It's time to start talking about a post-carbon tax Canada

[Anonymous]

As polling across Canada shows support for carbon pricing plummeting now that it's a reality as opposed to an idea, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must be wondering what went wrong?



Ditto Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.



Last year, with great, self-congratulatory fanfare, she imposed a cap and trade scheme, another name for a carbon tax, on Ontarians. That's one reason she's poised to lose her job in the province's June 7 election, her Liberal government trailing both the Progressive Conservatives and NDP in the polls.



An Ipsos/Global poll released Monday found more than seven in 10 eligible Ontario voters — 72% — believe carbon taxes are just an excuse by government to grab more money from them, with 68% calling them mere symbolism.



A similar fate appears to await Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, whose NDP government introduced a carbon tax last year and is now trailing far behind Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party in public support.



A poll released last month by Janet Brown Opinion Research and Trend Research for the CBC, found almost seven in 10 Albertans surveyed — 66% — want Notley's carbon tax scrapped.



An Angus Reid Institute poll released in July, 2017 found most Canadians — 56% — oppose Trudeau's national carbon price, with majorities against it in every province surveyed except Quebec, (55% support) and B.C. (50% support).



Meanwhile, 59% were opposed in Ontario; 68% opposed in Alberta; 71% opposed in Saskatchewan; 60% opposed in Manitoba; 67% opposed in New Brunswick; 62% opposed in Newfoundland and Labrador and 57% opposed in Nova Scotia.



It's all evidence of growing skepticism about carbon pricing as Canadians increasingly realize that when Trudeau and Co. talk about "making polluters pay" for carbon emissions, they really mean making us pay.



Having followed polling on carbon pricing and climate change for more than a decade, my rule of thumb is this: Ask people if they support efforts to combat man-made climate change and most say yes. Ask them if they support having to pay for it and most say no.



While the Canadian intelligentsia mock the public for holding these seemingly contradictory views, the reality is the public's skepticism about carbon pricing is justified.



That's because no government in Canada has instituted the most effective, open and transparent form of carbon pricing — a 100%, revenue neutral carbon tax in which all the money is returned to the public in broad-based income tax cuts — verified by the federal and provincial auditors general.



The reason no government in Canada is doing this is that no government in Canada wants to reduce industrial carbon dioxide emissions linked to climate change in the most effective way possible, which has nothing to do with raising government revenues.



The fact is that to significantly reduce emissions, carbon taxes would have to be set so high today (hundreds of dollars per tonne of emissions, as opposed to Trudeau's price of $50 per tonne by 2022) that, without revenue neutrality, the only reason emissions would drop would be due to a massive national recession.



So instead, what Trudeau and Co. are doing, is to nickel-and-dime Canadians to death through carbon pricing, putting a permanent drag on our economy without provoking a full recession, while hoping Canadians won't notice as the costs increase over time, with little impact on emissions.



What the polling on carbon taxes shows is that Canadians are coming to the correct conclusion that our carbon emperors have no clothes.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-and-co-losing-the-fight-on-carbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnist ... rbon-taxes">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-and-co-losing-the-fight-on-carbon-taxes



Canadians are  right, carbon pricing is a cash grab and mere symbolism.

Living in a province with a punitive carbon tax, I'm not surprised by Canadians cynicism.

Governments that implement carbon pricing are counting on collective ignorance and fear.

Anyone that attacks carbon taxes gets labelled a denier by the prime minister and Catherine McKenna.

[Thiel]

It's not just leftists that see C02 taxation for the cash cow that it is. Our premier, Brian Palliser is a Conservative and implemented carbon pricing. He can blame it on Trudeau.

[Anonymous]

OTTAWA - The Conservatives say they will force the House of Commons to sit all night tonight if the government doesn't agree to produce an analysis of how much its carbon price is going to cost Canadian families.



Finance critic Pierre Poilievre says it's his goal to make the government feel "as uncomfortable as possible."



OTTAWA - The Conservatives say they will force the House of Commons to sit all night tonight if the government doesn't agree to produce an analysis of how much its carbon price is going to cost Canadian families.



Finance critic Pierre Poilievre says it's his goal to make the government feel "as uncomfortable as possible."



The Liberals are requiring every province to have a price on carbon of $20 per tonne by next year, rising to $50 per tonne by 2022. Legislation to establish a federal carbon price that will be imposed on provinces that don't comply is part of the spring budget implementation bill.



Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has argued the costs to families will change, depending on how provinces decide to use revenues from the carbon tax — but she hasn't yet explicitly said how Ottawa will return the revenues to people who live in a province where Ottawa imposes its price.



"We will make the government as uncomfortable as possible until they tell the truth," Poilievre said.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/poilievre-warns-of-late-night-carbon-fight/ar-AAyD0RU?li=AAggFp5&ocid=mailsignout">https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics ... ailsignout">https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/poilievre-warns-of-late-night-carbon-fight/ar-AAyD0RU?li=AAggFp5&ocid=mailsignout



Canadians don't want it, the Trudeau regime won't tell us how much it will cost families or the tens of thousands of jobs it will impact. But they are determined to double down on stupid.

[JOE]

One major problem with the carbon tax in Canada are the lack of results.



We have seen very little action by governments and few projects after years of collecting the tax.



Contrast this with nations like Germany or Chile, where real green energy infrastructure and projects actually get built and implemented.



Chile built a huge solar collection station in the middle of a desert.



Germany has been so successful that many villages actually sell electricity back to the state.



The Philippines are building wind farms off its coast.



What has Canada done? ie - Vancouver, Canada's supposedly 'greenest city' shows very few visible results of all this talk and collection of these environmentally friendly taxes.



So in one respect I agree with the critics. Governments can't just collect tax and show no results.

[Anonymous]

All over the industrialized world, voters are getting donor fatigue about climate change and Canada is no exception.

72 cent of Ontarians feel the carbon tax is just a cash grab while 68 per cent don't believe it will work and they are right.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4232296/darrell-bricker-climate-change-ontario-election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/4232296/darr ... -election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/4232296/darrell-bricker-climate-change-ontario-election/

Europeans are tiring of paying for white elephants too.

Europe slashes subsidies for renewables as energy prices rise

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/europe-slashes-subsidies-for-renewables-as-energy-prices-rise/news-story/5f929493208755c5402709aac5a24d16">https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/i ... aac5a24d16">https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/europe-slashes-subsidies-for-renewables-as-energy-prices-rise/news-story/5f929493208755c5402709aac5a24d16

[Anonymous]

Climate Barbie is full of shit. True Dope's useless carbon tax will shave a half point off of GDP and put families in poverty.

But a new report from the non-partisan Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer has dragged the pricing mechanism kicking and screaming away from the global cocktail circuit and placed it firmly in budgeting reality.



In their latest economic and fiscal outlook, the fiscal watchdog has run the numbers and found that Trudeau's troubled carbon tax is expected to pull $10 billion per year out of the economy starting in 2022. That amounts to 0.5% of GDP.

http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-carbon-taxes-come-with-a-price-who-knew">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnist ... e-who-knew">http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/furey-carbon-taxes-come-with-a-price-who-knew

This appeared in today's Sun.

OTTAWA — MPS were facing another long night of marathon voting Thursday as the Conservatives pushed the government to disclose how much its carbon price is going to cost Canadian families.



Finance critic Pierre Poilievre said his goal is to make the government feel "as uncomfortable as possible until they tell the truth" about how much more Canadians will pay because of the carbon price.



The Conservatives had lined up more than 200 votes on the government's main spending plan and threatened to proceed with them late Thursday if the government opposed a Tory motion calling on it to table by June 22 how much the proposed $50-per-tonne carbon price will cost Canadian families.



Environment Minister Catherine Mckenna said the government has already released its cost analysis, pointing to a report released in April that said its plan could cut emissions by up to 90 million tonnes a year by the time the carbon price hits $50 a tonne in 2022, at a cost to the economy of about $2 billion. That is equivalent to less than 0.1 per cent of the GDP.



"The Conservative Party is going to make people vote all night in relation to this when we have released this information," Mckenna said. as for the specific impacts on families, Mckenna said it will depend on how each province chooses to use revenues from the carbon price.



What Poilievre wants, however, is a document done by the department of finance in 2015 which looks at the potential impact of a carbon price based on household consumption data across different income levels. He says he knows it exists because it was mentioned in documents he obtained through access-to-information legislation, although the actual analysis was blacked out.

[Angry White Male]

Indians cost Canada a billion dollars per year.  How else can we continue helping the Indians without an increase in taxes?

[Anonymous]

Indians cost Canada a billion dollars per year.  How else can we continue helping the Indians without an increase in taxes?

