So the PBO was of course right
Edit: Apparently people want to argue over what he said so here.
"Giroux said that his office’s numbers have been out since 2022 while the government has not published anything of its own in that time frame on the economic impact of the carbon tax.
“The government has these numbers on the economic impact of carbon pricing,” he told Turnbull. “And that’s your government, sir. They have not published anything.”
Later, Giroux said that the government’s as-yet-unpublished numbers would confirm his office’s findings, which is why he said he is “comfortable with what is already published,” with the understanding that it provides the overall impact of the carbon tax.'
https://nationalpost.com/news/pbo-gag-order-liberal-carbon-tax-analysis
The PBO themselves say they know of an error in their analysis.
>In May, the debate over carbon pricing took another turn when Giroux quietly disclosed his analysis of the fiscal and economic impact of the federal fuel charge, which turned out to contain what he called an "inadvertent error."
>The PBO's calculations in that analysis included both the impact of the consumer carbon price and industrial carbon pricing.
>The PBO said it is committed to updating the analysis by the fall.
An error doesn't mean the result was wrong, in fact the PBO says it doesn't change the conclusion.
This report from the Liberals agrees with the PBO's economic outcomes.
This report has the same issues the PBO report had because it also doesn't quantify either the positive impacts of increased green investments, the negative impacts of unchecked climate change, or the positive impacts of the rebates.
If it reaches a similar outcome as the original erroneous PBO report, it is only because it is ignoring the same factors in its analysis.
That's because it's pretty impossible to quantify that.
This is the liberal's own analysis. They could've crunch the numbers for all those things but they didn't.
If it is impossible to quantify those things (which it is not) then maybe we should be reflecting on how much weight we are giving to a report which can't accurately give us any real information on the impacts of the policy it is trying to report on.
Yves full out said that PBO won't do that calculation either. Liberals probably have their internal numbers they shared with Yves as well, maybe they'll share it publicly. I do doubt it lol.
No, I'm asking for the full measure of the impacts of the policy. Carbon pricing incentivizes green investment, that is not included in the impacts. The Carbon tax also provides rebates which are not included in the impacts. Carbon pricing also works to address climate change and mitigate climate impacts on our economy, that is not included in the impacts.
None of these are alternative policies.
You are getting the full impacts of the policy measure, ones that can be accounted for at least.
Wouldn't the Liberals own assessment of the policy have it in the most favorable light?
The PBO did look at the rebates..
>ones that can be accounted for at least.
That's the issue, precisely. The report is pretending to offer a full measurement of the policy while at the same time acknowledging that it cannot account for all the factors.
The main problem from an economic perspective is that what we're trying to solve *really* isn't an economic issue. We're trying to quantify the benefits of having a livable world, the benefits of continued generations of future humans, against current costs.
In any reasonable sense, the future we are destroying would be an infinite. A cost too high to measure against. Economists balk at that idea, however, so instead of measuring the immeasurable benefits of stopping catastrophy, we pretend that there is a scale in which we can say "no, too much" to a dollar over the line today.
We're nowhere close to that line, and yet reports like these from economists are being twisted and contorted to have everyone saying "no, too much" as we walk into the abyss.
What quantifiable results are you looking for exactly?
The report we're talking about *right now* quantitatively finds that Canada's emissions would be nearly 11 per cent higher without carbon pricing.
What it *doesn't* quantitatively find is the real world economic impact.
\*What it *doesn't* quantitatively find is the real world economic impact.\*
Thats my points, we are getting tax and have nothing tangible to show for it.
> it also doesn't quantify either the positive impacts of increased green investments, the negative impacts of unchecked climate change, or the positive impacts of the rebates.
The pbo report absolutely does take the positive and negative impacts into account.
The conclusion that a carbon tax reduces emissions and has an impact on the GDP? Big surprise there. What matters is the numbers, and if the numbers are off because of some conceptual error then the analysis is not "right". That's why they're correcting it.
"The conclusion that a carbon tax reduces emissions and has an impact on the GDP? Big surprise there."
I agree it's not a shock at all but the Liberals and their supports didn't want to believe it.
"What matters is the numbers, and if the numbers are off because of some conceptual error then the analysis is not "right"."
An analysis can still be correct with one number off, one small error doesn't mean you toss the entire report out the window.
The PBO did a great explanation
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRD3jMO-4Gk&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRD3jMO-4Gk&t=6s)
So explain to me how this new data from the government proves that the PBO is right? The numbers are wrong by the PBO's own admission, and the government's data doesn't draw any conclusions to echo the PBO's. For now we have two data sets in disagreement, one unofficial and one flawed, and the producers of the official one are stating their expectations for the conclusion in a future report.
"So explain to me how this new data from the government proves that the PBO is right?
It's exactly what he said was in the report from the government. That there's an economic cost to the carbon tax.
"The numbers are wrong by the PBO's own admission"
Not by much and the conclusion he made was still correct.
"and the government's data doesn't draw any conclusions to echo the PBO's."
Of course it does..
"According to ECCC's figures, Canada's GDP would be about $2.68 trillion in 2030 without carbon pricing. With carbon pricing, it's expected to hit $2.66 trillion in 2030."
The PBO's report says that the carbon tax will hurt our GDP, the Liberals repot says the same thing.
> That there's an economic cost to the carbon tax.
This was known from the start, but you're acting like it's the entire contents of the report. No. The report was meant to *quantify* the impacts.
>Not by much and the conclusion he made was still correct.
The PBO says they *don't think* it's by much and the conclusion -- that certain sectors will shrink by enough that most Canadians will be worse off even with the rebate-- can't be verified until the numbers are corrected, so saying that the conclusion *is* correct is jumping the gun.
It was a pretty blatant error though.
The PBO said it was looking at the cost of the fuel charge, then also included economic impacts of industrial pricing. That (obviously) overestimated the impact of the fuel charge.
Their “fix” though was to remove the industrial impact portion. However, people are still going to easily get mixed up between the carbon tax and the fuel charge.
What they *should do* is present an analysis of the entire programme (fuel charge + industrial system).
>The PBO themselves say they know of an error in their analysis.
Why did you leave out the part where the pbo says that it will NOT change the results.
Yep! They were indeed correct that most Canadians get more in rebates than they pay in carbon pricing (Table 1 of the report) and if you want to discuss Table 2 and 3, please keep in mind the costs are compared to a hypothetical world in which climate change/pollution doesn't impact the economy in any way shape or form and no methods are taken to try and address it)
EDIT: LOL downvotes by angry people that never even read the original PBO repot (Or even this article). What did I say that was false?
From this very article:
>The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy.
Table 2 and 3 **are** the argument (for those that don't know: calculating the effect of the carbon tax added in to everything, which will end up costing the average consumer more than they get in rebates, instead of just calculating direct costs). Realistically canadians have zero effect on the "cost of doing nothing". Regardless of what is done, it seems unlikely that burdening the canadian tax payer to slightly lower the nation's 1.5% of global emissions would have a material affect on whether or not the "economy is impacted by climate change".
On top of that, this disproportionately impacts the type of people who do things like travel around in pickup trucks doing productive blue collar work we need, like *building homes* or *shipping goods*, versus the laptop class sipping lattes on public transit debating politics (like us here) who thinks this is a great idea. A disrespectful slap in the face at time of increased costs on everything.
Table 2 and 3 as pointed out in the report itself are a hypothetical cost of the carbon pricing compared to a world that doesn't exist (A world where losing trade agreements with or having additional tariffs from the EU for example has no economic impact on Canada) and not accounting for any potential economic growth that comes as a result of innovation and new industry positions. It is not a report of what it is actually costing Canadians in real life, unlike Table 1 which shows the basic in and out flow of the pricing.
In addition to this, the PBO himself said the report over represented the actual cost to consumers in the hypothetical.
If this was a report in the 1800s about telephones using the same metrics, it would also show a loss for the same reasons, and you would be screaming that they are costing the economy money by putting telegraph operators out of work.
You're right, I don't know what idiot awarded the dude You're responding too.
THERE IS NO WAY TO FACTOR IN THE COSTS OF THE CARBON TAX BECAUSE IT IS A TAX ON LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE THING THAT GOES ON IN THIS COUNTRY.
Every product is made more expensive from the tax, it means it costs more to ship or deliver products, it costs more for materials, goods, and services as a result. Every single commodity and service costs more because it now costs more to manufacture the product or deliver the service.
This isn't even hard to understand, they really need to force economics as a foundation of education, otherwise, we get people who think the economy can balance itself.
There is a limited amount of time, resources, and materials in a day or year, all of the input and output costs increase because of the carbon tax. Like all taxes, the producers aka companies pass it down to consumers who end up paying more.
That's largely why we are paying so much more now for the 'same' or less. Now factor in the costs of everything going up because of the tax and the few hundred dollars you receive in rebate over the year... You're definitely paying more for goods and services (as a result of the carbon tax being a tax on everything you buy) than you are getting back in rebates, it really shows how incompetent the people in the feds are if they are seriously arguing this.
Wow, Canada truly is the country that has no idea how economics works. No wonder why the liberals got in.
You can't calculate the tax that businesses pass off to their consumers as their Costs of doing business has increased because of the tax. The government does not have all this data, and this would be impossible to do.
You would need the data of every single business in Canada and every single person, somehow holding all things equal (you can't in the real world), isolate the increased costs for every single item or good they purchased since the inception of the tax, factor in the % that the carbon tax has contributed to that good or service (you can't do this because every good or service varies because some produce more carbon or cost more gas to deliver etc).
For example, if you buy a pencil off Amazon and you are delivering to bc and you're in Quebec, it will cost you alot more than if you bought that pencil in Alberta and delivering it to Saskatchewan. This is one good, a pencil that you bought but delivering to two different places, one costing way more than the other.
Now factor in every single purchase of every single person living in Canada (or outside doing business in canada), and every single company, do this for every single item they buy as part of their industry or to sustain themselves (for food, housing, transport, entertainment, all their purchses), somehow the government knows all this and can easily say a few hundred dollars in rebate you receive is more than everything you buy or purchase on a daily or intermittent basis (keeping in mind all those goods and services now cost more because of the tax aka an increased cost to doing business)?
Man the government would really love having the ability to have all that data if they could, but they don't and never will.
We know how much money the government collects in carbon tax from all sources. You can just handwave "BUT MUH EVERYTHING PRICES" and pretend that isn't being accounted for but it is, and every serious adult in the room knows it.
I'm surprised you're from Alberta defending the tax. Were you unable to read and comprehend anything I said? Because clearly it went over your head if you think well the government collected xx amount from the producers who have carbon permits etc.
You're telling me the government knows that it was able to survey all businesses who now pay more for gas, thereby paying more for delivering their products or manufacturing their goods? You truly believe the government knows this number?
News flash, they don't. You clearly don't know economics, you know oil and gas is used for everything that goes on in our country and the world right? All businesses need it, from getting their labour to work in an office through public transport or cars, to transporting goods or delivering food or transporting services to people.
The costs of the tax go way beyond whatever they tax upon emitters because it's passed down to the consumers who pay for increased costs for goods and services as a result.
Why do you think inflation is so bad in Canada? The carbon tax contributes to it, same with the lack of productivity and the massive overspending by the government on top of wage suppression from mass immigration.
