Cyr urges NDP to Axe the Tax

2017 is already bogged down with baggage from the last two years as the NDP begin to implement very controversial legislation they rammed through our legislature.  With the 2015 year Albertans held rallies with thousands of people protesting the farming bill, but the NDP couldn’t be found.  In 2016 Albertans held rallies with thousands of people protesting the carbon tax, but the NDP were hard of hearing.

The vast majority of Albertans do not support a job killing carbon tax that was implemented on January 1, 2017, no matter how much money the NDP waste promoting it or how many ministers they send out to spin it.  As I went around, with our local Members of Parliament (MPs) Shannon Stubbs and David Yurdiga, to open houses in Cold Lake, Bonnyville and Glendon what we heard from our constituent’s was pretty clear.

AXE THE TAX!

The NDP is so out-of-touch that the Minister of Environment has stated the province is “still standing” on Day 2 of the carbon tax.  Adding further insult to injury we have a premier that said “it could sometimes be a question of taking a bus, walking, those kinds of things in terms of the patterns of fuel use people engage in”.  Apparently, all our problems will be solved by a little more walking and a rebate that the NDP will generously return back to us as a small pittance from the Carbon Tax they will burden on top of Albertans’ backs.

The rebate is meant to refund additional costs the Carbon Tax adds to what we pay for our necessities; transportation, food, shelter and heat.  The Wildrose has repeatedly asked the NDP to come up with the true cost to families and their answer is to trust them as they know what they are doing.  It is upsetting that the NDP are saying that a single person will have the yearly cost of only $200, a couple will be $300 and a couple with 2 children will be $360.  This appears to only account for gasoline and natural gas costs of your family.  Well this doesn’t factor in additional food costs, increased municipal taxes or the added costs to our purchases like clothing, to list just a few.

Let’s be clear the Carbon Tax Rebate isn’t free money from the NDP.

So when you get that $100 rebate check from the Alberta government remember that the NDP are paying you up front for costs that you haven’t yet paid for.  This is the equivalent of going to a money mart and getting an advance on your paycheck.  If you spend the cash now you will hurt later when the reckoning comes.  To make matters even worse, should you have questions about the carbon tax the Alberta government isn’t even going to be answering them.   The NDP have used our Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as the scapegoat to distribute the Carbon Tax Refunds.  So if you have any questions then you are asked to call CRA, but the only answers they will be able to provide is if you qualify for the refund and when you should receive your check.

As mentioned above, how can you add up the impact of the carbon tax when it is passed on from the manufacturer, distributor, supplier and retailer who all need to cover their cost?  The fact that they are on record (and are spending millions to advertise the carbon tax as good for us) saying that all your carbon tax paid will be covered by the rebate for over half of Albertans just doesn’t hold water.  How can they know without an economic impact study done?  They say that they will collect billions yet somehow that tax burden won’t be passed onto our families is just NDP radical ideology over common sense.

The NDP want the Wildrose to “lay down our swords” in our promise to scrap the carbon tax.  Albertans would rather the NDP lay down their sword of high taxes and making everything more expensive.  This is just another example of instability the NDP is bringing to Alberta that is causing a hemorrhage of jobs to leave our province.  As your MLA I will continue to press onto the NDP how important maintaining our standard of living is for all Albertans, especially our most vulnerable who will be unduly impacted by this new tax.

To find out if you qualify for the Carbon Tax Rebate, please go to the link https://www.alberta.ca/climate-carbon-pricing.aspx#p184s3.  If you want specifics on the Carbon Tax rebates call CRA at 1-800-959-2809.