CORRECTION: Food Professor roasts Liberals, legacy media for carbon tax propaganda

The Western Standard on January 1 published a story that contained a video of a food analyst claiming Canadian academics received federal funding for publishing a report that shows the carbon tax would not impact food prices. Two of the academics named have denied receiving federal funding for the report, and we have retracted that from the original article.

Food analyst Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, known as the Food Professor on social media, said that from a scientist’s perspective, the biggest scandal of 2024 was the Liberals carbon tax propaganda.

“As a scientist, the biggest scandal in 2024 was the revelation that Ottawa funded research to convince Canadians that the carbon tax had minimal impact on their food costs,” wrote Charlebois in the caption of a podcast clip he posted to social media.

In the Food Professor podcast's latest episode, host Michael LeBlanc asked Charlebois about a story the Toronto Star recently published based on a report from two Calgary-based economists Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter, claiming minimal relation to the Trudeau Liberals' carbon tax and rising food prices.

“I was really appalled by their reporting,” said Charlebois during the podcast, claiming they were both either funded or subsidized by Environment Minister Steven Guilbault’s Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

“They published this report suggesting that retail prices aren't impacted by the carbon tax, which, again, is a flawed hypothesis.”

In the caption of his post, Charlebois named Andrew Leach and Kent Fellows, who denied receiving funding to publish Ottawa rhetoric.

Charlebois on November 25 released a study demonstrating the carbon tax does indeed have a notable impact on retail food pricing.

The paper examines the "implications of carbon-taxing policies on food supply chain affordability and competitiveness in Canada." It found the carbon tax is linked to “stress on the wholesale supply chain," and the “compounding effect” of carbon tax “pushing wholesale prices to rise faster.”

Further, it outlines the “shift in wholesale and industrial prices since introduction of carbon tax.”

The data, based on Statistics Canada and open source government data, shows “asymmetric environmental strategies between countries leads to variations in costs.”

Companies then make up for the variations by adjusting quantities, known as “shrinkflated” products and spending more money to increase productivity.

Charlebois in the study said there “is a visible shift in production costs after the carbon tax is implemented in Canada,” but notes the discrepancy is “less volatile” in the dairy and meat industries, due to the supply management regime.

“The increase in costs and volatility in some categories after the implementation of the federal carbon tax leading to a loss in profitability can have an impact on investment decisions in the industry, making the Canadian food industry in several categories – fruit, vegetables, sugars and grains – losing competitive ground,” reads the study.

President-elect Donald Trump recently deemed the climate change fearmongering by leftist governments a “climate hysteria hoax” that “urgently needs to be defeated.”

“These people are crazy. But they're radical climate people, but they don’t mean it — they can't mean it, because it’s too obvious,” said Trump.

"The radical left's fearmongering about climate and our future is [...] destroying America's economy, weakening our society, and eviscerating our middle class. It's really hurting us."

"Conservative leaders, think tanks and intellectuals must be fearless in calling out the lunacy of what you're seeing, and what you're being led into. The world is not ending."

"We have to defeat the climate hoaxsters once and for all."