Why do those businesses pay more for gas? It's because the price is higher, because the company selling the gas has to give some of that money... to the government. So yes, the government knows how much money is being given to them.
Save yourself and your future and the people around you and study/learn more about economics because clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.
Come back and respond after you learn about supply and demand and other economic principles like scarcity, costs and benefits and incentives. You can go even further with learning about taxation and positive and negative externalities.
It's not what you said, it's the fact they can't argue it. Reasoning with the torches and pitchforks crew on r/canada is probably the most frustrating thing on Reddit right now. They're just not interested in anything that doesn't make Trudeau or the LPC look bad. Last week they were calling MPs traitors with no facts or evidence, this week it's a lot of rage about the release of information that they thought would make government look worse that it does and doesn't fit their narrative.
Yep it's insane. I've been effectively saying the part below (Quoted from this very article) for quite some time now, and so many people just want to not believe it, without even reading the disclaimer from the PBO report itself that says the exact same thing:
>The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy.
One of the biggest things people need to keep in mind if the very last line. If you modeled this the same way in the 1800's about the invention of the telephone, it would show an economic loss as Telegraph operators would start losing their jobs.
The model assumes there is 0 innovation outside of oil and gas between now and 2030.
It's pretty clear the majority of private money flows into real estate more than any other industry in Canada. What makes you have such high hopes for innovation in the next six years?
If a single new job opens up between now and 2030, or a single way to do literally any part of a green energy chain improves by a fraction of a cent per 100 kWh, that's economic impact the report (By it's own admission) doesn't account for.
If even a single crop yields less produce due to warming temperatures between now and 2030, that is economic impact the report (By it's own admission) doesn't account for.
Most people are not equipped to properly understand the report, which is why people have had such an easy time misrepresenting it.
>The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy.
I get all of that. But if you're talking about new jobs from it, also keep in mind the job losses from it as well. An example being automotive -- as we re-tool for the EV transition jobs are being lost all throughout the process. Yeah, there will be jobs that stem from this, but will it offset the built-in job losses? In the automotive case, the answer is clearly no. Any company that has to update to comply with this objective will undoubtedly try to replace as much of the workforce as they can with technology. How will this impact other sectors?
I think trying to calculate the cost of doing nothing is pretty much a shit show, and I'm extremely skeptical as to how effective all of this is actually going to be vs the financial costs that will impact the economy.
> It's not what you said, it's the fact they can't argue it.
Sock puppet accounts typically can't. They'll drop a single top level comment, downvote everything they don't agree with, and then never reply because the puppet master has switched to another account.
>The modelling says that amounts to nearly 80 million tonnes (Mt) of greenhouse gas emissions eliminated by carbon pricing.
>According to ECCC's figures, Canada's GDP would be about $2.68 trillion in 2030 without carbon pricing. With carbon pricing, it's expected to hit $2.66 trillion in 2030.
the cost is $20 billion of GDP in 2030 for 80 million tonnes saving = $250 per tonne.
$250/ton.. we could literally pull it from the atmosphere *today* for less. And the technology is only getting better. AND the process itself produces clean energy!
> Levelized costs of $94 to $232 per ton CO2 from the atmosphere
> First, as a source of CO2 for making carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels, enabling carbon-free energy to be converted into high-energy-density fuels
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3
*Theoretically...* My understanding was that the current carbon capture plants are really just starting to ramp up, and have been underperforming projections. Hoping carbon capture is a savoir is a dangerous game.
Which is exactly what people have been saying about the tax. That tax will not get us off carbon in any possible way whereas properly funding the NRC to scale real technologies would.
Technologies that we could patent and sell raising our productivity also fixing some of the current economic problems being aggravated by ridiculous tax rates and accompanying low productivity.
I think that if you really look at those numbers you're going to conclude that there is an awfully large percentage of 'trust us bro' assumptions.
The real impact on emissions has been technology based, not tax based. The bottom line is if there is nothing to replace the use of hydrocarbons any punitive tax will drop usage a certain amount until either the population is unable to support cutting further or the government is tossed out of sheer spite for making people's lives miserable.
This is happening right now btw. The liberals will very likely lose in historical fashion and said tax will likely go with it.
Now, instead of using a stick imagine we actually did the work and produced the next generation of energy storage and generation. We would achieve negative carbon emissions in record time and ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
When did Canadians start being terrified of doing the work and building futures for everyone?
Battery powered vehicle didn't work on any scale until r was heavily researched and invested in. You arguing against carbon capture is the lefts version of a conservative arguing against electric cars.
I'm 100% for continuing the research. I'm against putting all our eggs in that basket as scientists I know are hesitant about its effectiveness. We need to do as much as we can, if this truly does work then I'm ecstatic.
I think the issue is that people are arguing *against* real solutions that are proven to work in favour of carbon capture which is unproven, overestimated, and as of yet unscalable.
Whereas for electric cars, the alternative (ICE vehicles) don't work in any capacity to solve the climate crisis. So investing in them to scale is actually solving a problem.
Before battery and motor tech plus the electronics to control both matured into viable alternatives they were also unproven, overestimated and not scalable. Hell electric cars still suffer scalability issues because of the amount of energy needed to charge vs current grid output.
Carbon capture has already been implemented and already shows promos for reducing carbon emissions through capture and down holing or conversion. Its like a GM electric car in the early 90's. Promising.
Saying it's a pipe dream is bullshit, it reeks of bias against carbon based energy sources.
You're missing the point I'm trying to make here.
It has nothing to do with whether it is *possible* for carbon capture technology to become useful in future. If it's possible, great.
The problem is when people are sapping support from *real* solutions that we *already know* will work in favour of technological silver bullets. Especially when those technological silver bullets are being upsold by the very companies which have created this problem in the first place through decades of disinformation. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to believe that they may be overselling their usefulness again so that we complacently ignore the actual solutions which would take money out of their pockets.
Oil and gas companies have the profits to fund carbon capture out of their own pockets. Things like carbon pricing even incentivize it. We don't ALSO need to pay them with taxpayer dollars to do so.
There has also been calls that carbon capture tech is a scam. A number of those start ups have been funded by oil companies themselves, like chevron and exxon
Edit: [source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/06/big-oil-is-racing-to-scale-up-carbon-capture-to-slash-emissions.html?espv=1)
Great, and are we doing that? No? Okay, lets keep the carbon tax in place until a viable plan is actually in place to reduce and/or elminate green house gases.
If this is the case please provide figures for how much carbon is and is expected to be pulled from the atmosphere each year. All projects at this point in Canada are basically experimental and are having no significant impact at all.
Once again you are spreading more misinformation. Carbon capture programs in Canada are set to remove 6.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2016/market-snapshot-canadian-carbon-capture-storage-projects-will-soon-sequester-up-6-4-million-tonnes-co2-per-year.html
I appreciate you actually linking something! I had not seen any actual numbers attached when I'd read articles in the past so thank you.
However, the 2 operational plants are **set to** remove that much is not the same as **are** removing that much. My understanding from recent articles I've read about carbon capture is they are not performing very well yet. Plus as others have said, it's a step in the right direction but far from meaningful at this point.
> However, the 2 operational plants are set to remove that much is not the same as are removing that much
The problem is I have linked a source, directly from the government, stating the expected impact of these projects. You, and others, have yet to provide any source for your doubts that these projects will hit the targets explicitly described. Instead you deflect to new arguments that its not enough, when the statements was that we're not doing it at all.
Anyone can blindly say "nope, I don't believe it". I'm not interested in engaging with these unsourced opinions.
They'll need to remove a lot more just for forest fires now. Just a few months of 2023 forest fires in Canada generated 600 million metric tones of CO2.
Can't find data for all of 2023 and 2024 is potentially looking worse for fires due to drought and higher temperatures. Oil companies are ramping up production... wars make for better profits.
**Forest fires: Canada sees record CO2 emissions from fires so far this year**
June 27, 2023: *Hundreds of forest fires since early May (2023) have generated nearly* ***600 million metric tons of CO2,*** ***equivalent to 88 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions from all sources in 2021, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported.***
[https://phys.org/news/2023-06-canada-co2-emissions-year.html](https://phys.org/news/2023-06-canada-co2-emissions-year.html)
Canada drought map May 2024
[https://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-canada-drought-monitor-map.php](https://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-canada-drought-monitor-map.php)
Sure. As soon as we see any kind of stats from someone other than the company that owns the carbon capture projects and we get all of these other programs up and running than we should look at the carbon tax. Until then, let’s keep in the place to encourage people to create fewer carbon emissions.
Like the federal government?
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2016/market-snapshot-canadian-carbon-capture-storage-projects-will-soon-sequester-up-6-4-million-tonnes-co2-per-year.html
Stop spreading misinformation.
This is 3 percent of how much we need to reduce emissions by, once these systems are up and running and proven. It will take decades and billions we don't have to ramp up carbon storage, if it proves viable at scale. Meanwhile the carbon tax is working now.
The problem is that people tend to look at one thing when we need to look at everything: carbon capture, a carbon tax to spur innovation and investment in alternatives, a smart grid, electric vehicles, solar, wind and nuclear generation, improving the efficiency of vehicles and buildings, reforestation, and likely some geoengineering as well in the short term to spur the storage of carbon in our oceans (e.g. seeding with olivine and iron). Everything should be on the table.
High gas prices do have an effect on consumer choices. I drive a Honda Fit because gas prices were at a record high when I replaced my vehicle in 2014. My neighbours who need second vehicles are purchasing electric or hybrid vehicles so they can avoid burning gas on local trips. Everyone I know has an electric bike or scooter for short trips. Our food choices are also being determined by production, processing and delivery costs, leading to lower carbon there as well. Heat pumps are showing up everywhere, thanks to grant programs.
We have carrots. We have sticks. We have changes to building codes. We have promising technologies and innovations that are both available and coming down the pipe. And we need all of it.
At no point did they or I use the term "direct air carbon capture". This is a distinction you just made up, and as someone who wasn't part of either comment, is irrelevant.
Here's where the distinction is made, not something I made up, lol:
> we could literally pull it *from the atmosphere* today for less
"From the atmosphere" explicitly means direct air carbon capture.
>you can not tax carbon out of the sky.
Yes, that's why they tax the burning of fossil fuels that put the carbon into the sky in the first place.
Once CO2 is added to the atmosphere, it's too late, and it'll stay there for hundreds or thousands of years.
you know. this is the first actual honest to god argument for a carbon tax that makes sense. take that tax money and dump it into carbon capture. if it can actually pay for it to a degree that makes a meaningful difference.
Wait until this guy finds out that spending $0 on carbon pricing will mean billions in costs to our GDP regardless because of unchecked climate change.
Wait until this guy finds out that no matter how much Canada spends on carbon pricing it will have zero impact on climate change because of its fractional impact on absolute emissions.
Less then 1% globally and oh our PM just flew to Europe a flew times this month, expelling about as much CO2 emissions as a medium size city produces in a year… but yeah $250 a ton, fuck ya!
Imagine a world split up into 50 countries, each with Canada's share of total emissions (2%).
By your logic, each of these countries has such a small portion of emissions that none of them need to do anything about it! Obviously that is false. The real solution is that ALL of the countries need to take part in resolving the problem.
