Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[#-3]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

The issue with the carbon tax thing is that they're removing the consumer carbon tax while increasing the industrial carbon tax to compensate, which is exactly backwards.

It's probably the most concerning thing about Carney to this point, and the thing I most disliked about Trudeau, if you ignore all of the right wing fantasies about him. Carney is falling into the taking half measures on everything trap, because he is worried about how it polls politically. If you do everything you wanted to 30% of the way because you are worried that some people wont like the policy you will hit a perfect equilibrium, where the people who don't like the policy will be unhappy you started to implement it, the people who like the policy will be upset you compromised for politics, and the people who don't care about the policy will be unhappy that you wasted money on something ineffective.

Scrap the consumer carbon tax, but just roll it into and hide it in the industrial carbon tax, assuming people are too stupid to see the higher prices being directly linked back to that tax.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It's not even half measures, it's the wrong measure.

I don't think a Canadian carbon tax makes any sense anyway because there is no universe where it actually produces any real results in terms of combating climate change; Canada simply doesn't account for a big enough share of global emissions. But even if you leave that aside, and say "well our per capita emissions are high and we should bring them down", then if anything you should be keeping the consumer carbon tax and scrapping the industrial one. Consumer behaviour is actually affected by price increases. Industry is generally doing more or less everything it can already to keep its energy use down because it's trying to minimize cost. And if you increase the industry carbon tax, it'll just be priced in down the chain... ironically, it just becomes an indirect tax increase on consumers that they can't immediately see as a separate cost, just like Trump's tariffs.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

It's not even half measures, it's the wrong measure.

I don't think a Canadian carbon tax makes any sense anyway because there is no universe where it actually produces any real results in terms of combating climate change; Canada simply doesn't account for a big enough share of global emissions. But even if you leave that aside, and say "well our per capita emissions are high and we should bring them down", then if anything you should be keeping the consumer carbon tax and scrapping the industrial one. Consumer behaviour is actually affected by price increases. Industry is generally doing more or less everything it can already to keep its energy use down because it's trying to minimize cost. And if you increase the industry carbon tax, it'll just be priced in down the chain... ironically, it just becomes an indirect tax increase on consumers that they can't immediately see as a separate cost, just like Trump's tariffs.

Industrial carbon pricing predates the election of the federal Liberals, and was brought in first by Alberta under Ed Stelmach. The way you’ve categorized it isn’t accurate and is basically entirely ignorant of its history or the variety of reasons why it’s in place.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Every day life in Canada is awesome. We've got it damn good.

The irony is it's broken for people living in poverty in places like the downtown Eastside of Vancouver; people living with horrible addiction.
It's broken for low income people who rely on things like dental care, and the child care assistance and can't afford day to day life.
The world is broken in places of extreme pollution, war torn societies that need financial aid and refugee assistance.

Basically anything that's really broken is where modern conservatives want to cut spending and assistance.
Real broken instead of "I don't like paying taxes" broken.

[puffnstuff]

Arent there a number of trade deals in place that require a carbon tax of some sort?

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Industrial carbon pricing predates the election of the federal Liberals, and was brought in first by Alberta under Ed Stelmach. The way you’ve categorized it isn’t accurate and is basically entirely ignorant of its history or the variety of reasons why it’s in place.

You're arguing history not effectiveness here. Saying "but he did it first" is irrelevant to whether something is good policy.

If you want to reduce emissions a consumer carbon tax is way better - my heating and commuting emissions can't move to another country to avoid the tax, and so higher costs do produce change (more efficient vehicles/houses/heating systems).

By contrast, many industrial emitters can either move offshore or be competed away by countries with lower emissions costs. I don’t think shutting down our steel industry and importing steel from China helps emissions globally, etc.

Carney cut consumer not industrial not because it's good policy but because it was politically expedient.

[Fuzz]

Must read piece for many here, as we discussed per capita GDP and particularity the comparisons to the US.


Here's part one(part two linked in the article)

It’s the denominator, therefore, that explains Canada’s seemingly poor performance by this measure. GDP has grown but not as fast as the population. Indeed, in recent years, Canada has had its fastest population growth since the 1950s. The population grew three per cent in each of 2023 and 2024, almost entirely due to immigrants – two thirds of whom were non-permanent arrivals (on temporary work or student visas).

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magaz...r-denominator/


I think the good stuff comes in part two:

Comparing GDP per capita between Canada and the U.S. is especially fraught because of other methodological problems. For example, the much larger proportion of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. artificially boosts its apparent per capita GDP. There are an estimated 11 million people there who contribute to the numerator (GDP) but are not counted in the denominator (population).


Similarly, per capita GDP ignores the value of time. In 2023, the average employed American worked 114 hours longer than the average employed Canadian – about three weeks more of full-time work.


