You can pay me now or pay me later - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Checking the polls recently, it seems assured, unless things change wildly, that the next election will see Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as Canada’s next Prime Minister. One big reason, apparently, is that Canadians are fed up with the carbon tax.
Poilievre courts support with the simple challenge to the Justin Trudeau Liberal government to “Axe the Tax”. Part of the problem for Trudeau’s government is that most people don’t have a clear idea of what the tax does.

 

Let’s get this straight right off the bat - I benefit from the carbon tax. Every three months, my bank account mysteriously increases thanks to money to offset the carbon tax sent by the federal government. As for the cost of the tax, I don’t drive a lot of miles, so I don’t often get gas and see the tax increase the cost of a tank of gas.

 

Our home is heated with geothermal heat, drawn from the ground, so we have no tax on furnace oil or natural gas. Our electricity bill is higher because geothermal requires electricity to pump the heat from the earth, but we still spend less on energy than most people - and save the carbon tax because of it. I haven’t done the math but there’s no doubt that I come out ahead with the carbon tax. According to the statistics, 60 per cent of Canadian households will receive more than they paid in carbon taxes.

 

The problem is, we don’t really recognize the tax rebate we get from the government because it silently slips into our bank accounts. Meanwhile we see the cost of the tax every time we go to the gas station.

 

That’s the way it was supposed to work, of course: to remind us every time we filled the tank of the cost of burning gas, but compensating people who used less. But, it appears, the government outsmarted itself. We see the cost of using carbon, and we fume, but we don’t see our rebates that slip silently into our bank accounts.

 

And Mr. Poilievre benefits because he regularly targets the tax, but he never mentions the rebates we get that many Canadians don’t notice. When he promises to “axe the tax” he never mentions those rebates. Either he’s going to add greatly to the national debt by eliminating the carbon tax, but still giving us the rebate, or most of us are suddenly going to be out of pocket.

 

Meanwhile, we don’t seem to be picking up signals of the cost of excessive use of carbon. Last summer, we in the southern parts of Canada and Americans south of the border coughed our way through smoke from forest fires in nearly every province in Canada. With a continued drought, the forest fire season started even earlier this year with people in communities in northern B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan moved from their homes to avoid fires. Thankfully light rains have lessened the risk, temporarily at least, but we need much more rain to bring relief this year.

 

A documentary on TV the other night pointed to the problem. Way back in June of 1992, a total of 154 countries signed the UNFCCC, agreeing to combat harmful human impacts on the climate. The 27th version of the same conference was held last year in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. As might be expected from a conference in an oil-producing region, little progress was made in cutting petroleum production.

 

That’s been the challenge of the issue: how to cut pollution, mostly from burning carbon, without hurting the people who depend on sales of carbon.

 

Here in Canada, the federal government stepped in to finish the Trans Mountain pipeline, originally planned by Kinder Morgan, to deliver natural gas from Alberta to the Pacific coast. Did that win plaudits from Alberta? Carbon fees are still an enemy of the right-wing Alberta government. Under Premier Danielle Smith, Alberta has even outlawed building new wind turbines, even though Alberta was once Canada’s leader in electricity from wind.

 

The federal government shot itself in the foot earlier this year when it cut carbon taxes in the Maritimes, where people spend more to heat their homes - and also vote Liberal. By doing so, they also undermined the value of the carbon tax as a way of getting us to use less carbon.

 

Meanwhile, as part of the strategy of the carbon tax, the cost gets heavier. In December of 2020, the federal government announced a plan to increase the carbon price by $15 per tonne per year from 2023 to 2030. 

 

Hurricanes are expected to get worse this year - part of the ongoing cost of climate change. Tornadoes are more frequent because of climate change, and we’ve already discussed the misery of forest fires.

 

We have a choice - change the way we live or have it changed for us by natural forces trying to cope with climate change. The problem is, even if we change, it will take nature years to recover. We can’t afford to delay any longer.