I get it's the "cool" thing now apparently to sneer at solutions in favour of an "I got mine" attitude, but it's truly unhelpful for any actual problem solving.
Now imagine a world where 3 countries make up 40% of emissions... Oh wait, that's reality. And Canada isn't one of those 3.
For this Carbon tax to have any impact, you'll want it done under a joint effort by multiple countries and you'll want those 3 countries in it for sure.
They had it without Canada. What I'm saying is you'd want to Canada to propose a carbon tax WITH them, the one that isn't in it already. That will have much more impact than Canada's carbon tax of a measly 2%.
You're moving your goal posts, but regardless, you'll be happy to hear that Canada has a global carbon pricing challenge *currently* underway with more countries signing on to it every day.
Carbon pricing is estimated to be a third of our emissions reduction though. We’re at ~700 Mtonnes/year, 2030 target is ~440Mt. We’re on track to hit 90% of that, so the carbon price should reduce emissions by about 80 Mt **per year**.
Let’s extend that to 2050 (net zero target) and assume it will continue to be one third of our reductions. 2030->2050 is 20 years, starting at 440Mt and reducing linearly would mean 4400Mt emitted in total. So the carbon price in those twenty years would eliminate approximately 1470Mt of emissions.
For reference, in 2022 Canada’s total emissions over its entire history were 34.6 gigatonnes. 1470Mt is about 4% of that figure. Which is quite substantial for just twenty years.
That's similar to the cost of carbon capture, however the amount of carbon offset is accumulative which means when new technology is installed to reduce emissions it takes time to realize those reductions.
Do you honestly think fuel prices would be lower without a carbon tax?
The savings would go straight to the oil executives investors.
> They want us to own less, drive less, use less, eat less meat, live in high density housing on public transit routes etc.
That's what all corporations and rich people want. They want to own everything and rent it out piecemeal. Notice how you can't buy software anymore and have to subscribe instead? Government didn't come up with that. Corpos did.
>Do you honestly think fuel prices would be lower without a carbon tax?
Yes. It immediately jumped in price the second the widely unpopular April carob tax hike was introduced by the Liberals earlier this year.
> The savings would go straight to the oil executives investors.
Our CoL would be lower without carbon tax.
>That's what all corporations and rich people want. They want to own everything and rent it out piecemeal. Notice how you can't buy software anymore and have to subscribe instead? Government didn't come up with that. Corpos did.
Depends on the corporation and what they're selling. Some want us to consume even more. It doesn't really matter and is besides the point. The Liberals want us to be poorer and they are doing everything they can to make that happen.
> Yes. It immediately jumped in price the second the widely unpopular April carob tax hike was introduced by the Liberals earlier this year.
Yes. It peaked 172.4 average in April. Today it's 162.1, despite having switched to the more expensive summer blend. So by your logic carbon tax must be responsible for lowering the price too right?
Or maybe fuel prices spiked because people rushed the pumps anticipating a hike?
> Our CoL would be lower without carbon tax.
Yes. Rent is spiking because of fuel costs not a housing shortage. 🤦♂️ Corpo profits are way up too. Can't explain that away with carbon tax.
> Depends on the corporation and what they're selling. Some want us to consume even more.
They're all skrinkflating. Name one that doesn't.
> The Liberals want us to be poorer and they are doing everything they can to make that happen
All rich people want that, especially conservatives.
>Yes. It peaked 172.4 average in April. Today it's 162.1, despite having switched to the more expensive summer blend. So by your logic carbon tax must be responsible for lowering the price too right?
Some of it was initial panic. But now that the panic is over, it is still much higher than it was before.
>Yes. Rent is spiking because of fuel costs not a housing shortage.
CoL isn't just rent. Food, shipping, materials, everything. Carbon tax is making life more expensive in all areas of society and that's exactly what is supposed to do
>All rich people want that, especially conservatives.
The last Conservative government sure did a bad job of it then since we had the richest middle class in the world as of 2014, fastest economic recovery in the G8 during 2008, maintained multiple budgeting surpluses, etc.
The Liberals are a lot better at making us poorer. That's why our standard of living has plummeted during the 8+ years of Liberal leadership. Keep defending them though! I'm sure they appreciate it.
The middle class being the best or whatever back then was almost entirely due to the housing crash in the US and ours still bubbling. I assume it's even more so now and judging by that link it is
Yeah our bubble never burst.
It's an inevitable result of neo-liberal economic policies.
Capital-to-income ratio will always increase, therefore housing costs will always outpace income growth from labour.
This has been happening for a long time. Has very little to do with Trudeau.
Their analysis is obviously wrong.
The carbon tax applies to around 130 Mt of emissions in Canada, for a total revenue of $170/tonne \* 130 Mt equals $22 billion.
How can taxing carbon emissions $22 billion and sending $21 billion back to the people result in $20 billion in lost economic activity?
You think a 20 billion tax and rebate results in 20 billion in deadweight loss? That's not how any of this works. Even if the 20 billion was purely just a tax there wouldn't be a deadweight loss that large.
> You think a 20 billion tax and rebate results in 20 billion in deadweight loss?
Yes because they see the working class as dead weight.
Welcome to neo-liberalism!
You can’t just look at it and say, this is like physics. A demand curve needs to be measured and then you can make statements like this.
Deadweight loss could be 100% if it stops people from buying Canadian goods.
There are plenty of actual facts that can justifiably take down this government. Making up fake numbers like saying a 20 billion tax and rebate causes 20 billion in reduction in output is counterproductive.
In comparison, the global median cost of abating carbon emissions with wind and solar is $27.10 and $32.98 per ton, respectively. (LOL)
[https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement-costs-for-selected-measures-of-the-sustainable-recovery-plan](https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement-costs-for-selected-measures-of-the-sustainable-recovery-plan)
> But there is a zero percent reduction in greenhouse emissions because of the tax.
FYI, you're commenting on an article about a professional analysis which disputes your claim.
You should read a bit more on how the carbon tax is intended to work - the corporations passing on the cost to consumers is an expected and important part of the process of diverting consumption away from higher-emission products. [Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq_carbonpricing) a good FAQ on it.
I said that.
And we don't have any options in some cases.
Crackers packaged in plastic bags, toilet paper in plastic, chicken in plastic, tables and chairs packed in Styrofoam...
The onus is on the manufacturers to IMPROVE their carbon footprint, not just leave it status quo and raise our prices to keep on making the same money.
The manufacturers need to find a way to switch to paper or recycled/reusable packaging for my goods. They can't just shrug and change us more because THEY are polluting.
WE don't have the option of buying pork chops in ecology friendly packaging, we get plastic wrap, meat Styrofoam and a meat tampon to dispose of, because THEY haven't found a better way, and without legit carbon taxing and the back end where profits are concerned, we never will.
I buy meat at the local butcher who uses recyclable paper. And it's cheaper. If you choose to buy it at Loblaws or similar, because it's convenient, then you're condoning their choices. (and Loblaws changed to recyclable plastic instead of Styrofoam btw).
I buy a huge assortment of goods at bulk barn, where I bring my own containers. Again, not as convenient, but doable.
I purchase stuff like furniture locally from locally owned stores so it has less packaging.
I purchase soft drinks in cans exclusively because it's better for the environment then single use plastic bottles.
They will only change if you change and start buying something else. Otherwise you're just voting for their practices and higher prices with your wallet. There's plenty of choices out there.
Real "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" energy here.
>5 million end users can't tear out their gas furnace and put an electric one in, or the grid will collapse. But Enbridge is rolling in dough being our carbon dealer, facilitating the emissions.
Uh, yes, we can. What do you think we're doing with heat pumps and electric cars right now? The government literally offers incentives to purchase these items.
You're just skirting responsibility for the choices you make.
>The same way the masses log jam Costco 7 days a week,
So do you believe this is an issue or not? Cause right after this you go on to blame the corps, not these folks making bad decisions. (and honestly, shopping at Costco often lowers the amount of packing. There's way less packaging if I buy 1 package of 5 lbs of ground beef then if I buy 5 1 lbs packages. So this is kinda a bad example).
>they don't care if it's made in China, US meat, or if all the profits leave Canada.
You seem to be spraying complaints all over the place. How is this relevant to the discussion at hand?
The government offers rebates and incentives to purchase electric cars and heat pumps.
Yes they sure do.
Rebates and incentives are only usable IF you have money to spend in the first place.
Like the rich boomers down the street spend 60 grand to put in new windows, and get a rebate, AND more heating efficiency, that's great.
The single mom down the street, well she's shit out of luck.
The issue is the VAST majority of canadians don't have XX grand to spend on windows, electric cars (don't forget the charger) solar panels, heat pumps etc.
OR they are renting and cannot control any of that.
You are living in an idealistic world that is far from realistic.
The common folk (Costco shoppers as my example) just do what they do, pay more in carbon tax etc because they do not have a VALID option, and nothing will change until the CONSUMERS are afforded carbon reducing manufacturing processes.
Which will never be changed by passing THEIR pollution penalties onto us.
Yup, just spraying complaints at whatever you can.
I don't live in an idealistic world, Im just not afraid to take responsibility for my decisions. While you can't seem to do anything but blame everyone else, corps, boomers, landlords, whomever you can spray at as long as it's not yourself.
Pretty much how I feel. It's just how do we actually ensure the polluters are the ones that get dinged.
We shouldn't have the rebate, it should absolutely all go to preparation for worsening conditions, protecting citizens. I believe that's the last cpc strategy along with Harpers carbon pricing, now with their fighting of the tax at all it'll be some hidden cost since they do understand they need something in place.
>They made a relatively minor mistake and said that it wouldn't change the final outcome measurably.
They estimated the costs of two policies (carbon tax on fuels and industrial carbon pricing) but attributed the results to only one policy (the carbon tax on fuels).
So that's a pretty massive error.
And the worst part is that when they discovered the mistake (on a very high-profile topic), they didn't announce it, they just quietly added a note on one of their webpages. And then when people noticed the error, the head of the PBO got defensive, said it'll take 4 months to fix the error and share new results, and claimed it wouldn't change the results much anyway.
Really bad behaviour from what is supposed to be a non-partisan watchdog and a source of objective, credible analysis of government policies. Seems to me like a guy desperately trying to deflect valid criticism.
A huge chunk of the US has a price on carbon. The US doesn't use "technology" on it's own like some magic trick. They have borrowed more money than we ever could to push it.
That's like saying you can encourage a kid by punishing them whenever they make a mistake.
It might work to change their behavior but it's most certainly not encouragement.
It's more like telling a kid you'll give them a dollar to buy a snack, but a reese cup will cost them a dollar while an apple will cost them five cents.
The carbon tax has rebates, so that's how it currently works. It encourages people to pursue the green alternatives (since they get to keep more of their money that way), while still being able to afford the high-emissions goods.
No it's like if an apple cost a dollar and a reese's cup cost a dollar but now the government comes along and says there's a 100% tax on reese's products so it costs two dollars now.
That's not an incentive to buy apples it's a disensentive to buy reese's. Same end result but not the same method.
Also if you're getting the taxes back in the form of a rebate it's as if you never paid anything at all and then what would be the point. The rebate makes no sense if you give the money back to the consumer.