American working hours are among the longest of any OECD country because low wages compel many of them to work extra hours or even second jobs and because there are no legal requirements for paid vacation. Those longer working hours account for much of the Canada-U.S. gap in GDP per capita.

Three-quarters of the gap in per capita output is captured by higher incomes for the top 10 per cent of Americans. There is little difference in incomes between the bottom 90 per cent in the two countries. The richest 10 per cent of Americans receive almost half of all pre-tax income, so their wealth significantly inflates the overall per capita average.
In fact, most Canadian workers earn higher wages than those in the U.S. It is most accurate to measure typical incomes by the median wage (the halfway point in a distribution), not the average (which can be distorted by very high incomes at the top).

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magaz...anada-alabama/


There are a lot more points in both parts so it's worth reading through if you have bought into the GDP story, and the lost decade and all the discussion around that. Well, it's really worth reading for everyone. Also discussion in his BS thread:


https://bsky.app/profile/jimbostanfo.../3lnem3n35rs2h

[Looch City]

What's everyone's bets on the gems in the upcoming CPC costed platform?

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

The irony is it's broken for people living in poverty in places like the downtown Eastside of Vancouver; people living with horrible addiction.
It's broken for low income people who rely on things like dental care, and the child care assistance and can't afford day to day life.
The world is broken in places of extreme pollution, war torn societies that need financial aid and refugee assistance.

Basically anything that's really broken is where modern conservatives want to cut spending and assistance.
Real broken instead of "I don't like paying taxes" broken.

Canada getting near 40 million people. With large population comes more homeless and there's really no way around it regardless of what politicians sell you. You can't have as much immigration as Canada has had and not have a segment of homeless and low income people. I'm not saying burn down the programs or anything but there's no feasible solution that's going to make it go away.

[TheIronMaiden]

[belsarius]

We need to do away with regulations related to tailings ponds. Seriously, all they do is add costs to businesses which limits growth and employment opportunities. If companies even took that savings as profit, look how much higher our taxes would be to pay for schools, hospitals, infrastructure.

The tailings are basically just basic elements you find in nature anyways. If we just released it into the water streams, it would flow out into the ocean and dilute to the point where they don't matter anymore. Our industrial waste is on such a small scale compared to the rest of the world that any effort we make is basically useless, and is just adding costs. Do you realize how much wildlife is killed by these ponds? The number of birds, or the costs in setting up ways to prevent the wildlife from accessing them.

These useless environmental regulations, like "reclamation" are just woke ideology and industry killers. If we want to improve our GDP per capita, we need to get back to business and cut things like requirements and fines for tailings ponds.

[puffnstuff]

Originally Posted by Looch City

What's everyone's bets on the gems in the upcoming CPC costed platform?

Appears to be out and relies on projected future revenues due to projected future growth. So trickle down.
When that doesnt happen those tax cuts they have promised, which will be more for higher incomes anyways and that the middle class hardly feels, will be used as the excuse to say the govt is broke and will start canceling social programs (because those are just handouts to the poor).
Its the conservative way.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Carney cut consumer not industrial not because it's good policy but because it was politically expedient.

Not true according to Carney. In his announcement of his future climate plan on January 31, 2025 he claims

I'm not a politician, I'm becoming a politician but I'm not a politician, and so slogans, slander and sound bites don't come easily to me. And because I'm not a politician I don't like press releases that are dressed up as policies so if I see a politically expedient but half baked solution I'll reject it.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

You're arguing history not effectiveness here. Saying "but he did it first" is irrelevant to whether something is good policy.

If you want to reduce emissions a consumer carbon tax is way better - my heating and commuting emissions can't move to another country to avoid the tax, and so higher costs do produce change (more efficient vehicles/houses/heating systems).

By contrast, many industrial emitters can either move offshore or be competed away by countries with lower emissions costs. I don’t think shutting down our steel industry and importing steel from China helps emissions globally, etc.

Carney cut consumer not industrial not because it's good policy but because it was politically expedient.

However Carney has also proposed and import Carbon tax which prevents the exporting of the emissions and the EU has an improper Carbon tax on all untaxed goods. So the world is slowly moving in this direction.

I think the optimal solution would be Carbon reciprocity. Have an industrial Carbon Tax applied to all imports from untaxed regimes, an export Carbon Tax applied to all exported goods to Carbon tax regimes, and a domestic carbon tax for all goods consumed goods within Canada.

Hide the tax from the consumer and don’t tax things in competition with untaxed regimes.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Looch City

What's everyone's bets on the gems in the upcoming CPC costed platform?

