Political grab-bag: Palestinian statehood, carbon tax fight | Front Burner

Hi I’m Jamie P today on the show Aaron wary my colleague in Ottawa senior parliamentary Bureau reporter is here we’re going to split this political conversation in two starting with a motion introduced this week by the NDP to recognize Palestinian statehood will the Prime Minister vote

Today for peace why did it get so messy and what are the ramifications of the motion Parliament ended up passing and then the never ending carbon tax fight which has seen a few notable updates of late such as a growing provincial Revolt over the upcoming increase that fight

Between the provinces and Ottawa has flared up yet again next month the federal government’s carbon tax is scheduled to increase what’s going to happen who is winning the communication War all right let’s let’s get into it Ain hey hey so great to have you uh

So before we get to the NDP motion I I actually just want to get some clarity on what Canada’s position has been in recent years Visa the recognition of a Palestinian State because I think it’s important context here so what has our position been yeah

And I’m going to read uh from it because words matter and uh the language here is highly specific so Canada’s position is that it recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination and supports the creation of a sovereign independent viable Democratic and territorial contigous Palestinian state that has been the uh long-standing position not

Just of this government but of previous governments uh and it you know broadly aligns with uh all of our G7 Partners okay so when the NDP puts forward this motion to be debate debated and voted on on Monday and I should just note this motion is non-binding it was non-binding so it’s

More symbolic than anything else but how is that part different from the official position that you just read out to me sure so if you look at the original language of the NDP motion the the motion they put before uh the House of Commons before was amended uh it’s a

Long motion there’s it’s multi-art but the last part says uh that the house would call on the government to uh quote officially recognize the state of Palestine and so the distinction there is between you know recognizing the possibility of a Palestinian State accepting the idea of a two-state solution and actually you know

Officially saying there is a state of Palestine and that is a is a step that you know as I say our other G7 Partners haven’t taken there’s been some musings in the United Kingdom in the United States about potentially taking that step in the future but no one has quite

Gone that far and that’s you know that would be a a pretty significant and and arguably potentially provocative move for any country to take at this point especially you know from Canada’s perspective taking it out of step with our other G7 Partners okay so this is kind of the centerpiece of the original

Motion but just what else does the original motion having it the idea of recognizing Palestinian statehood was really the kind of major sticking point or the kind of primary sticking point but there are also pieces of it you know in terms of funding unra in terms of uh arms exports

You know recogn you know certain comments about what the situation in the Middle East what it would recognize what what it wouldn’t recognize uh it’s it’s a long motion and uh as as we’ll get into the amendment that came to it was was a long amendment

That rewrote a lot of P portions of it but I think if you could sort of boil it down it’s really you know so first of all that issue of Palestinian statehood and second the issue of uh arms permits export permits and and what were uh what

Canada is allowing to be sent to Israel right and so before it was amended which as you noted we’re going to get to uh it goes to the floor and it’s debated and just give me a sense of how much support the original motion has and who opposed

It and uh you know maybe a little bit about you what they said yeah so from the start obviously the NDP was supportive the block kekoa came out fairly quickly and said it would support the motion the conservatives were opposed to the motion continuing debate The Honorable member for Thornhill Mr

Speaker despite the many positions of the government of Canada this motion is not about about a ceasefire this motion is about rewarding Hamas for their Massacre this and then there was this you know kind of emerging split in the liberal on the liberal side the you know

About a dozen liberal MPS had sort of gone on the record of saying they were inclined to support the motion it’s hard to know exactly how many would have ended up voting for it it’s safe to assume it would have been a significant number and the government you know

Initially was actually it was hard to tell exactly what they were going to do Melanie Jolie the foreign affairs minister stood up in the House of Commons and and and spoke to the moot and and took in debate and didn’t really kind of categorically say one way or the

Other where the government was going to go she did say that the government had issu certain issues with the with the motion and we knew that uh the Liberals and the NDP were in talks specifically the liberal government and the NDP were in talks about some kind of amendment to

The motion to sort of find some kind of compromise that everyone could agree to but for a while for most most of of the afternoon the sense was that those talks had kind of broken off and that you know the the feeling was that this motion was probably headed for

