Regina Leader-Post

CARBON TAX COVERUP CONTINUES

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It’s not rocket science. At least it shouldn’t be.

Although the way the Liberals are acting you’d think it’s a superhuman feat to disclose how much carbon taxes are going to ding the average Canadian family.

On Thursday evening, the Conservati­ves used the legislativ­e tools at their disposal to keep MPs around late into the night to vote on a motion that would see the Liberals release a needlessly secret report that gives up the carbon tax goods.

Back in 2015 bureaucrat­s at the federal finance department calculated how much a federal carbon tax levy was going to cost. Conservati­ve MP Pierre Poilievre recently filed an access to informatio­n request to receive the document. But when he got it, the pertinent informatio­n was blacked out. The data was redacted. Poilievre is now challengin­g this, with the Office of the Informatio­n Commission­er investigat­ing whether the Liberals in fact broke access to informatio­n laws by failing to disclose the data.

You’d think if they’re such proponents of the carbon tax they’d be all gung ho to talk about it and all of its details.

The truth, though, is that carbon tax fans never want to discuss the costs because they know how high they are and they know this will turn the people off of them.

This is scandalous. The people have a right to know. What’s even more scandalous is that MPs would collective­ly vote to block the release of the document once again.

While 71 MPs voted in favour of the motion, 184 voted to block it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on more open government, yet he isn’t even willing to release an internal government report to the people on an important public policy issue we’re all talking about.

Poilievre has labelled this saga “the carbon tax coverup.”

That’s exactly what this is — the government doing everything it can to stop us from talking about the costs and hide the informatio­n from us.

There are a number of estimates out there from private and academic sources. The lowest of them suggests families will pay around $600 per year on average. It could be more.

Stop this charade and tell us.

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