Horgan and Trudeau: Hypocrite, Hypocrite, Hypocrite

[Gone_Fishin]

GUNTER: Trade war reveals environmental hypocrisy

Lorne Gunter
Published:
July 3, 2018


Here’s a little tidbit I came across when researching Canada’s current trade war with the United States.

It reinforces the stupidity of economic nationalism by both countries, but equally importantly reveals the environmental hypocrisy of both Justin Trudeau’s and John Horgan’s obsession with “green” energy.

Vancouver is not merely the largest coal-exporting port on the West Coast (including United States ports), it is the largest western port for AMERICAN coal exports. The huge thermal coal mines in Wyoming and Montana — the biggest in the U.S. — ship nearly all their export coal through Vancouver.

Our economies have become so integrated (to both country’s advantage) that this trade war will hurt us both for as long as it lasts.

But here, for me, is the real kicker: Approximately one-third of all U.S. coal exports go through Vancouver’s Westshore Terminals AND NOT ONE LUMP OF IT IS SUBJECTED TO FEDERAL OR B.C. CARBON TAX.

Coal is dirtier than oil, even oilsands oil. Burning it produces more pollution and more carbon emissions, especially in less-sophisticated overseas power plants. Yet there is B.C. Premier John Horgan, in the name of climate change, attempting to block his neighbouring province, Alberta, from building a pipeline to the West Coast. Meanwhile, he is welcoming tens of millions of tonnes of the global-warming-est coal around to slip in his province’s backdoor and out through the Port of Vancouver.

Hypocrite.

Then there is our sanctimonious P.M., who is about to beggar Canada with a massive federal carbon tax — again in the name of saving the planet — and yet he permits million and millions of tonnes of coal to pass through Canada every year without charging a penny of his Earth-saving tax.

I don’t want the Trudeau government charging it on anything, foreign or domestic. It won’t save a milligram of emissions. But it is economic lunacy to place punitive taxes on Canadian energy sources while giving foreign energy coming through our country a free pass.

Trudeau is attempting, slowly, to shut down the Western Canadian energy sector — especially coal-fired power plants — while, it turns out, at the same time effectively giving a subsidy to American coal.

Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

Last week, Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, who was runner-up in last year’s federal Tory leadership race, tweeted that Trudeau “has totally bungled our trade relationship with the US” because Trudeau has been more concerned with “virtue signalling” than serious negotiations.

The federal Liberal government, Bernier charged, has been more interested in demonstrating its progressive morality on “gender and aboriginal issues, labour rights and climate change” than dealing with the American’s trade demands.

The Trump administration, for instance, wants to deal with the subsidies and non-tariff barriers for our dairy farmers implicit in Canada’s “supply management” agriculture system, whereas the Trudeau government wants to embed gender-based analysis of energy projects in any new NAFTA.

snip.

But our tariffs on American goods will cost Canadian jobs because many of the parts in products Ottawa is punishing are made here. Similarly, many of the Trump admin’s tariffs will cost American jobs for the same reason.

Our economies are too interlocked for national sabre-rattling to work well.

So, I suspect before too long we will negotiate a new Canada-U.S. free trade arrangement.

But in the meantime, the environmental piety of both the federal and B.C. governments has been exposed as phony, economically suicidal and utterly hypocritical.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnist ... -hypocrisy

[liisgo]

Excellent post. Its only starting to surface now the extent of manipulation that has controlled our products and/or our economy of this country. Government given tax subsidies and programs given to cooperation's here, but then those gains used not here but to assist in a cheaper product to enter and sell in the USA to challenge their market instead of ours. Lets not forget the Hypocrisy of all the protesters out there. Have you seen them blocking the coal exports day to day.

[Jflem1983]

Save western Canada. Ontario woke up. Manitoba woke up. Alberta is gonna go back to a conservative footing. What is wrong with us in BC. Who voted for these boneheads. Why is that speaker guy not charged with treason.

[hobbyguy]

Save western Canada. Ontario woke up. Manitoba woke up. Alberta is gonna go back to a conservative footing. What is wrong with us in BC. Who voted for these boneheads. Why is that speaker guy not charged with treason.

The boneheads we are stuck with did not win the election, they pulled a sleazy backroom deal to usurp power. Disgusting bunch of thieves and liars.