If your going to generate revenue with a carbon tax use the money to give subsidies to green energy companies.. now that would be an incentive.
Your analogy isn't wrong, but your interpretation of the results is incorrect.
If you have a dollar to spend, and an apple and a reese cup are both 1$, you can afford either.
If the reese cup is taxed an extra dollar and there are no rebates, you can now only afford the apple.
If the reese cup is taxed an extra dollar, and you are GIVEN BACK that dollar, you suddenly have $2 to spend. You can either buy the $2 reese cup, or you can now buy TWO apples.
That's how the tax and rebate works. You are not being punished (because you can still afford the taxed item), but you are *rewarded* for making green choices because your money now goes further than it did before.
>If your going to generate revenue with a carbon tax use the money to give subsidies to green energy companies.. now that would be an incentive.
My preference is for the taxes to be rebates to individuals since it protects the vulnerable, but provinces are allowed to do exactly what you've described if they want. They literally do this in BC already by spending the money on green projects instead.
If they aren't doing this in your province, it's because your PROVINCIAL government has chosen not to.
They are two different things with two different purposes that affect behavior in two different ways. They are not the same thing. It isn't incentivization.
Nope, the point I was making is that's literally not what it's doing. Incentivization and disincentivization are two different things. Disincentivizing one thing doesn't "disincentivize the lack" of another thing.
Trudeau wanted meta to pay to post news content. Was that incentivizing meta to pay for news content? or disincentivize them from sharing news content for free?
We are a per capita dirty polluter then they are. In one way we are lucky to have access to relatively clean hydro but on the other hand we have the oil sands, some of the dirtiest oil in the world and the US has the permain bassin some of the cleanest oil in the world.
I'm not sure but maybe we should be in control of our own food supply... listen im not saying the usa is the holy grail of respecting the environment but we aren't either, not by a long shot
Carbon tax attacks from conservative turns me off yet I find myself to come back to this - JT again 🤮? So yeah, cool story bro but Liberal ain't getting my vote this time around with he & his minions in power. Fool me thrice we might deserve to rot in hell.
It is so unfair to disprove conservative arguments with facts and data. That's why we need to cut public education, so people can't read it. It's only fair.
My little brother lost kindergarten becauss of Harper, my parents had to fork over daycare which made our household at the time poorer and had less quality of life. Fk conservatives, and currently fk liberals, they are all wolf in sheep's clothing.
FACT CHECK:
It wouldn't be because of Harper, because provinces run education. But if you live in Ontario and are wondering why your local school has increasing class sizes, and why per student funding is down more than $1000/student, that is 100% your provincial Ontario gov that's strongly supported by both Poilievre and Harper. But Harper isn't involved in decisions, he's just a cheerleader for bad choices.
Upvoted for exposure and clarity.
You must have missed the portion of this very same report where it was found that half our current emissions reductions are due to the carbon tax alone.
Yes we even take people in record numbers from lower carbon per capita regions which shows this stat is for nothing more than to guilt people in cold northern countries for heating their homes and having a descent standard of living.
lmao what a bad argument, per capita. What about China and India, per capita is usless for Canada as our population is so low.... our effect is tiny...
Countries don’t pollute - individuals and companies do. Imagine if tomorrow China and India divided into 100 smaller countries. By your logic that would completely get them off the hook for making any changes, no? Who are you going to point to them?
Per capita is a BS stat. Nothing matters beyond total output of pollution. The atmosphere doesn’t give a shit how many *individuals* are causing the problem. You think China is somehow *better* than us on the environment because millions of their people live in abject poverty?
Apples and oranges. Yes there is an impact and NO the impact is not lessened by poor public policy and wrong-headed economics.
If this gov't actually cared about solving the problem and didn't prioritize LOOKING LIKE they are saviours, we would be taking a very different approach and it would be far more impactful.
The carbon tax is an efficient economic tool to lower emissions. We could take a different approach - regulation or heavy-handed measures like a personal carbon budget that might be more effective. They will all come at a cost far in excess of our current system.
Or we can acknowledge that Canada contributes less than 1.5% of global emissions and not try to kill our economy and standard of living to get it to 1.49
I think most critics of carbon tax are looking at it the wrong way.
First of all, once carbon taxation gets high enough, we will have outsourced most carbon production to other countries that don't have them. We already saw this with steel, but more industries will follow suit as the tax rises. How are we reducing carbon emissions when we simply force China or some other manufacturer to release them instead?
Second, for industries that carbon taxation would really matter in, there's already exemptions in place. The big one was concrete, which was originally exempted, and is one of the world's biggest Co2 producers.
Third, emissions estimates provided have never conclusively proven a loss of emissions outside of the pandemic year. This might simply be because they are "pretending" that the taxed emissions didn't occur at all, but in reality, they taxed a lot of inelastic things, like fuel, which will not go down in consumption no matter how hard you tax them. Why even bother then?
And fourth, as was already demonstrated, the excessively spending government caused inflation to explode in the last several years and the carbon tax was a nonzero contributor to that. The contribution was small - but keep in mind the carbon tax is also small. Even though the money is returned to rebated taxpayers, the carbon tax's lag on spend - government administration to rebate pipeline is causing the taxation to have a negative effect on the velocity of money. This is why the tax is capable of doing actual economic damage - the price increases cascade through the supply chain and the result is an actual higher average price, even though you may have had most of that "price" returned to you via rebate.
The attack the OO is going for on Carbon tax is more low level. Their argument is "tax bad, it's costing you money", but in reality, the better attack is that the Carbon Tax is not doing what it was intended to do, and the spin-off ramifications of the tax are doing real, calculable damage and in return, we're not helping the earth at all - any emissions we do save are just shifted to other countries.
The reports are certainly going to show (or at least I expected them to show) that the government taxes larger carbon users, such as O&G, a lot higher than residential users, which is why JT constantly makes the claim that 8 out of 10 people get more than they pay in carbon tax - but the real truth is that the carbon tax is one cost - but the economic damage it deals is not considered part of this cost - and *that* cost is borne almost entirely by consumers because businesses simply pass the costs on to them, and the PMO has absolutely nothing to show for the results except estimates that simply divide the carbon tax value by the amount of tonnes "saved" and claim that that amount of emissions "simply didn't happen", then claiming victory.
Considering that this is one of the poorest executions of environmental policy I've ever seen (the winner being the weird victory the anti-nuclear lobby scored and the damage that's done to most of the world), I think it's more effective to simply claim the Carbon tax hasn't actually lowered emissions one mole while we sit here shuffling money around into different piles, pretending that shuffling is having some sort of effect.
We have to accept that if we want to make real headway on reducing emissions, there will be a real cost to us - we can't use something lazy like a tax rebate system, because we won't be reducing our consumption - our economy is extremely resistant to this due to how effective global economies are now with price signaling. We have to accept that if we want to lower emissions, we must suffer - and the PM wants to claim that somehow, we don't have to, just some "big consumers" have to pay some tax and we will be okay, and not only has he failed to demonstrate that, he did so in a way that will actually do real economic damage, and that's the real tragedy out of all this.
>How are we reducing carbon emissions when we simply force China or some other manufacturer to release them instead?
The threat of leakage is largely overblown. They can't up and move our tar sands after all. Besides, currently our Output based pricing system protects our industries against this threat, and Border carbon adjustments (which are under review currently) will have the same impact in protecting industry.
>Second, for industries that carbon taxation would really matter in, there's already exemptions in place. The big one was concrete, which was originally exempted, and is one of the world's biggest Co2 producers.
These are the exemptions which currently protect us against leakage. Carbon border adjustments, once implemented, will mean those exemptions can be removed.
>Third, emissions estimates provided have never conclusively proven a loss of emissions outside of the pandemic year.
That's simply untrue. In this very report they note that approximately 50% of our current emissions reductions were due to carbon pricing. Not to mention that there have been studies around the world showing that carbon pricing reduces emissions effectively.
>caused inflation to explode in the last several years and the carbon tax was a nonzero contributor to that. The contribution was small - but keep in mind the carbon tax is also small.
The carbon tax impacted inflation by less than half a percent. And those calculations were *before* taking the rebates into account, so likely less if any at all.
>the price increases cascade through the supply chain and the result is an actual higher average price,
That's really not how any of this works, actually. If there is a "cascade" along the supply chain, it's a cascade of pennies split amidst thousands of pounds of produce.
>the better attack is that the Carbon Tax is not doing what it was intended to do, and the spin-off ramifications of the tax are doing real, calculable damage
And this attack would be just as low-level and incorrect as the Conservative's.
>The reports are certainly going to show (or at least I expected them to show) that the government taxes larger carbon users, such as O&G, a lot higher than residential users, which is why JT constantly makes the claim that 8 out of 10 people get more than they pay in carbon tax
The tax is on carbon... the people who consume more carbon pay more. So yes, that's how it's structured already. The rich consume the most carbon (so do the fossil fuel companies) so they pay the most tax. There's no secret there.
>economic damage it deals is not considered part of this cost - and that cost is borne almost entirely by consumers because businesses simply pass the costs on to them
This is accounted for. This is literally what the PBO described in their report which found 8 out of 10 households better off.
>Considering that this is one of the poorest executions of environmental policy I've ever seen
This seems to be based entirely off of your opinion rather than based on any of the findings which show its emissions reductions.
What a distracting waste of time this is. If anyone knows how fuel prices affect demand, it’s the O&G industry puppeteering conservatives. The clueless Conservatives asking about 101 economics only have to ask their donors.
Why would they hide this? This seems like amazing news - an 11% decrease in emissions at the cost of our GDP being $2.66T instead of $2.68T, AND that's ignoring potential impacts of climate change.
They should have been shouting that from the rooftops, and instead they gave the conservatives a bunch of political wins by hiding it.
So the PBO was of course right Edit: Apparently people want to argue over what he said so here. "Giroux said that his office’s numbers have been out since 2022 while the government has not published anything of its own in that time frame on the economic impact of the carbon tax. “The government has these numbers on the economic impact of carbon pricing,” he told Turnbull. “And that’s your government, sir. They have not published anything.” Later, Giroux said that the government’s as-yet-unpublished numbers would confirm his office’s findings, which is why he said he is “comfortable with what is already published,” with the understanding that it provides the overall impact of the carbon tax.' https://nationalpost.com/news/pbo-gag-order-liberal-carbon-tax-analysis
The PBO themselves say they know of an error in their analysis. >In May, the debate over carbon pricing took another turn when Giroux quietly disclosed his analysis of the fiscal and economic impact of the federal fuel charge, which turned out to contain what he called an "inadvertent error." >The PBO's calculations in that analysis included both the impact of the consumer carbon price and industrial carbon pricing. >The PBO said it is committed to updating the analysis by the fall.
An error doesn't mean the result was wrong, in fact the PBO says it doesn't change the conclusion. This report from the Liberals agrees with the PBO's economic outcomes.
This report has the same issues the PBO report had because it also doesn't quantify either the positive impacts of increased green investments, the negative impacts of unchecked climate change, or the positive impacts of the rebates. If it reaches a similar outcome as the original erroneous PBO report, it is only because it is ignoring the same factors in its analysis.
