‘I’m proper now an MP for downtown Toronto, and a truth that also shocks my dad is that I don’t truly personal a automotive’
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Whereas answering questions on spiking gasoline prices in Atlantic Canada, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland responded that she doesn’t personal a automotive – however failed to notice her frequent utilization of a taxpayer-funded automotive and driver.
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“I’m proper now an MP for downtown Toronto, and a truth that also shocks my dad is that I don’t truly personal a automotive,” Freeland instructed reporters in Charlottetown, P.E.I. on Friday. “I’m like 300 metres from the closest subway; I stroll, I take the subway; my youngsters stroll and experience their bikes and take the subway – it’s truly more healthy for our household.”
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Like every cupboard minister, Freeland is routinely granted entry to a taxpayer-funded automotive and driver round Ottawa. A search of publicly out there federal data additionally exhibits that she’s employed a government-funded automotive and chauffeur no less than 15 instances between April 2021 and March 2023 for journey round Toronto, Montreal and Quebec Metropolis.
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From July 28 to July 30, 2021, as an illustration, the Division of Finance Canada billed $749.77 only for the lodging and meal bills of getting Freeland’s driver shepherd the finance minister round her house driving of Toronto.
Freeland has additionally been identified to rent automotive companies whereas overseas – even when there are viable public transportation choices. In April 2022, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation famous that Freeland had billed greater than $3,000 to an government automotive service whereas in Scotland for the COP26 local weather change convention.
The convention was in Glasgow, however Freeland and her workforce stayed in Edinburgh and used the automotive service to commute between the east and west sides of Scotland.
In 2017, there have been additionally experiences of Freeland’s official automotive being pushed empty from Ottawa to Montreal; Freeland would journey between the 2 cities by air and be met on the airport by her normal Ottawa automotive and driver.
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Freeland’s Friday assertion was in response to a reporter’s query relating to Liberal inexperienced insurance policies coming “too quickly, too quick” even for Atlantic provinces who in any other case supported Ottawa’s push to transition away from fossil fuels.
The go to comes only some weeks after a spike in Atlantic Canadian gasoline costs led to by new federal laws enacted in early July, together with a hike to the carbon tax and the introduction of recent Clear Gas Laws. On June 30, the Council for Atlantic Premiers issued a joint assertion urging Ottawa to dial again the measures and tackle “the disproportionate impacts on Atlantic Canadians.”
An edited video of Freeland was posted to Conservative Get together social media channels as proof that the finance minister was suggesting that Atlantic Canadians experience a motorbike if they might now not afford gasoline. “Freeland’s message to Prince Edward Islanders anxious about 61c/litre carbon tax: transfer to Toronto and get a motorbike!!!” wrote Conservative Chief Pierre Poilievre in a publish.
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What the Conservative video omitted was Freeland’s acknowledgement that her authorities’s inexperienced insurance policies are certainly hitting tougher in rural areas.
“I perceive that there are communities in P.E.I. and throughout Atlantic Canada the place you want to drive, so I perceive that our insurance policies must respect that, and I actually imagine they do,” she mentioned, after delivering a favorite anecdote about how she obtained her driver’s licence on her sixteenth birthday.
Freeland wrote in a reply to Poilievre on Saturday, “As I mentioned yesterday, in feedback you narrow out of your clip, I’m each a downtown Toronto MP who rides her bike to work within the metropolis, and a proud daughter of northern Alberta, who received her driver’s licence on the day she turned 16.”
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Freeland’s go to to Charlottetown occurred to coincide with a decline in Liberal help in Atlantic Canada, presumably led to partly attributable to rising gasoline costs. Even in conventional Liberal strongholds similar to Fredericton, N.B., current polls have the Conservatives main by as a lot as seven factors.
When a reporter pressed Freeland on the notion that top gasoline costs would damage the car-centric East Coast tourism market, she responded that tourism will truly be helped by rising carbon taxes.
“Individuals won’t wish to go to our nation if they don’t see that we’re energetically embracing the inexperienced transition…. I actually imagine very strongly that our inexperienced coverage is an financial development coverage,” she mentioned.
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