Jagmeet Singh Blames Rising Prices On Canadian Companies, Calls For Increasing Taxes

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, in response NATO placed heavy sanctions on trade with Russia. 

Russia’s top 3 exports according to The Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) are Crude Petroleum ($74.4B), Refined Petroleum ($48B), Petroleum Gas ($19.7B), selling mostly to China and Europe. According to the Columbia climate school, The EU depends on Russian gas for 45 percent of its imports and around 40 percent of its consumption. The sanctions put in place have led to shortages across Europe and elsewhere, leading to higher demand for existing non-Russian oil and gas markets globally.

In Canada, the already climbing domestic gas prices began to skyrocket. Reaching 2.01 a litre on March 14, 2022

Image from Globalpetrolprices.com

In response, federal CPC candidate Pierre Poilievre promised to expand Canadian oil production and scrap the carbon tax, not just to make everyday costs cheaper for Canadians but also as a foreign policy strategy to get the world off of dependence on Russian oil.

The Trudeau government announced its plan to gradually raise Canada’s carbon tax on fuels from $30 per tonne to $170 per tonne by 2030. Federal carbon taxes were raised by 25% on April 1st.

You’d think the federal Liberal response has been the exact opposite of the conservatives but there is an even larger contrast in response coming from NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

Instead of blaming Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, currency inflation, reduced oil production, and basic supply and demand price signal disruptions, Jagmeet took the opportunity on social media to blame Canadian Oil and grocery companies and called on PM Trudeau to “tax excessive profits and redistribute the funds to people who need help getting by”.

On Twitter and Facebook Jagmeet released a statement claiming “Big Oil and Corporate Grocery” are “exploiting a war, a pandemic and inflation to price gouge Canadians,” taking from the Biden administration’s playbook on using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an excuse for rising inflation. 

He also made the claim that the economic system has been “rigged” by Liberals and Conservatives to “protect the rich and powerful” and asked “What if instead of gas prices going up, big oil made less money?”, in stark contrast to Poilievre’s messaging of basic economic principles. 

Jagmeet Blamed rising oil and gas prices on the companies “price gouging” Canadians, and called for increasing taxes on their profits. 

The NDP proposes an additional 15% tax on oil and gas companies.

Would it shock anyone at this point that the federal NDP has a socialist caucus? It seems unlikely that Canadians are really interested in Jagmeet Singh’s radical redistribution-based taxation plans.