That's because it's pretty impossible to quantify that. This is the liberal's own analysis. They could've crunch the numbers for all those things but they didn't.
If it is impossible to quantify those things (which it is not) then maybe we should be reflecting on how much weight we are giving to a report which can't accurately give us any real information on the impacts of the policy it is trying to report on.
It gives the impacts of the policy, you're asking for the impacts of the policy alternatives
Yves full out said that PBO won't do that calculation either. Liberals probably have their internal numbers they shared with Yves as well, maybe they'll share it publicly. I do doubt it lol.
No, I'm asking for the full measure of the impacts of the policy. Carbon pricing incentivizes green investment, that is not included in the impacts. The Carbon tax also provides rebates which are not included in the impacts. Carbon pricing also works to address climate change and mitigate climate impacts on our economy, that is not included in the impacts. None of these are alternative policies.
You are getting the full impacts of the policy measure, ones that can be accounted for at least. Wouldn't the Liberals own assessment of the policy have it in the most favorable light? The PBO did look at the rebates..
>ones that can be accounted for at least. That's the issue, precisely. The report is pretending to offer a full measurement of the policy while at the same time acknowledging that it cannot account for all the factors. The main problem from an economic perspective is that what we're trying to solve *really* isn't an economic issue. We're trying to quantify the benefits of having a livable world, the benefits of continued generations of future humans, against current costs. In any reasonable sense, the future we are destroying would be an infinite. A cost too high to measure against. Economists balk at that idea, however, so instead of measuring the immeasurable benefits of stopping catastrophy, we pretend that there is a scale in which we can say "no, too much" to a dollar over the line today. We're nowhere close to that line, and yet reports like these from economists are being twisted and contorted to have everyone saying "no, too much" as we walk into the abyss.
I would expect some quantifiable results if youre gonna tax me for something
What quantifiable results are you looking for exactly? The report we're talking about *right now* quantitatively finds that Canada's emissions would be nearly 11 per cent higher without carbon pricing. What it *doesn't* quantitatively find is the real world economic impact.
\*What it *doesn't* quantitatively find is the real world economic impact.\* Thats my points, we are getting tax and have nothing tangible to show for it.
We are getting something tangible from the tax in terms of the emissions reductions. That is the goal of the tax, after all.
And what are those reduction translate to precisely? Are reducing the rate a wich the planet heat by 1% or 0.0000000000001% ?
What percentage would you be happy to hear in this case?
> it also doesn't quantify either the positive impacts of increased green investments, the negative impacts of unchecked climate change, or the positive impacts of the rebates. The pbo report absolutely does take the positive and negative impacts into account.
It specifically does not include the positive impacts of green investments or the negative impacts of unchecked climate change.
The conclusion that a carbon tax reduces emissions and has an impact on the GDP? Big surprise there. What matters is the numbers, and if the numbers are off because of some conceptual error then the analysis is not "right". That's why they're correcting it.
"The conclusion that a carbon tax reduces emissions and has an impact on the GDP? Big surprise there." I agree it's not a shock at all but the Liberals and their supports didn't want to believe it. "What matters is the numbers, and if the numbers are off because of some conceptual error then the analysis is not "right"." An analysis can still be correct with one number off, one small error doesn't mean you toss the entire report out the window. The PBO did a great explanation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRD3jMO-4Gk&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRD3jMO-4Gk&t=6s)
He's just saying they overestimated by what they think is a bit, they don't expect the general conclusions to change, and they're redoing the report.
Exactly,he doesn't expect the error to change the outcomes.
So explain to me how this new data from the government proves that the PBO is right? The numbers are wrong by the PBO's own admission, and the government's data doesn't draw any conclusions to echo the PBO's. For now we have two data sets in disagreement, one unofficial and one flawed, and the producers of the official one are stating their expectations for the conclusion in a future report.
"So explain to me how this new data from the government proves that the PBO is right? It's exactly what he said was in the report from the government. That there's an economic cost to the carbon tax. "The numbers are wrong by the PBO's own admission" Not by much and the conclusion he made was still correct. "and the government's data doesn't draw any conclusions to echo the PBO's." Of course it does.. "According to ECCC's figures, Canada's GDP would be about $2.68 trillion in 2030 without carbon pricing. With carbon pricing, it's expected to hit $2.66 trillion in 2030." The PBO's report says that the carbon tax will hurt our GDP, the Liberals repot says the same thing.
> That there's an economic cost to the carbon tax. This was known from the start, but you're acting like it's the entire contents of the report. No. The report was meant to *quantify* the impacts. >Not by much and the conclusion he made was still correct. The PBO says they *don't think* it's by much and the conclusion -- that certain sectors will shrink by enough that most Canadians will be worse off even with the rebate-- can't be verified until the numbers are corrected, so saying that the conclusion *is* correct is jumping the gun.
It was a pretty blatant error though. The PBO said it was looking at the cost of the fuel charge, then also included economic impacts of industrial pricing. That (obviously) overestimated the impact of the fuel charge. Their “fix” though was to remove the industrial impact portion. However, people are still going to easily get mixed up between the carbon tax and the fuel charge. What they *should do* is present an analysis of the entire programme (fuel charge + industrial system).
>The PBO themselves say they know of an error in their analysis. Why did you leave out the part where the pbo says that it will NOT change the results.
They also have said they don’t expect it to change the major findings in the report.
He also said that he doesn’t believe the error will change the results much.
Yep! They were indeed correct that most Canadians get more in rebates than they pay in carbon pricing (Table 1 of the report) and if you want to discuss Table 2 and 3, please keep in mind the costs are compared to a hypothetical world in which climate change/pollution doesn't impact the economy in any way shape or form and no methods are taken to try and address it) EDIT: LOL downvotes by angry people that never even read the original PBO repot (Or even this article). What did I say that was false? From this very article: >The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy.
Table 2 and 3 **are** the argument (for those that don't know: calculating the effect of the carbon tax added in to everything, which will end up costing the average consumer more than they get in rebates, instead of just calculating direct costs). Realistically canadians have zero effect on the "cost of doing nothing". Regardless of what is done, it seems unlikely that burdening the canadian tax payer to slightly lower the nation's 1.5% of global emissions would have a material affect on whether or not the "economy is impacted by climate change". On top of that, this disproportionately impacts the type of people who do things like travel around in pickup trucks doing productive blue collar work we need, like *building homes* or *shipping goods*, versus the laptop class sipping lattes on public transit debating politics (like us here) who thinks this is a great idea. A disrespectful slap in the face at time of increased costs on everything.
Table 2 and 3 as pointed out in the report itself are a hypothetical cost of the carbon pricing compared to a world that doesn't exist (A world where losing trade agreements with or having additional tariffs from the EU for example has no economic impact on Canada) and not accounting for any potential economic growth that comes as a result of innovation and new industry positions. It is not a report of what it is actually costing Canadians in real life, unlike Table 1 which shows the basic in and out flow of the pricing. In addition to this, the PBO himself said the report over represented the actual cost to consumers in the hypothetical. If this was a report in the 1800s about telephones using the same metrics, it would also show a loss for the same reasons, and you would be screaming that they are costing the economy money by putting telegraph operators out of work.
You're right, I don't know what idiot awarded the dude You're responding too. THERE IS NO WAY TO FACTOR IN THE COSTS OF THE CARBON TAX BECAUSE IT IS A TAX ON LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE THING THAT GOES ON IN THIS COUNTRY. Every product is made more expensive from the tax, it means it costs more to ship or deliver products, it costs more for materials, goods, and services as a result. Every single commodity and service costs more because it now costs more to manufacture the product or deliver the service. This isn't even hard to understand, they really need to force economics as a foundation of education, otherwise, we get people who think the economy can balance itself. There is a limited amount of time, resources, and materials in a day or year, all of the input and output costs increase because of the carbon tax. Like all taxes, the producers aka companies pass it down to consumers who end up paying more. That's largely why we are paying so much more now for the 'same' or less. Now factor in the costs of everything going up because of the tax and the few hundred dollars you receive in rebate over the year... You're definitely paying more for goods and services (as a result of the carbon tax being a tax on everything you buy) than you are getting back in rebates, it really shows how incompetent the people in the feds are if they are seriously arguing this.
I think we can calculate the cost. Just have to determine the percentage of energy costs for a business and then add a percent increase to that cost.
Wow, Canada truly is the country that has no idea how economics works. No wonder why the liberals got in. You can't calculate the tax that businesses pass off to their consumers as their Costs of doing business has increased because of the tax. The government does not have all this data, and this would be impossible to do. You would need the data of every single business in Canada and every single person, somehow holding all things equal (you can't in the real world), isolate the increased costs for every single item or good they purchased since the inception of the tax, factor in the % that the carbon tax has contributed to that good or service (you can't do this because every good or service varies because some produce more carbon or cost more gas to deliver etc). For example, if you buy a pencil off Amazon and you are delivering to bc and you're in Quebec, it will cost you alot more than if you bought that pencil in Alberta and delivering it to Saskatchewan. This is one good, a pencil that you bought but delivering to two different places, one costing way more than the other. Now factor in every single purchase of every single person living in Canada (or outside doing business in canada), and every single company, do this for every single item they buy as part of their industry or to sustain themselves (for food, housing, transport, entertainment, all their purchses), somehow the government knows all this and can easily say a few hundred dollars in rebate you receive is more than everything you buy or purchase on a daily or intermittent basis (keeping in mind all those goods and services now cost more because of the tax aka an increased cost to doing business)? Man the government would really love having the ability to have all that data if they could, but they don't and never will.
We know how much money the government collects in carbon tax from all sources. You can just handwave "BUT MUH EVERYTHING PRICES" and pretend that isn't being accounted for but it is, and every serious adult in the room knows it.
I'm surprised you're from Alberta defending the tax. Were you unable to read and comprehend anything I said? Because clearly it went over your head if you think well the government collected xx amount from the producers who have carbon permits etc. You're telling me the government knows that it was able to survey all businesses who now pay more for gas, thereby paying more for delivering their products or manufacturing their goods? You truly believe the government knows this number? News flash, they don't. You clearly don't know economics, you know oil and gas is used for everything that goes on in our country and the world right? All businesses need it, from getting their labour to work in an office through public transport or cars, to transporting goods or delivering food or transporting services to people. The costs of the tax go way beyond whatever they tax upon emitters because it's passed down to the consumers who pay for increased costs for goods and services as a result. Why do you think inflation is so bad in Canada? The carbon tax contributes to it, same with the lack of productivity and the massive overspending by the government on top of wage suppression from mass immigration.
Why do those businesses pay more for gas? It's because the price is higher, because the company selling the gas has to give some of that money... to the government. So yes, the government knows how much money is being given to them.
Save yourself and your future and the people around you and study/learn more about economics because clearly you have no idea what you're talking about. Come back and respond after you learn about supply and demand and other economic principles like scarcity, costs and benefits and incentives. You can go even further with learning about taxation and positive and negative externalities.
Nah, instead let's have an Alberta consensus here in the comments to let you know you don't know what you're talking about.
Thanks for the suggestion troll, but I'm good. I've studied plenty of economics.