Defeat and the people who uh were against so the conservatives and quite a few members of the uh Liberal Party why were they uh against it like what was their reasoning yeah so I think there were kind of two uh issues one was again this issue of Palestinian statehood and

Whether uh Parliament and the effectively the federal government should should should change foreign Pol the Canadian foreign policy with a motion in the House of Commons like this and should change it at this point and then and then a more broader concern was was you know sort of a a feeling that

The motion was was tilted against Israel or wasn’t evenly balanced this motion is stirring up some division in the liberal caucus some say they will vote for it others like Quebec Liberal MP Anthony housefather called the motion a huge slap in the face Mr Speaker Canada should be standing with Israel Canada

Should be defending the right of Israel to fight back against a terrorist organization and we should not be passing motions that make the terrorist organization equivalent to a democratic State thank you and those were sort of the two kind of larger you know complaints about the

Motion or the the two issues that were kind of the motion was running up against I guess okay so then uh really at the last minute uh there is this announcement that this deal is made between the Liberals and the NDP to amend the original motion uh and you and

I were messaging back and forth about this on Gchat um and and give me the C notes about what happened yeah so you know usually uh Motions like this aren’t quite so dramatic in the House of Commons right there if there are negotiations they happen quick and and

They’re resolved and it goes to a vote or it doesn’t and and it passes or fails and in this case you know in part because the House of Commons was uh the proceedings were somewhat delayed because there were tributes to Brian Mor roone the late Brian Mor that day and so

The debate stretched into the evening and then really as you say you know moments before this was supposed to come to a vote the liberal house leader comes into the house and says uh I’d like to table the following Amendment and reads out this very long Amendment uh you know

Detailing multiple changes to the original motion the speaker asks whether Heather mcferson the NDP Foreign Affairs critic who who originally tabled the motion agreed with that she said yes but there was immediate sort of uh complaint that this was being tabled at the last minute that the house didn’t have time

To review it that MPS didn’t have a chance to look at what they were going to be voting on a couple liberal MPS and the conservatives were upset that they were kind of caught off guard by this it was a very last minute change uh and that’s not something that usually

Happens in the House of Commons yeah and and it does end up passing right 204 to 117 and I just I want to start by asking you the NDP you they amend this original motion uh there have been criticisms that they basically acques to like a watered down

Version of what uh they wanted including on the question of Palestinian statehood which basically just uh became what Canada’s position already was and and just to be clear like did the NDP get anything new out of this past motion even if it’s symbolic were they able to push forward what they wanted to

Accomplish at all here yeah so the NDP argument is look they would have liked what they originally tabled but they were listening to you know Palestinian Canadians they were listening to uh people who had concerns about about what’s going on in the Middle East uh people who wanted to see Parliament or

The government move on certain issues and the feeling was that moving forward with emotion that didn’t acknowledge Palestinian St was worth it if it made some movement on some other things and the the movement that they can point to on a couple fronts I guess you know

First of all there is a commitment to continue funding anra this support simply cannot wait now amid dire warnings of famine a move by Canada Andra forms the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza and in the region because of its networks because of its Pres and its history on the ground

Um and uh there are some acknowledgements of you know the international uh courts and and other issues and then there is this other clause which was Rewritten which ended up saying that the federal government would quote cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance

With Canada’s arms export regime so that that language is narrower than what was originally proposed but it’s arguably further than we knew or that the that we knew the government had had gone or that the liberal government had publicly gone so far and just to to

Spend a bit more time on the arms export thing I I am a little confused because there W there have been you know reports that this is something that that Canada essentially stopped doing back in January and is is that true the reporting has been you know hard to follow because it’s not

Quite clear what the federal policy has been or how it’s been sort of put into action the federal government at first said we have approved no export permits since October 7th subsequent reporting said there are these permits or these requests to export uh armored Patrol vehicles and other non-lethal equipment

You know the example was given of night uh vision of goggles uh these permits have been you know at least not approved maybe slow walked maybe held up because even though they’re non-lethal equipment there were concerns about how that equipment might end up being used and so

It it hasn’t been quite clear exactly what the federal policy is you know other than the fact that export permits haven’t been granted it’s not quite clear what lines the government was drawing and coming out of this motion it seems like the federal government is now

