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Did you get money from the federal government this week?
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I got $183.00 to compensate me for the money I spent due to the carbon tax.
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All in all, not a good bargain.
Sure, I’d rather have the money than not. I am not giving it back. But better still would be if we didn’t have the carbon tax in the first place.
All the arguments for it fail the logic test.
The stated purpose is to incent us to spend less on carbon fuels by charging more for them. That’s solid economics as far as it goes. Generally as price goes up, demand goes down.
But they promised to give us the money back. Why should I buy less gasoline if the price is neutral or negligible?
As such it was a failed proposition from the get-go.
Of course most people won’t get all their money back. That is a lie.
The Parliamentary Budget Office, calculating the negative effect the tax has on the economy says, “Most households in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing. That is, the costs they face including the federal carbon levy, higher GST and lower incomes will exceed the Climate Action Incentive rebate they receive.”
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By implanting and steadily increasing the tax, the government is punishing Canadians for something we are not responsible for.
50% of the carbon emitted on the planet is from three nations combined; China, India and the USA.
Canadians account for less than two percent.
Fanatics will jump up to say, “But we are among the highest emitters per capita.”
That is irrelevant. It is estimated that if we emitted nothing we would account for a drop of one quarter of one percent in worldwide emissions.
To put that in perspective let’s imagine 400 cows in a closed building. With all the methane pouring out of cows, it would get pretty close in there.
So, let’s remove a cow. Anyone going to notice a difference if the remaining 99 keep on blowing?
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Of course not. We are the one cow, not the 99.
Ontario closed five coal burning plants to serve a green agenda. China builds two a week, so again we made no difference.
Another reason people give for adopting green policies and taxes whether a small country like ours makes a difference in emissions is that they say we have to be an example to the world.
Really? Name a country that cares what we do.
Does anyone believe a meeting ever took place in China where someone said, “Canada is closing coal plants and taxing their citizens. We better slow it down and go green, or we’ll look bad to Canadian liberals.”
People will call my radio show and say, “We have to do something.”
No we don’t.
Just doing something just to be doing something is juvenile at best and really, just dumb.
To solve any problem it is necessary to do something effective, but as pointed out, there is nothing effective about the carbon tax.
The only winners are federal bureaucrats cozily employed to administer the program and send us money to try to hoodwink us into believing we are getting a good deal.
Federal employees have great benefits, none of which accrues to the rest of us, or the planet.
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