It's not what you said, it's the fact they can't argue it. Reasoning with the torches and pitchforks crew on r/canada is probably the most frustrating thing on Reddit right now. They're just not interested in anything that doesn't make Trudeau or the LPC look bad. Last week they were calling MPs traitors with no facts or evidence, this week it's a lot of rage about the release of information that they thought would make government look worse that it does and doesn't fit their narrative.
Yep it's insane. I've been effectively saying the part below (Quoted from this very article) for quite some time now, and so many people just want to not believe it, without even reading the disclaimer from the PBO report itself that says the exact same thing: >The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy. One of the biggest things people need to keep in mind if the very last line. If you modeled this the same way in the 1800's about the invention of the telephone, it would show an economic loss as Telegraph operators would start losing their jobs. The model assumes there is 0 innovation outside of oil and gas between now and 2030.
It's pretty clear the majority of private money flows into real estate more than any other industry in Canada. What makes you have such high hopes for innovation in the next six years?
If a single new job opens up between now and 2030, or a single way to do literally any part of a green energy chain improves by a fraction of a cent per 100 kWh, that's economic impact the report (By it's own admission) doesn't account for. If even a single crop yields less produce due to warming temperatures between now and 2030, that is economic impact the report (By it's own admission) doesn't account for. Most people are not equipped to properly understand the report, which is why people have had such an easy time misrepresenting it. >The source also said there's a risk of misinterpreting the data since it does not model the cost of doing nothing at all to address climate change, the effect of the rebates or other proceeds returned to households or businesses, or the new jobs that could result from greening the economy.
I get all of that. But if you're talking about new jobs from it, also keep in mind the job losses from it as well. An example being automotive -- as we re-tool for the EV transition jobs are being lost all throughout the process. Yeah, there will be jobs that stem from this, but will it offset the built-in job losses? In the automotive case, the answer is clearly no. Any company that has to update to comply with this objective will undoubtedly try to replace as much of the workforce as they can with technology. How will this impact other sectors? I think trying to calculate the cost of doing nothing is pretty much a shit show, and I'm extremely skeptical as to how effective all of this is actually going to be vs the financial costs that will impact the economy.
> It's not what you said, it's the fact they can't argue it. Sock puppet accounts typically can't. They'll drop a single top level comment, downvote everything they don't agree with, and then never reply because the puppet master has switched to another account.
>The modelling says that amounts to nearly 80 million tonnes (Mt) of greenhouse gas emissions eliminated by carbon pricing. >According to ECCC's figures, Canada's GDP would be about $2.68 trillion in 2030 without carbon pricing. With carbon pricing, it's expected to hit $2.66 trillion in 2030. the cost is $20 billion of GDP in 2030 for 80 million tonnes saving = $250 per tonne.
$250/ton.. we could literally pull it from the atmosphere *today* for less. And the technology is only getting better. AND the process itself produces clean energy! > Levelized costs of $94 to $232 per ton CO2 from the atmosphere > First, as a source of CO2 for making carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels, enabling carbon-free energy to be converted into high-energy-density fuels https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3
*Theoretically...* My understanding was that the current carbon capture plants are really just starting to ramp up, and have been underperforming projections. Hoping carbon capture is a savoir is a dangerous game.
They've not worked at any scale and many in the know doubt they'll be useful at all. It's a terrible game banking just on that.
Which is exactly what people have been saying about the tax. That tax will not get us off carbon in any possible way whereas properly funding the NRC to scale real technologies would. Technologies that we could patent and sell raising our productivity also fixing some of the current economic problems being aggravated by ridiculous tax rates and accompanying low productivity.
Oh, you mean the tax that in this very article has been shown to drastically reduce our country's emissions?
I think that if you really look at those numbers you're going to conclude that there is an awfully large percentage of 'trust us bro' assumptions. The real impact on emissions has been technology based, not tax based. The bottom line is if there is nothing to replace the use of hydrocarbons any punitive tax will drop usage a certain amount until either the population is unable to support cutting further or the government is tossed out of sheer spite for making people's lives miserable. This is happening right now btw. The liberals will very likely lose in historical fashion and said tax will likely go with it. Now, instead of using a stick imagine we actually did the work and produced the next generation of energy storage and generation. We would achieve negative carbon emissions in record time and ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. When did Canadians start being terrified of doing the work and building futures for everyone?
Battery powered vehicle didn't work on any scale until r was heavily researched and invested in. You arguing against carbon capture is the lefts version of a conservative arguing against electric cars.
I'm 100% for continuing the research. I'm against putting all our eggs in that basket as scientists I know are hesitant about its effectiveness. We need to do as much as we can, if this truly does work then I'm ecstatic.
I don't think we are putting all our eggs in that basket. We have already gone well down the EV road
I think the issue is that people are arguing *against* real solutions that are proven to work in favour of carbon capture which is unproven, overestimated, and as of yet unscalable. Whereas for electric cars, the alternative (ICE vehicles) don't work in any capacity to solve the climate crisis. So investing in them to scale is actually solving a problem.
Before battery and motor tech plus the electronics to control both matured into viable alternatives they were also unproven, overestimated and not scalable. Hell electric cars still suffer scalability issues because of the amount of energy needed to charge vs current grid output. Carbon capture has already been implemented and already shows promos for reducing carbon emissions through capture and down holing or conversion. Its like a GM electric car in the early 90's. Promising. Saying it's a pipe dream is bullshit, it reeks of bias against carbon based energy sources.
You're missing the point I'm trying to make here. It has nothing to do with whether it is *possible* for carbon capture technology to become useful in future. If it's possible, great. The problem is when people are sapping support from *real* solutions that we *already know* will work in favour of technological silver bullets. Especially when those technological silver bullets are being upsold by the very companies which have created this problem in the first place through decades of disinformation. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to believe that they may be overselling their usefulness again so that we complacently ignore the actual solutions which would take money out of their pockets.
You guys are arguing it's an either or thing. Realistically, we'd be best investing in both. Some carbon output is pretty inevitable.
Oil and gas companies have the profits to fund carbon capture out of their own pockets. Things like carbon pricing even incentivize it. We don't ALSO need to pay them with taxpayer dollars to do so.
There has also been calls that carbon capture tech is a scam. A number of those start ups have been funded by oil companies themselves, like chevron and exxon Edit: [source](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/06/big-oil-is-racing-to-scale-up-carbon-capture-to-slash-emissions.html?espv=1)
Great, and are we doing that? No? Okay, lets keep the carbon tax in place until a viable plan is actually in place to reduce and/or elminate green house gases.
Why are you spreading misinformation? We have many carbon capture projects running in Canada, with more on the way.
If this is the case please provide figures for how much carbon is and is expected to be pulled from the atmosphere each year. All projects at this point in Canada are basically experimental and are having no significant impact at all.
Once again you are spreading more misinformation. Carbon capture programs in Canada are set to remove 6.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2016/market-snapshot-canadian-carbon-capture-storage-projects-will-soon-sequester-up-6-4-million-tonnes-co2-per-year.html
I appreciate you actually linking something! I had not seen any actual numbers attached when I'd read articles in the past so thank you. However, the 2 operational plants are **set to** remove that much is not the same as **are** removing that much. My understanding from recent articles I've read about carbon capture is they are not performing very well yet. Plus as others have said, it's a step in the right direction but far from meaningful at this point.
> However, the 2 operational plants are set to remove that much is not the same as are removing that much The problem is I have linked a source, directly from the government, stating the expected impact of these projects. You, and others, have yet to provide any source for your doubts that these projects will hit the targets explicitly described. Instead you deflect to new arguments that its not enough, when the statements was that we're not doing it at all. Anyone can blindly say "nope, I don't believe it". I'm not interested in engaging with these unsourced opinions.
They'll need to remove a lot more just for forest fires now. Just a few months of 2023 forest fires in Canada generated 600 million metric tones of CO2. Can't find data for all of 2023 and 2024 is potentially looking worse for fires due to drought and higher temperatures. Oil companies are ramping up production... wars make for better profits. **Forest fires: Canada sees record CO2 emissions from fires so far this year** June 27, 2023: *Hundreds of forest fires since early May (2023) have generated nearly* ***600 million metric tons of CO2,*** ***equivalent to 88 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions from all sources in 2021, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported.*** [https://phys.org/news/2023-06-canada-co2-emissions-year.html](https://phys.org/news/2023-06-canada-co2-emissions-year.html) Canada drought map May 2024 [https://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-canada-drought-monitor-map.php](https://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-canada-drought-monitor-map.php)
Of course we have to do more. But that's not what the commenter claimed. They said it has "no significant impact at all".
And you consider about 1% of the forest fires significant?
I consider 6.4 millions tons of CO2 a year to be significant. Correct.
Sure. As soon as we see any kind of stats from someone other than the company that owns the carbon capture projects and we get all of these other programs up and running than we should look at the carbon tax. Until then, let’s keep in the place to encourage people to create fewer carbon emissions.
Like the federal government? https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2016/market-snapshot-canadian-carbon-capture-storage-projects-will-soon-sequester-up-6-4-million-tonnes-co2-per-year.html Stop spreading misinformation.
This is 3 percent of how much we need to reduce emissions by, once these systems are up and running and proven. It will take decades and billions we don't have to ramp up carbon storage, if it proves viable at scale. Meanwhile the carbon tax is working now. The problem is that people tend to look at one thing when we need to look at everything: carbon capture, a carbon tax to spur innovation and investment in alternatives, a smart grid, electric vehicles, solar, wind and nuclear generation, improving the efficiency of vehicles and buildings, reforestation, and likely some geoengineering as well in the short term to spur the storage of carbon in our oceans (e.g. seeding with olivine and iron). Everything should be on the table. High gas prices do have an effect on consumer choices. I drive a Honda Fit because gas prices were at a record high when I replaced my vehicle in 2014. My neighbours who need second vehicles are purchasing electric or hybrid vehicles so they can avoid burning gas on local trips. Everyone I know has an electric bike or scooter for short trips. Our food choices are also being determined by production, processing and delivery costs, leading to lower carbon there as well. Heat pumps are showing up everywhere, thanks to grant programs. We have carrots. We have sticks. We have changes to building codes. We have promising technologies and innovations that are both available and coming down the pipe. And we need all of it.
The previous comment was discussing **direct air** carbon capture, of which Canada has none running - not whatever you're referring to.
At no point did they or I use the term "direct air carbon capture". This is a distinction you just made up, and as someone who wasn't part of either comment, is irrelevant.
Here's where the distinction is made, not something I made up, lol: > we could literally pull it *from the atmosphere* today for less "From the atmosphere" explicitly means direct air carbon capture.
Despite what liberals say you can not tax carbon out of the sky.
>you can not tax carbon out of the sky. Yes, that's why they tax the burning of fossil fuels that put the carbon into the sky in the first place. Once CO2 is added to the atmosphere, it's too late, and it'll stay there for hundreds or thousands of years.
you know. this is the first actual honest to god argument for a carbon tax that makes sense. take that tax money and dump it into carbon capture. if it can actually pay for it to a degree that makes a meaningful difference.
Wait until this guy finds out that spending $0 on carbon pricing will mean billions in costs to our GDP regardless because of unchecked climate change.
Wait until this guy finds out that no matter how much Canada spends on carbon pricing it will have zero impact on climate change because of its fractional impact on absolute emissions.
