Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
This is a good example of how politics interferes with policy. Because the Carbon tax is being implemented in a manner designed to slowly escalate over time to encourage changes before the full impact is realized it becomes a political point of contention and framed as a tax increase every year. Politically it may have just been better to do it in two or 3 significant jumps.
Things like $10 daycare, Carbon Tax once fully implemented, property tax minimum wage should all be indexed to inflation. We don’t all celebrate the tax cut every year we get when RRSP limits and personal deductions go up.
Really the debates should happen once in these things rather than continually and perhaps periodically revisited.
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Do you agree with the carbon tax carveout on home heating oil that the Liberals implemented to save their Atlantic vote? That was purely political and completely destroyed the policy.
When carbon tax was first introduced by the Liberals, it was in fact meant to be a few small jumps. Carbon tax was to peak at 50$ per tonne of CO2 by 2022.
When the Liberals got reelected in 2019 with climate change as a a major driver and election issue, Liberals were reelected at a time when the carbon tax was still at only 20$ per tonne of CO2 in 2019. The Liberals got emboldened by their mandate and changed it to an astronomical 170$ per tonne of CO2 by 2030 vowing for a stronger climate change plan. The Liberals largely did this to themselves by sticking to this plan despite cost of living and inflation worries and changing Canadian priorities.
I also bolded the exact problem. Carbon tax has an impact in mind, this is the whole purpose behind it. It's meant to discourage carbon emission technologies and products and subsidize greener alternatives, but the alternatives are still very expensive or not there yet in infrastructure and technology, and it is impacting certain communities over others. There is a reason why there is a rural top up for instance and why it is more popular with urban dwellers who do not see major costs while getting carbon rebates in the mail with an individual net gain. We also had the PBO report that the carbon tax has an adverse impact on households on average when the economic impact on GDP and investment income is factored in. The business / industry side is still a disaster, only recently getting the billions of dollars owed in rebates that the federal government withheld for years until the backlash was too hard.
https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/site/tim...ken-carbon-tax
Atlantic provinces for example were adversely impacted by use of home heating oil which they were previously not subject to carbon tax as provinces like Nova Scotia has cap and trade programs. The federal government rejected these programs and forced the federal carbon tax plan.
When you have cost of living issues pressing and inflation issues, having the carbon tax increased yearly further exacerbates the impression of being squeezed.
You pretty much have acknowledged my point that it's politically damaging, and why it has been so unpopular where our government has shifted climate change policies based on where their own constituents are located.
Liberals and the NDP made it a political farce in their handling of the situation and the CPC has pounced on the weakness and reaped the benefits of Canadian anger (remember CPC under O'Toole had a carbon tax plan on their platform conceding at the time that any government to be elected would need a plan politically).