I do agree that a carbon tax will be used for a lot of different things that have nothing to do with climate as it is here in Alberta.

[Angry White Male]

That happens with everything.  Here we have ICBC, which is a public sector insurer of motor vehicles, and is mandatory to use for basic vehicle insurance...



What do you think happened when ICBC had some good years and posted nice profits?  Give the customers a break?  No.  Save the funds for a rainy day?  No.  They flowed the profits into general revenue, surprise surprise...

[Anonymous]

That happens with everything.  Here we have ICBC, which is a public sector insurer of motor vehicles, and is mandatory to use for basic vehicle insurance...



What do you think happened when ICBC had some good years and posted nice profits?  Give the customers a break?  No.  Save the funds for a rainy day?  No.  They flowed the profits into general revenue, surprise surprise...

Insurance is still all private here.....for now anyway.

[Anonymous]

Justine's refusal to release carbon tax costs is a big help to Ford.



From the Sun



Hear that sound? It's the death knell of carbon taxes in Canada. Two death knells, actually.



The first came at 10:41 p.m. on Thursday night. That was the official time the Conservative motion calling on the Liberals to release redacted documents on the federal carbon tax was defeated.



There were 71 "yeas" backing the idea that the Liberals should fess up and disclose the figures calculated by the Department of Finance that tell us how much the carbon tax is expected to cost the average family, whereas there were 184 MPS who thought it was wise to vote "nay" against this.



The Conservatives have a winner on their hands with this issue. Carbon taxes are one of those things that people think sounds OK from afar, but the more they learn about it, the less they like it.



This was the case in Australia, where one government snuck it in, only to have public outrage see it be removed two years later. Meanwhile, Washington state didn't even get that far before its mostly left-leaning politicians saw fit to abandon the idea.



Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, though, and his increasingly moody band of climate warriors, seems to be digging in his heels in defiance over the issue. The public will not appreciate learning that there is data out there from a 2015 document that they could be reading, but the Liberals are blocking its release.



This will only further suspicions about the tax. It'll also help provincial leaders who want to free themselves from the yoke of Trudeau's federally mandated carbon tax. Like Ontario Premier-designate Doug Ford, which brings us to death knell number two.



On Friday, Ford announced that his first priority is to eliminate the Liberals' cap-andtrade carbon-pricing scheme. He plans to do it right away, when he reconvenes the legislature in a few weeks for a special summer session.



This is quite a remarkable turn of events, given that it was only a year ago that former leader Patrick Brown was a vocal champion of carbon taxes. The PCS under Brown even went so far in their wrongheadedness as to banish anti-carbon tax activist Jim Karahalios from the party over his advocacy.



Where it gets complicated is that Trudeau has told the provinces that they either enact their own carbon tax, or he'll force one upon them.



Now, common sense tells you it would be too politically damaging for Trudeau to fight Ford so soon after the latter has won a majority mandate, during which he repeatedly railed against the tax.



But within hours of Ford's announcement, Climate Change and Environment Minister Catherine Mckenna's office unleashed threats against the province: "Ontario's current pollution pricing system meets the federal standard. If the new government changes or eliminates its system, that assessment may change and the federal price on pollution would apply."



Whatever they try, Ford will have none of it. He's already said he's prepared to take this all the way up to the Supreme Court, and he'll have Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to join him. Plus, by that time, Jason Kenney could well be premier of Alberta. The three carbon tax amigos.



In a recent column, I argued that one of the first things Ford needs to do is file a reference question with the courts to get instruction on the constitutionality of Trudeau's edict. Ford seems to be heading in this direction, as he said on Friday that he'll instruct his attorney general to look into combating the feds.



Tough call



It's a tough call to say how this will go as it winds its way up the court system. The question is one of jurisdiction, and whether the feds even have the right to do this. The Library of Parliament released a paper on this in 2013 that basically calls it a coin toss.



It explains that, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, "provinces have jurisdiction to regulate most types of buildings, businesses, industries and interprovincial transportation, and therefore they may also have jurisdiction to control the greenhouse gas emissions related to these matters." This reads like a win for Ford, but the report continues: "With regard to addressing climate change by establishing an overarching strategy or regime, note that both Parliament and the provincial legislatures have broad jurisdiction to impose taxes. Therefore, either or both levels of government could institute a carbon tax."