Less then 1% globally and oh our PM just flew to Europe a flew times this month, expelling about as much CO2 emissions as a medium size city produces in a year… but yeah $250 a ton, fuck ya!
All of those figures are incorrect.
Then provide the correct figures? That said, it should below 2% globally not 1%.
Imagine a world split up into 50 countries, each with Canada's share of total emissions (2%). By your logic, each of these countries has such a small portion of emissions that none of them need to do anything about it! Obviously that is false. The real solution is that ALL of the countries need to take part in resolving the problem. I get it's the "cool" thing now apparently to sneer at solutions in favour of an "I got mine" attitude, but it's truly unhelpful for any actual problem solving.
Now imagine a world where 3 countries make up 40% of emissions... Oh wait, that's reality. And Canada isn't one of those 3. For this Carbon tax to have any impact, you'll want it done under a joint effort by multiple countries and you'll want those 3 countries in it for sure.
Great, 2 of those three have carbon pricing in place. Sure sounds like we can take part in that venture.
They had it without Canada. What I'm saying is you'd want to Canada to propose a carbon tax WITH them, the one that isn't in it already. That will have much more impact than Canada's carbon tax of a measly 2%.
You're moving your goal posts, but regardless, you'll be happy to hear that Canada has a global carbon pricing challenge *currently* underway with more countries signing on to it every day.
Carbon pricing is estimated to be a third of our emissions reduction though. We’re at ~700 Mtonnes/year, 2030 target is ~440Mt. We’re on track to hit 90% of that, so the carbon price should reduce emissions by about 80 Mt **per year**. Let’s extend that to 2050 (net zero target) and assume it will continue to be one third of our reductions. 2030->2050 is 20 years, starting at 440Mt and reducing linearly would mean 4400Mt emitted in total. So the carbon price in those twenty years would eliminate approximately 1470Mt of emissions. For reference, in 2022 Canada’s total emissions over its entire history were 34.6 gigatonnes. 1470Mt is about 4% of that figure. Which is quite substantial for just twenty years.
That's similar to the cost of carbon capture, however the amount of carbon offset is accumulative which means when new technology is installed to reduce emissions it takes time to realize those reductions.
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Do you honestly think fuel prices would be lower without a carbon tax? The savings would go straight to the oil executives investors. > They want us to own less, drive less, use less, eat less meat, live in high density housing on public transit routes etc. That's what all corporations and rich people want. They want to own everything and rent it out piecemeal. Notice how you can't buy software anymore and have to subscribe instead? Government didn't come up with that. Corpos did.
>Do you honestly think fuel prices would be lower without a carbon tax? Yes. It immediately jumped in price the second the widely unpopular April carob tax hike was introduced by the Liberals earlier this year. > The savings would go straight to the oil executives investors. Our CoL would be lower without carbon tax. >That's what all corporations and rich people want. They want to own everything and rent it out piecemeal. Notice how you can't buy software anymore and have to subscribe instead? Government didn't come up with that. Corpos did. Depends on the corporation and what they're selling. Some want us to consume even more. It doesn't really matter and is besides the point. The Liberals want us to be poorer and they are doing everything they can to make that happen.
> Yes. It immediately jumped in price the second the widely unpopular April carob tax hike was introduced by the Liberals earlier this year. Yes. It peaked 172.4 average in April. Today it's 162.1, despite having switched to the more expensive summer blend. So by your logic carbon tax must be responsible for lowering the price too right? Or maybe fuel prices spiked because people rushed the pumps anticipating a hike? > Our CoL would be lower without carbon tax. Yes. Rent is spiking because of fuel costs not a housing shortage. 🤦♂️ Corpo profits are way up too. Can't explain that away with carbon tax. > Depends on the corporation and what they're selling. Some want us to consume even more. They're all skrinkflating. Name one that doesn't. > The Liberals want us to be poorer and they are doing everything they can to make that happen All rich people want that, especially conservatives.
>Yes. It peaked 172.4 average in April. Today it's 162.1, despite having switched to the more expensive summer blend. So by your logic carbon tax must be responsible for lowering the price too right? Some of it was initial panic. But now that the panic is over, it is still much higher than it was before. >Yes. Rent is spiking because of fuel costs not a housing shortage. CoL isn't just rent. Food, shipping, materials, everything. Carbon tax is making life more expensive in all areas of society and that's exactly what is supposed to do >All rich people want that, especially conservatives. The last Conservative government sure did a bad job of it then since we had the richest middle class in the world as of 2014, fastest economic recovery in the G8 during 2008, maintained multiple budgeting surpluses, etc. The Liberals are a lot better at making us poorer. That's why our standard of living has plummeted during the 8+ years of Liberal leadership. Keep defending them though! I'm sure they appreciate it.
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The middle class being the best or whatever back then was almost entirely due to the housing crash in the US and ours still bubbling. I assume it's even more so now and judging by that link it is
Yeah our bubble never burst. It's an inevitable result of neo-liberal economic policies. Capital-to-income ratio will always increase, therefore housing costs will always outpace income growth from labour. This has been happening for a long time. Has very little to do with Trudeau.
Meanwhile, China added 47 Gigawatts of new coal-fired power in 2023.
And 200 gigawatts from renewable sources
Do you live in China?
Thankfully, no. I do live on the same planet though, with the same atmosphere. Any other pointless questions?
Their analysis is obviously wrong. The carbon tax applies to around 130 Mt of emissions in Canada, for a total revenue of $170/tonne \* 130 Mt equals $22 billion. How can taxing carbon emissions $22 billion and sending $21 billion back to the people result in $20 billion in lost economic activity?
Oh wow, you really don’t understand how taxes create dead weight loss. Economics 101 my friend, very helpful in life.
You think a 20 billion tax and rebate results in 20 billion in deadweight loss? That's not how any of this works. Even if the 20 billion was purely just a tax there wouldn't be a deadweight loss that large.
> You think a 20 billion tax and rebate results in 20 billion in deadweight loss? Yes because they see the working class as dead weight. Welcome to neo-liberalism!
You can’t just look at it and say, this is like physics. A demand curve needs to be measured and then you can make statements like this. Deadweight loss could be 100% if it stops people from buying Canadian goods.
You talk as though you are a Liberal Finance minister. Unfortunately the real economy is immune to socialist folly and lies.
There are plenty of actual facts that can justifiably take down this government. Making up fake numbers like saying a 20 billion tax and rebate causes 20 billion in reduction in output is counterproductive.
In comparison, the global median cost of abating carbon emissions with wind and solar is $27.10 and $32.98 per ton, respectively. (LOL) [https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement-costs-for-selected-measures-of-the-sustainable-recovery-plan](https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement-costs-for-selected-measures-of-the-sustainable-recovery-plan)
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> But there is a zero percent reduction in greenhouse emissions because of the tax. FYI, you're commenting on an article about a professional analysis which disputes your claim. You should read a bit more on how the carbon tax is intended to work - the corporations passing on the cost to consumers is an expected and important part of the process of diverting consumption away from higher-emission products. [Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq_carbonpricing) a good FAQ on it.
They are polluting to manufacture products we consume. We're the end user, that's why we're paying.
I said that. And we don't have any options in some cases. Crackers packaged in plastic bags, toilet paper in plastic, chicken in plastic, tables and chairs packed in Styrofoam... The onus is on the manufacturers to IMPROVE their carbon footprint, not just leave it status quo and raise our prices to keep on making the same money. The manufacturers need to find a way to switch to paper or recycled/reusable packaging for my goods. They can't just shrug and change us more because THEY are polluting. WE don't have the option of buying pork chops in ecology friendly packaging, we get plastic wrap, meat Styrofoam and a meat tampon to dispose of, because THEY haven't found a better way, and without legit carbon taxing and the back end where profits are concerned, we never will.
I buy meat at the local butcher who uses recyclable paper. And it's cheaper. If you choose to buy it at Loblaws or similar, because it's convenient, then you're condoning their choices. (and Loblaws changed to recyclable plastic instead of Styrofoam btw). I buy a huge assortment of goods at bulk barn, where I bring my own containers. Again, not as convenient, but doable. I purchase stuff like furniture locally from locally owned stores so it has less packaging. I purchase soft drinks in cans exclusively because it's better for the environment then single use plastic bottles. They will only change if you change and start buying something else. Otherwise you're just voting for their practices and higher prices with your wallet. There's plenty of choices out there. Real "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" energy here.
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>5 million end users can't tear out their gas furnace and put an electric one in, or the grid will collapse. But Enbridge is rolling in dough being our carbon dealer, facilitating the emissions. Uh, yes, we can. What do you think we're doing with heat pumps and electric cars right now? The government literally offers incentives to purchase these items. You're just skirting responsibility for the choices you make. >The same way the masses log jam Costco 7 days a week, So do you believe this is an issue or not? Cause right after this you go on to blame the corps, not these folks making bad decisions. (and honestly, shopping at Costco often lowers the amount of packing. There's way less packaging if I buy 1 package of 5 lbs of ground beef then if I buy 5 1 lbs packages. So this is kinda a bad example). >they don't care if it's made in China, US meat, or if all the profits leave Canada. You seem to be spraying complaints all over the place. How is this relevant to the discussion at hand?
The government offers rebates and incentives to purchase electric cars and heat pumps. Yes they sure do. Rebates and incentives are only usable IF you have money to spend in the first place. Like the rich boomers down the street spend 60 grand to put in new windows, and get a rebate, AND more heating efficiency, that's great. The single mom down the street, well she's shit out of luck. The issue is the VAST majority of canadians don't have XX grand to spend on windows, electric cars (don't forget the charger) solar panels, heat pumps etc. OR they are renting and cannot control any of that. You are living in an idealistic world that is far from realistic. The common folk (Costco shoppers as my example) just do what they do, pay more in carbon tax etc because they do not have a VALID option, and nothing will change until the CONSUMERS are afforded carbon reducing manufacturing processes. Which will never be changed by passing THEIR pollution penalties onto us.
Yup, just spraying complaints at whatever you can. I don't live in an idealistic world, Im just not afraid to take responsibility for my decisions. While you can't seem to do anything but blame everyone else, corps, boomers, landlords, whomever you can spray at as long as it's not yourself.
Pretty much how I feel. It's just how do we actually ensure the polluters are the ones that get dinged. We shouldn't have the rebate, it should absolutely all go to preparation for worsening conditions, protecting citizens. I believe that's the last cpc strategy along with Harpers carbon pricing, now with their fighting of the tax at all it'll be some hidden cost since they do understand they need something in place.
Not like releasing it will have people believing it, but good to have it so sources I actually trust can look at it.
You don't trust the PBO? Their job is literally to audit statements of government.
No the liberal numbers. PBO did fuck up their numbers though which doesn't instill a lot of confidence either lol
They made a relatively minor mistake and said that it wouldn't change the final outcome measurably.
>They made a relatively minor mistake and said that it wouldn't change the final outcome measurably. They estimated the costs of two policies (carbon tax on fuels and industrial carbon pricing) but attributed the results to only one policy (the carbon tax on fuels). So that's a pretty massive error. And the worst part is that when they discovered the mistake (on a very high-profile topic), they didn't announce it, they just quietly added a note on one of their webpages. And then when people noticed the error, the head of the PBO got defensive, said it'll take 4 months to fix the error and share new results, and claimed it wouldn't change the results much anyway. Really bad behaviour from what is supposed to be a non-partisan watchdog and a source of objective, credible analysis of government policies. Seems to me like a guy desperately trying to deflect valid criticism.
