as well as a “carbon border adjustment mechanism”—a tariff or quota that is bound to elicit U.S. retaliation.

Liberal governance has left Canada in poor shape to face Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught. But irony of ironies, those U.S. tariffs have become the Liberals’ great hope, spurring a recovery of 10 or 15 points in election polls.

Never under-estimate the power of anti-Americanism.

It will be the weapons-grade cope Canadians want when Carney’s taxes wipe out their savings.

 

Whenever there is a regime change, the new dictators always raise the body count:

Perhaps some would call it the good massacre: Following a global rush to legitimize the new strongman at Damascus, Ahmed al-Sharaa, his forces are killing Syrians — up to 15,000 over one weekend — and condemnations, including at the United Nations, are nearly nonexistent.

A few days after Secretary-General Guterres shook Mr. Sharaa’s hands and praised his efforts at uniting all Syrians, has the world body’s chief made a call to Damascus? “No, he has not,” the UN spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, tells the Sun.

Images of mass executions around the port city of Latakia in Syria’s northwestern coastal region flooded social media, even as they garnered no major coverage on top news outlets. Forces loyal to Mr. Sharaa’s interim government seemed to return to their Al Qaeda roots, executing Alawites accused of loyalty to the ousted president, Bashar al-Assad.    

 

 

Don’t forget Pi Day on Friday!

And the Rest of It

A lot going on ...

 

An Ontario town is considering bringing a statue of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald back out of storage after it was defaced in 2020 amid a heated debate over the legacy of Canada’s first prime minister.

Wilmot, a small community outside of Waterloo, Ont., has been mired in controversy since 2013 after a group of citizens offered to privately finance the construction of 22 statues of former Canadian leaders. Macdonald was the first statue constructed for the project, known as the Prime Ministers Path. It was first displayed in 2015, moved in 2016 and put into storage after it was splashed with red paint in 2020. Four years later, the town restarted consultations on the value of the project, and in April will hear recommendations about what to do with the statues of Macdonald and other prime ministers.

Article content

Wilmot could become one of the first municipalities to propose re-erecting a statue of Macdonald after tributes to the founding father were vandalized and torn down across the country.

City council member Steven Martin said he views the conversation unfolding in Wilmot as part of a broader pattern across the country.

“When the Prime Ministers are portrayed, they can represent painful times in peoples’ lives, such as the Residential Schools or even Canada turning down ships of Jewish people during World War II who then went on to their deaths,” Martin told National Post in an email. “I believe that across Canada as we deal with our history and rename streets, buildings and other locations, in order to not glorify painful events, then we are dealing with issues in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

 

I'll just leave this right here:

It was a consequential year in ways both familiar and forgotten. It was the year of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”; of Louis Pasteur first vaccinating a child against rabies; of the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time. The year 1885 was the year of the second Louis Riel rebellion as well as the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was also a year of disease — of a smallpox outbreak that killed thousands. It was the year when empire loyalists demanded revenge for the death of Gen. Gordon in Khartoum. Canada’s international trade was on the block in the midst of a severe recession, and Canada’s treaty with the United States regulating the fisheries was set to expire. It was a year when Macdonald attempted to expand the franchise, to allow women, status Indians and a larger segment of the working class to vote.

Now, Mexico, about that ... :

That’s popular Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum participating recently in some kind of ceremony meant to honor indigenous women. When she was inaugurated last year, she held a public ritual in which indigenous women “cleansed” her. A friend from Central America told me on Friday that based on what his Mexican relatives tell him, he would not be at all surprised if Mexico City reverted to Tenochtitlán, its Aztec name. If that happens, it will be because of the broader de-Christianization and re-indigenization of the country.

Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who defeated the Aztec Empire, is buried in Mexico City, in a small, austere tomb located inside a church. The church discourages photographing the tomb, owing to the sensitivity of Cortés’s legacy. In contemporary Mexico, Cortés is widely despised as the chief villain behind colonialism. AMLO, Sheinbaum’s predecessor in office (they are members of the same left-wing party), heavily leaned in to demonizing Cortés and promoting pre-Christian indigenous culture. This is about left-wing populism.

We should not forget that whatever evils the conquistadores wreaked on the indigenous Mexicans, their defeat of the Aztecs stopped a satanic empire that engaged in ritual human sacrifices in massive numbers. The machinery of systematic mass murder defeated by Cortés and his men was such that humanity would not see anything like it again until the Holocaust.

 

 

What a fix this is:

High-stakes talks between senior delegations from Ukraine and the United States on how to end Kyiv’s three-year war with Moscow opened in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, hours after Russian air defenses shot down 337 Ukrainian drones over Russia.

 

The Tariff War the Liberals Caused

Forget Trump.

No one forced Canada to put unrealistic tariffs on the US, or have intra-provincial tariffs, or stoke anti-Americanism to such obscene lengths to win an election.