Ready to draw a clear line we’re still sort of waiting for an explanation but uh the tronto star reported yesterday that that foreign affairs minister Melanie Jolie had made this comment that yes what’s in the motion is going to be our is is is what’s going to be our

Policy and again because these are kind of you get into the questions of lethal or non-lethal it’s it’s there’s a fair bit of parsing that has to happen but it does seem like the liberal government because of this motion has has drawn a firmer line at this point

So that is basically what happened this week around this uh NDP motion that was put forward and uh I think now uh what I’m hoping we can do eron is take a bit of a of 180 like a a real turn and talk about the NeverEnding debate about over

The carbon tax uh a growing number of provincial leaders are pushing for the liberal government to cut the tax or to pause the scheduled increase for it the increase is due to come up in April uh so far it’s New Brunswick Pei Saskatchewan Alberta Ontario Nova Scotia

And newf Landon Labrador so across the political Spectrum here and why have we you been hearing so much about this issue from the premieres lately so I think a couple things one is you know the conservative the federal conservative leader Pierre PV continues to double triple down on his opposition

To this we’re not going to put up with it anymore we as common sense conservatives are saying no to Trudeau’s 23% April fools day uh increase we are saying Spike the hike until we Common Sense conservatives can ax the tax the good news is the fact the that the you

Know the tax increases every year on April 1st means it’s going to come up every March that this you know is going to be an issue and I think you know with the Liberals the federal liberals down in the polls it has become I think very easy for uh provincial

Premieres uh and even some opposition leaders uh liberal leaders in a couple provinces it’s become very easy for them to say yeah yeah the federal government should pause the carbon tax or scrap the carbon tax because you know even though there is this rebate uh attached to it

And we’ll get more into that in a bit the the the carbon tax has become kind of an easy scapegoat for you know larger concerns about the cost of living and the cost of groceries and the cost of other things yeah uh and so one of the

Premier uh really at the Forefront of this I think it’s fair to say is the scat from Premier Scott Mo uh and he said in January that the province would stop charging the carbon tax on natural gas just wondering though so are you still planning to not pay the rest of

The carbon tax or is that yeah we’re not paying no we’re not paying on uh effective January the 1st Sask energy will stop collecting and submitting the carbon tax on natural gas Mo has now said that he’s not giving the feds the money that the province owes on this for

The month of January and it was due February 29th and this is a big develop men because they’re essentially defying the law here right yeah this is uh this really is a provincial government breaking federal law the federal law says you know not only is the carbon tax

Supposed to be charged but the the government or the provincial government or the regulator or whoever is is collecting the charge it’s supposed to remit that payment to the federal government and the government in Saskatchewan has has now openly defied that this is fairly unprecedented territory uh

The the idea of a provincial government openly saying you know we’re just not going to follow the law is is a pretty remarkable development what kind of precedents are people worried about this setting like specifically well I mean it’s it’s really the precedent of of laws being

Optional uh you know it’s hard to put it any other way you know where exactly does this end right like you know a government a provincial government a provincial political party whatever can you know has has real options if they disagree with the law right they can

Appeal to the courts they can campaign against it they can you know try to convince voters in their Province and other provinces to vote against the federal party that sponsors the law you know they can they have options and if if we’re getting into a place where provincial governments are just going to

Decide uh you know never mind Democratic rule of law means we’re just not going to pay attention to the law uh we’re just not going to follow the law where you know where does that that end exactly mhh Premier Mo would would somehow decide that he’s Above the Law

No one is above the law in Canada we we we live in a state of law it’s not a dictatorship um and and and no one is above the law if if if Premier Scott Mo decided that he wants to start breaking laws and not respecting federal laws

Then measures will have to be taken so I know everybody calls it a tax but it’s not actually a tax because it’s supposed to be Revenue neutral and you’re supposed to get money back what do we know about where the rebates leave most people right so this is uh this has

Become the Crux of a fair bit of debate we know from reporting by the Parliamentary budget officer that on a straight fiscal issue of how much you pay in carbon tax and you know how much you pay in additional cost created by the carbon tax and how much you get back