I scanned it, and it's full of the usual childishness that we've all come to expect. Things like "stop funding drug dens" and "stop the Liberal gun grab" make it hard to take this seriously. They're running about a $100bn deficit over the next four years, if you can believe that $10bn in consultants' savings per year. There is no plan to balance the budget, so I'm curious to see what the CPC supporters think of that.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

You're arguing history not effectiveness here. Saying "but he did it first" is irrelevant to whether something is good policy.

If you want to reduce emissions a consumer carbon tax is way better - my heating and commuting emissions can't move to another country to avoid the tax, and so higher costs do produce change (more efficient vehicles/houses/heating systems).

By contrast, many industrial emitters can either move offshore or be competed away by countries with lower emissions costs. I don’t think shutting down our steel industry and importing steel from China helps emissions globally, etc.

Carney cut consumer not industrial not because it's good policy but because it was politically expedient.

Interpreting the point as “he did it first” is the kind of ignorance I’m talking about. Who did it first is relevant only in that it gives a clue as to a big reason the system exists, and the fact that Premiers like Smith have said they’ll keep it even if PP removes the requirement for it should provide a further clue.

Both the consumer and industrial “taxes” shift the needle. You can argue that any shift isn’t relevant on the global scale, fine. But ask yourself, if the industrial levy is just about climate change and causes businesses to offshore or hurts their competitiveness, why was it first implemented by a PC government and why is a UCP government set on keeping it?

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by Slava

I scanned it, and it's full of the usual childishness that we've all come to expect. Things like "stop funding drug dens" and "stop the Liberal gun grab" make it hard to take this seriously. They're running about a $100bn deficit over the next four years, if you can believe that $10bn in consultants' savings per year. There is no plan to balance the budget, so I'm curious to see what the CPC supporters think of that.

Okay this is actually hilarious now:

‘It’s time for the government to start pinching pennies'

Poilievre said he’ll manage the government purse the way that a small business, a single mom or a senior does. He referenced his own mother, a retired teacher, to make a point about how he’d spend taxpayer money.

“If she would not be happy with it coming out of her retirement funds, then I should not be happy spending it. Canadians have been pinching pennies long enough. It’s time for the government to start pinching pennies as well,” the Conservative leader said.

Hey guys, it's time for cuts! We're going to do this about how we "feel" (aka, #### you, it'll trickle down in the future) about it internally rather than true metrics and what's best for society.

Is this a true joke? hahahah

[Fuzz]

[#-3]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

It's not even half measures, it's the wrong measure.

I don't think a Canadian carbon tax makes any sense anyway because there is no universe where it actually produces any real results in terms of combating climate change; Canada simply doesn't account for a big enough share of global emissions. But even if you leave that aside, and say "well our per capita emissions are high and we should bring them down", then if anything you should be keeping the consumer carbon tax and scrapping the industrial one. Consumer behaviour is actually affected by price increases. Industry is generally doing more or less everything it can already to keep its energy use down because it's trying to minimize cost. And if you increase the industry carbon tax, it'll just be priced in down the chain... ironically, it just becomes an indirect tax increase on consumers that they can't immediately see as a separate cost, just like Trump's tariffs.

I actually think the former consumer carbon tax as structured made a lot of sense in a certain way, and carbon tax designed not to really cost the average person any money, but also designed to encourage change the would diminish the collection of carbon tax over time. They even had the policy in place to help people take steps to avoid the carbon tax with the BEV credits, and greener home loans... Where that policy did fall down a little bit is that those programs became much much more accessible the more access you had to liquidity and financing. But in general if you had the resources to invest a little bit of time and money up front, you could very quickly and easily have the former consumer carbon policy be a profitable program for you on a personal level.

Where I think the industrial tax struggles is that there isn't always an in the box ready to ship solution for a lot of those emission and the tax is somewhat hidden in the cost of goods. So it will have a slower impact over time, and will effect general consumers more.

In General I still fall on the side of them being good policies, but politically mishandled. A lot of this has been a bottom up push with small jurisdictions taking actions that is not inline with the wider global economy, if anything they need to use trade policy to work with other countries on leveling the playing field in terms of responsible climate management, not only because we care about the environment (which I do, and we should). But because in fairly short order it will be the cheaper option, what makes most of these "greener" options are greener because they use fewer resources to do the same amount of 'work', and as we get better at these new ways of exploiting resources it will inherently become cheaper, because less is less.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Looch City

Okay this is actually hilarious now:

‘It’s time for the government to start pinching pennies'


Hey guys, it's time for cuts! We're going to do this about how we "feel" (aka, #### you, it'll trickle down in the future) about it internally rather than true metrics and what's best for society.

Is this a true joke? hahahah

Like I say, it's hard to take this seriously. Like this is a party that was effectively destined for government and running the country, and they've put out what reminds me of someone running for Student Council president as a document for their election. How much credibility can I give someone who wants to cut university education as a requirement for government employees? Are they suggesting that the issue is that we have a public service that is too well-educated?