We know who is to blame for this:

 **

The Trudeau-Carney Liberals have been utterly mum on the announcement of 100% tariffs from China over the weekend — a stark contrast to their reaction to tariffs from the US. 

(Sidebar: these tariffs.)

Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, prime minister-elect Mark Carney, Ontario premier Doug Ford, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre — the list goes on — all blatantly spoke out loudly against threats from President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. 

Canadian leaders across the board in lockstep have declared Canada needs to “fight back” against Trump, calling the tariffs an “existential threat” and threatening to impose retaliatory tariffs and even cut off energy and electricity to the Americans.

Ford on Monday morning announced he is immediately slapping a 25% surcharge on residents and businesses in three US states for access to Ontario's hydro and said he wouldn’t think twice to shut it down altogether if Trump retaliates. 

Former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who lost to Carney in Sunday’s leadership race, said on the debate stage the US has gone from friend to foe — “a predatory threat,” she said — and Canada should align against the US with countries who possess nuclear weapons. 

Both the federal Liberals and Conservatives have made Trump, tensions with the US and the tariff war primary talking points as they prepare for the campaign trail, as an election could now be called at any time.

Despite all the showmanship around the American president, all the above mentioned Canadian leaders have failed to even publicly acknowledge the fact that China imposed a 100% tariff on all rapeseed (used for canola oil), oil cakes and peas, plus a 25% tariff “on aquatic products and pork originating in Canada.”

The silence from Canadian authorities raises a number of questions: Why are leaders willing to go neck-and-neck with the far more powerful United States but shy away from condemning the Chinese communists for the same, or worse, punishment?

The tariff will go into effect March 20. China’s ministry of finance released a statement over the weekend announcing the tariffs are in response to a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles Ottawa imposed on Beijing on October 1 and a 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum on October 22.

China, as usual, has laid out its demands and waits for Canada to comply.

 

Why hasn't the Trudeau-Carney government replied?

Why, indeed: 

“And while Carney seeks to distance himself from Trudeau’s unpopular record, his closest allies remain the same WEF-linked figures who helped shape Trudeau’s policies.”

Among those named in Cooper’s expose are former Canadian ambassador to China Dominic Barton, Trudeau campaign backers Mark Wiseman and Gerald Butts, former CBC Power & Politics host Evan Solomon and Jin Liqun of AIIB, who is reportedly a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operative and former Red Guard.

The common denominator among these figures is their stated goals: “consolidating financial power across borders to coordinate carbon-reduction policies and progressive social outcomes,” Cooper wrote.

** 

In fact, on leaked information from Canadian Security Intelligence Service alleging Chinese money influenced two Canadian elections, the only official investigation is on the whistleblowers who exposed it.

“There is an investigation under way by CSIS and our partners regarding the sources of the information, the leaks,” CSIS Director David Vigneault told a parliamentary committee last week.

Yet there is no probe into the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, named after the late former prime minister who was current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, revealing it returned a $200,000 donation to a Chinese billionaire in response to those documents. While the foundation said it has returned the donation, the public didn’t know it’s former president and CEO was the same oversight official who did “not detect foreign interference.”

**

Xi Jinping's threatening rebuke of Justin Trudeau was a rare and surprising move by the Chinese president, and highlighted the disregard he has for the Canadian prime minister, according to some experts and former diplomats. 

"He certainly wouldn't speak like that to the U.S. president. So it does suggest that Mr. Xi has a degree of disdain for the prime minister and does not see Canada as an important partner," said Charles Burton, senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a former diplomat to China.

Burton said he found the language used by Xi during his interaction with Trudeau at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, to be "quite dismissive and threatening," indicating that any illusions the government has that China respects Canada as an influential nation in the world have long since disappeared.

Anyway, how it started and how it's going:

Cabinet should consider an energy export tax to hit the U.S. “where it really hurts,” former prime minister Jean Chretien said last night. It was up to premiers to agree, he added: “Governments altogether can consider going further and hitting the Americans where it really hurts.”

**

Ontario has placed a surcharge of 25 per cent on electricity exported to the United States as of Monday, and the government says it could raise that amount even higher in response to further American escalation.

**

U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically upped the ante in his trade war with Canada Tuesday morning.

In a Truth Social post, the president wrote he will double the tariff on steel and aluminum, expected tomorrow, and said he will declare a “National Emergency on Electricity” in areas affected by Ontario’s 25 per cent surcharge on energy exports to the U.S. ...

U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically upped the ante in his trade war with Canada Tuesday morning.

In a Truth Social post, the president wrote he will double the tariff on steel and aluminum, expected tomorrow, and said he will declare a “National Emergency on Electricity” in areas affected by Ontario’s 25 per cent surcharge on energy exports to the U.S.

 **

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has dropped the plan to double tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel, and has committed to lowering U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff back down to 25 per cent.

This comes after Ontario agreed to pause a surcharge on electricity exports to the U.S., which dramatically upped the ante in Trump’s trade war with Canada Tuesday.