From the rebates that the vast majority of families uh come out ahead uh and it’s actually mostly people at the higher incomes who don’t come out ahead because people with higher incomes tend to generate tend to use uh tend to use and burn more fossil fuels so uh the the straight rebate

Calculation it’s fairly cut and dry that that you know uh you know I believe the figure the federal government uses is eight out of 10 Canadian families or households uh come out ahead right but the the conservatives certainly say that it’s not Revenue neutral and why do they

Say that like what what’s their reasoning right so there is this other PBO report so the first the first report the PBO did looked at straightforwardly uh the fiscal impact do you pay more or do you get more from the rebate and that came out to this calculation that you’re more you’re

Further ahead with the rebate but then the PBO did a second report that said okay let’s consider both the fiscal impact and the economic impact of the carbon tax and because it’s a carbon tax it has a negative economic cost it it acts as a you know a drag on economic

Growth and they took that economic cost and then they distributed that across households and they said okay when you consider both the fiscal impact and the economic impact then most families don’t come out ahead and so the conservatives point to this report and say aha see it’s not

You know most people don’t come out ahead the all the talk about the rebate is now Moot and you know this gets into kind of a larger discussion because as people have pointed out the PBO reporting on the economic costs had some had some pretty significant kind of omissions or things

It didn’t consider so first of all it didn’t consider the benefits of reducing emissions and uh second of all it didn’t compare the carbon tax to any other policy uh that would reduce emissions and so you know yes you can look at it and say the carbon tax uh has a negative

Negative economic impact uh therefore it’s bad policy but then the next question becomes what are you going to do instead and how would the carbon tax compare to that policy Because unless you’re assuming that we we don’t need to reduce emissions and that there will be no negative consequences from uh uh from

Not reducing emissions then it’s not clear what that PBO report amounts to and the PBO himself has come out and said look not reducing emissions is going to have a cost uh other policies are going to have have have a cost he he himself has kind of come out and said

That he’s he’s frustrated with the way his reporting is being used now that would you know necessarily or you know might suggest that maybe the PBO should go back and do another report but in the metime just what we need in the meantime we kind of have this conflict over this

Report this conflict aside which can get quite uh detailed um do you even think that people totally get that they’re getting money back here that they’re actually that they actually are getting a rebate there is I think a a significant communication challenge so first of all we know from polling that not everyone

Realizes they get these checks uh or they get these payments whenever the carbon tax is in the news we get flooded with all sorts of comments saying I don’t get the rebates spoiler alert they actually probably do or at least they should part of that you can trace to the

Fact that uh well the federal government can call it whatever it wants it’s currently calling it a canid carbon rebate when Banks deposit the money in your account uh they can call it whatever they want and so they can you know sometimes it just shows up on your

Bank uh statement as like Federal payment Y and it’s not obvious what that’s for yeah I remember when we got ours I remember training my what is this and I cover this all the time so so there’s so there’s first there’s a Communications issue I think there’s

Also kind of a psychological issue of even if you are getting the rebate uh even if you know you’re getting the rebate you know do people then uh understand or believe that they’re getting more in the rebate then they’re paying out right because the the payment

In a lot of CES in a lot of cases is very explicit do you think there’s anything the LI the Liberals could have done differently here that might have changed the outcome you know to a certain extent I I think it it was almost easy to conclude that this fight

Had been fought and won by the Liberals uh you know you go back to the last election and even the federal conservatives were running on a on a policy of pricing carbon yeah a no to’s campaign yeah exactly and uh you know the Liberals uh held on to Government

After 2019 they held on to Government after 2021 I don’t know that there was a uh a magical solution that would have necessarily made this policy more palatable but I do think you know if this policy dies the post analysis is inevitably going to say did they sell it well enough were they

Out in in making enough of a case to the public were they stressing this policy to the public enough uh it’s the communications and the advertising for it that I think people are going to kind of come back and question all right Ain thanks very much for coming and doing

This conversation with us it was great always good to have you thank you anytime all right that’s all for today I’m Jamie pone thanks so much for listening talk to you tomorrow

We tackle two topics in the Canadian political zeitgeist: heated negotiations over the NDP’s motion on Palestinian statehood, and the escalating fight over the carbon tax.

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