Trudeau’s Carbon Tax, and the Rule of Non-Law
This April 1st is the Monday of Easter Octave – and a continued blessed one to all. Christus resurrexit vere, alleluia! But in the secular world All Fools’ Day, fitting for Prime Minister Trudeau’s punitive carbon tax to come into effect, hiking the price of petrol 23%. Herr Leader is asking – warning – us to obey the law, or else:
“You can’t opt out of federation. You can’t opt out of Canada. …We expect people to obey the law. That’s what government expects of their citizens. That’s what citizens should expect of their governments.”
PM Trudeau is asked to comment on Saskatchewan refusing to collect the… pic.twitter.com/q4wMa7VeXm
— Juno News (@junonewscom) March 13, 2024
Let us ponder his words (striving to look past the ad hominen distraction of the smugness of it all).
You can’t opt out of federation. You can’t opt out of Canada. …We expect people to obey the law. That’s what government expects of their citizens. That’s what citizens should expect of their governments
Sure, but citizens should also ‘expect of their governments’ to make laws that are just and fair, not heavy burdens breaking the backs of already beleaguered Canadians. Let us leave aside the manifestly evil laws that Trudeau has instantiated – euthanasia being the prime example, becoming ever-less ‘voluntary’ – along with his continuation of Trudeau pere’s legalizing of abortion.
Let’s just stick to the carbon tax, a law based on an ideology – and a rather dubious one at that – that ‘carbon emissions’ makes the world irreversibly ‘warmer’, leading to global catastrophe. Or, if the world is not getting warmer, the climate is ‘changing’ in ways that are left rather vague, so that any phenomenon may fit one’s hypothesis. It is does not classify in any traditional sense as ‘science’.
Whatever one’s opinion, and whatever the motives behind all this literal non-sense – and I hope that the Churchmen who adopt this know not what they do – there is the basic principle that carbon is the basis of all life, necessary for every creature on God’s earth, both as intake and output. Hence ‘anti-carbon’ is also ‘anti-life’, Manicheism and Catharism in a different key: The fewer the humans, and the fewer the things those fewer humans do, the better. Barring, of course, a very few elites, who get to jet around emitting more carbon that entire countries. Trudeau, I would imagine, does not pay for much of his own fuel. Neither do many of those who work for the government. In socialism, there is never equality, and some animals are always more equal than others.
For practical purposes, and for the hoi polloi close to home, all those who actually pay for all this, taxing fossil fuels is taxing the very life of Canadians runs. It’s what they – we – use to drive around, heat our homes and transport food, goods and services. Everything gets more expensive for, as the saying goes, if you got it, a truck brought it. And trucks run on carbon-based fuels. Trudeau and Guilbeault’s 23% hike in gas prices has as its specific aim to make people drive less, do less, and pay more even for that. And with most Canadians are already at the breaking point, this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Good for Premier Scott Moe for leading the resistance in refusing to implement this tax: thus far, and no farther.
In that, Mr. Moe’s being a good Thomist, for Saint Thomas says that a human law only binds in conscience when it fulfills three criteria: It is for the common good of the society; it is within the authority of the lawmaker; and it is not disproportionately burdensome. Such a law, says Thomas, is no law at all, but a kind of violence inflicted on the people.
The carbon tax fails on all three. It’s in no way good for the common good, and will not lead anywhere good, except increased poverty for many. It is outside the scope of Trudeau’s mandate, and usurps the authority of the provinces. And it is certainly overly burdensome, seeking to alleviate a problem for which there is little evidence, will do little to solve that hypothetical problem, and will certainly create many more, and more grave, problems. This will make us less free than we already are.
So resist, insofar as you are able, or at least urge your representatives to do so. May all the premiers join Mr. Moe, and take a stand against this rule by ideologues. Even if it ends up being futile, and whoever or whatever is ultimately behind such insane and quite literally counter-productive and anti-life policies ultimately has their way, and whatever their ultimate agenda, at least we should make a stand for the truth, and not go down without a fight.
How much fight, and love for the truth and freedom, is left in Canada? We may be about to find out.
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