You'd think that if there was overlapping jurisdiction, the more local government (Ford) would get the final say on its affairs over the umbrella government (Trudeau). This particular issue has never been tested in court, though, since carbon taxes are a recent fad.



Ford is set to be a trailblazer on the matter. The question is whether Trudeau really wants to roll the dice and choose to stand in his way.

[Anonymous]

There are 184 MP's who think taxpayers don't deserve to know how much our pm's cash grab will cost them.

 ac_wot

[Anonymous]

There are 184 MP's who think taxpayers don't deserve to know how much our pm's cash grab will cost them.

 ac_wot

All dipper and Bloc/Quebec debout voted with the Grits. I guess they too think you don't have the right to know how much this cash grab will cost you.



BTW, 25 Tory MP's didn't vote.

https://openparliament.ca/votes/42-1/761/">https://openparliament.ca/votes/42-1/761/

[Anonymous]

There are 184 MP's who think taxpayers don't deserve to know how much our pm's cash grab will cost them.

 ac_wot

All dipper and Bloc/Quebec debout voted with the Grits. I guess they too think you don't have the right to know how much this cash grab will cost you.



BTW, 25 Tory MP's didn't vote.

https://openparliament.ca/votes/42-1/761/">https://openparliament.ca/votes/42-1/761/

No MP should've voted against releasing the cost information to the people who must pay for it.

[Anonymous]

[size=150]Carbon tax racket is coming to an end[/size]



It looks like the game is up and the Liberal carbon tax racket is coming apart at the seams.



As recently as early 2018, it seemed like a forgone conclusion that the Liberals would impose their carbon tax from coast to coast. The Trudeau government mandated the tax hike but ordered the provinces to impose and administer the tax.



It's crafty politics, since the provincial governments, not Trudeau and his team of climate zealots, would carry the burden of imposing the largest tax increase in a generation.



The governments of both Ontario (out-going Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne) and Alberta (the NDP'S Rachel Notley) won election victories without mentioning the tax, only to quickly impose it after being elected.



The sole glimmer of hope for Canadian taxpayers came from Saskatchewan. First, Premier Brad Wall firmly told the Trudeau government that he refused to impose the tax. If the feds wanted to force carbon taxes onto Saskatchewan, they'd have to do it in court.



Wall retired last year, and his successor Scott Moe has picked up right where Wall left off.



"The carbon tax plan is wrong for our province," said Moe in a recent speech. "As an economic plan, it's a total disaster. As an environmental plan, it's not worth the paper that David Suzuki's University of Alberta honorary degree is written on."



Meanwhile in Ontario, former PC Leader Patrick Brown included carbon taxes in his platform, despite the tax being deeply unpopular. After the ousting of Brown as leader, he was replaced by the outspoken carbon tax critic Doug Ford.



On June 7, Ford was elected in a landslide, and will become Ontario Premier on June 29th. He's pledged to scrap the $2 billion carbon pricing scheme and pull Ontario out of the notoriously fraudulent cap-and-trade system with Quebec and California.



We're also less than a year away from the provincial election in Alberta, where polls show that United Conservative leader Jason Kenney holds a commanding lead and is favoured to oust the NDP government.



Kenney is a fierce critic of carbon taxes, and has vowed to work with Ford and Moe to challenge the constitutionality of Trudeau's tax mandate.



Just like that, the tables have turned in Canada.



The Liberals aren't going down without a fight, and the usual green evangelists have ratcheted up their name-calling and fear-mongering campaign over climate change.



It doesn't help that Ford seems committed to reducing carbon emissions without having a specific alternative plan. The reality is that even with heavy-handed carbon taxes, Canada has no hope of reaching Trudeau's pie-in-the-sky pledges made in the Paris Climate agreement.



As my colleague Lorrie Goldstein put it in a recent column, "everyone who can add has concluded that hell will freeze over before Canada meets its 2020 and 2030 emission reduction promises Trudeau made to the UN."



Interestingly, a new study from researchers at Cambridge University predicts that new technology and changing attitudes will make fossil fuels increasingly undesirable and eventually, obsolete.



The study states that, "low-carbon technology diffusion, energy efficiency and climate policy may be substantially reducing global demand for fossil fuels."



This prompted far-left climate fanatic David Suzuki to conclude: "the carbon bubble will burst with or without government action."



If that's the case, why burden Canadian families with a regressive and punitive tax?