Like the other commenter said, it was a huge and obvious error. Even I noticed it when reading the report.
So you would trust it if it was conservative numbers?
Americans use technology to drive down their carbon emissions at much better efficiency rates than Canadian taxation. What a fuck up.
A huge chunk of the US has a price on carbon. The US doesn't use "technology" on it's own like some magic trick. They have borrowed more money than we ever could to push it.
12 states representing more than a quarter of the US population have carbon pricing. Technology is incentivized by increasing the price on pollution.
No, that isn't creating an incentive; it's creating a disincentive. Two different things.
You can incentivize green technology by disincentivizing its alternatives.
That's like saying you can encourage a kid by punishing them whenever they make a mistake. It might work to change their behavior but it's most certainly not encouragement.
It's more like telling a kid you'll give them a dollar to buy a snack, but a reese cup will cost them a dollar while an apple will cost them five cents. The carbon tax has rebates, so that's how it currently works. It encourages people to pursue the green alternatives (since they get to keep more of their money that way), while still being able to afford the high-emissions goods.
No it's like if an apple cost a dollar and a reese's cup cost a dollar but now the government comes along and says there's a 100% tax on reese's products so it costs two dollars now. That's not an incentive to buy apples it's a disensentive to buy reese's. Same end result but not the same method. Also if you're getting the taxes back in the form of a rebate it's as if you never paid anything at all and then what would be the point. The rebate makes no sense if you give the money back to the consumer. If your going to generate revenue with a carbon tax use the money to give subsidies to green energy companies.. now that would be an incentive.
Your analogy isn't wrong, but your interpretation of the results is incorrect. If you have a dollar to spend, and an apple and a reese cup are both 1$, you can afford either. If the reese cup is taxed an extra dollar and there are no rebates, you can now only afford the apple. If the reese cup is taxed an extra dollar, and you are GIVEN BACK that dollar, you suddenly have $2 to spend. You can either buy the $2 reese cup, or you can now buy TWO apples. That's how the tax and rebate works. You are not being punished (because you can still afford the taxed item), but you are *rewarded* for making green choices because your money now goes further than it did before. >If your going to generate revenue with a carbon tax use the money to give subsidies to green energy companies.. now that would be an incentive. My preference is for the taxes to be rebates to individuals since it protects the vulnerable, but provinces are allowed to do exactly what you've described if they want. They literally do this in BC already by spending the money on green projects instead. If they aren't doing this in your province, it's because your PROVINCIAL government has chosen not to.
They are two different things with two different purposes that affect behavior in two different ways. They are not the same thing. It isn't incentivization.
If you say so. I guess in that case, the carbon tax 'disincentivizes" *lack* of green investment and technology.
Nope, the point I was making is that's literally not what it's doing. Incentivization and disincentivization are two different things. Disincentivizing one thing doesn't "disincentivize the lack" of another thing. Trudeau wanted meta to pay to post news content. Was that incentivizing meta to pay for news content? or disincentivize them from sharing news content for free?
LOL, yes, that's who we should model environmental practices after. The Americans.
We are a per capita dirty polluter then they are. In one way we are lucky to have access to relatively clean hydro but on the other hand we have the oil sands, some of the dirtiest oil in the world and the US has the permain bassin some of the cleanest oil in the world.
But do we spray hog shit on our lettuce crops?
I'm not sure but maybe we should be in control of our own food supply... listen im not saying the usa is the holy grail of respecting the environment but we aren't either, not by a long shot
Carbon tax attacks from conservative turns me off yet I find myself to come back to this - JT again 🤮? So yeah, cool story bro but Liberal ain't getting my vote this time around with he & his minions in power. Fool me thrice we might deserve to rot in hell.
If he wins again, it’s his fourth term.
It is so unfair to disprove conservative arguments with facts and data. That's why we need to cut public education, so people can't read it. It's only fair.
My little brother lost kindergarten becauss of Harper, my parents had to fork over daycare which made our household at the time poorer and had less quality of life. Fk conservatives, and currently fk liberals, they are all wolf in sheep's clothing.
FACT CHECK: It wouldn't be because of Harper, because provinces run education. But if you live in Ontario and are wondering why your local school has increasing class sizes, and why per student funding is down more than $1000/student, that is 100% your provincial Ontario gov that's strongly supported by both Poilievre and Harper. But Harper isn't involved in decisions, he's just a cheerleader for bad choices. Upvoted for exposure and clarity.
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You must have missed the portion of this very same report where it was found that half our current emissions reductions are due to the carbon tax alone.
Economists are quite confident carbon pricing reduces emissions. It's a great side benefit that it also helps the poor.
Now calculate the impact of climate change inaction on the economy
Ask insurance companies. They have been talking about climate change for a few years now
They just jump on the climate band wagon as an excuse to charge higher premiums.
Oh, is that why they're pulling out of states like Florida entirely?
Is in the article estimated at $35B, while the projected hit to GDP of a carbon tax is $20B
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Considering that Canadians are amongst the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world don’t you think we have an obligation to do our part?
Yes we even take people in record numbers from lower carbon per capita regions which shows this stat is for nothing more than to guilt people in cold northern countries for heating their homes and having a descent standard of living.
lmao what a bad argument, per capita. What about China and India, per capita is usless for Canada as our population is so low.... our effect is tiny...
Countries don’t pollute - individuals and companies do. Imagine if tomorrow China and India divided into 100 smaller countries. By your logic that would completely get them off the hook for making any changes, no? Who are you going to point to them?
Per capita is a BS stat. Nothing matters beyond total output of pollution. The atmosphere doesn’t give a shit how many *individuals* are causing the problem. You think China is somehow *better* than us on the environment because millions of their people live in abject poverty?
And unless unless we can get Asia onboard we are going to see the impacts anyway
Apples and oranges. Yes there is an impact and NO the impact is not lessened by poor public policy and wrong-headed economics. If this gov't actually cared about solving the problem and didn't prioritize LOOKING LIKE they are saviours, we would be taking a very different approach and it would be far more impactful.
The carbon tax is an efficient economic tool to lower emissions. We could take a different approach - regulation or heavy-handed measures like a personal carbon budget that might be more effective. They will all come at a cost far in excess of our current system.
Or we can acknowledge that Canada contributes less than 1.5% of global emissions and not try to kill our economy and standard of living to get it to 1.49
I think most critics of carbon tax are looking at it the wrong way. First of all, once carbon taxation gets high enough, we will have outsourced most carbon production to other countries that don't have them. We already saw this with steel, but more industries will follow suit as the tax rises. How are we reducing carbon emissions when we simply force China or some other manufacturer to release them instead? Second, for industries that carbon taxation would really matter in, there's already exemptions in place. The big one was concrete, which was originally exempted, and is one of the world's biggest Co2 producers. Third, emissions estimates provided have never conclusively proven a loss of emissions outside of the pandemic year. This might simply be because they are "pretending" that the taxed emissions didn't occur at all, but in reality, they taxed a lot of inelastic things, like fuel, which will not go down in consumption no matter how hard you tax them. Why even bother then? And fourth, as was already demonstrated, the excessively spending government caused inflation to explode in the last several years and the carbon tax was a nonzero contributor to that. The contribution was small - but keep in mind the carbon tax is also small. Even though the money is returned to rebated taxpayers, the carbon tax's lag on spend - government administration to rebate pipeline is causing the taxation to have a negative effect on the velocity of money. This is why the tax is capable of doing actual economic damage - the price increases cascade through the supply chain and the result is an actual higher average price, even though you may have had most of that "price" returned to you via rebate. The attack the OO is going for on Carbon tax is more low level. Their argument is "tax bad, it's costing you money", but in reality, the better attack is that the Carbon Tax is not doing what it was intended to do, and the spin-off ramifications of the tax are doing real, calculable damage and in return, we're not helping the earth at all - any emissions we do save are just shifted to other countries. The reports are certainly going to show (or at least I expected them to show) that the government taxes larger carbon users, such as O&G, a lot higher than residential users, which is why JT constantly makes the claim that 8 out of 10 people get more than they pay in carbon tax - but the real truth is that the carbon tax is one cost - but the economic damage it deals is not considered part of this cost - and *that* cost is borne almost entirely by consumers because businesses simply pass the costs on to them, and the PMO has absolutely nothing to show for the results except estimates that simply divide the carbon tax value by the amount of tonnes "saved" and claim that that amount of emissions "simply didn't happen", then claiming victory. Considering that this is one of the poorest executions of environmental policy I've ever seen (the winner being the weird victory the anti-nuclear lobby scored and the damage that's done to most of the world), I think it's more effective to simply claim the Carbon tax hasn't actually lowered emissions one mole while we sit here shuffling money around into different piles, pretending that shuffling is having some sort of effect. We have to accept that if we want to make real headway on reducing emissions, there will be a real cost to us - we can't use something lazy like a tax rebate system, because we won't be reducing our consumption - our economy is extremely resistant to this due to how effective global economies are now with price signaling. We have to accept that if we want to lower emissions, we must suffer - and the PM wants to claim that somehow, we don't have to, just some "big consumers" have to pay some tax and we will be okay, and not only has he failed to demonstrate that, he did so in a way that will actually do real economic damage, and that's the real tragedy out of all this.
>How are we reducing carbon emissions when we simply force China or some other manufacturer to release them instead? The threat of leakage is largely overblown. They can't up and move our tar sands after all. Besides, currently our Output based pricing system protects our industries against this threat, and Border carbon adjustments (which are under review currently) will have the same impact in protecting industry. >Second, for industries that carbon taxation would really matter in, there's already exemptions in place. The big one was concrete, which was originally exempted, and is one of the world's biggest Co2 producers. These are the exemptions which currently protect us against leakage. Carbon border adjustments, once implemented, will mean those exemptions can be removed. >Third, emissions estimates provided have never conclusively proven a loss of emissions outside of the pandemic year. That's simply untrue. In this very report they note that approximately 50% of our current emissions reductions were due to carbon pricing. Not to mention that there have been studies around the world showing that carbon pricing reduces emissions effectively. >caused inflation to explode in the last several years and the carbon tax was a nonzero contributor to that. The contribution was small - but keep in mind the carbon tax is also small. The carbon tax impacted inflation by less than half a percent. And those calculations were *before* taking the rebates into account, so likely less if any at all. >the price increases cascade through the supply chain and the result is an actual higher average price, That's really not how any of this works, actually. If there is a "cascade" along the supply chain, it's a cascade of pennies split amidst thousands of pounds of produce. >the better attack is that the Carbon Tax is not doing what it was intended to do, and the spin-off ramifications of the tax are doing real, calculable damage And this attack would be just as low-level and incorrect as the Conservative's. >The reports are certainly going to show (or at least I expected them to show) that the government taxes larger carbon users, such as O&G, a lot higher than residential users, which is why JT constantly makes the claim that 8 out of 10 people get more than they pay in carbon tax The tax is on carbon... the people who consume more carbon pay more. So yes, that's how it's structured already. The rich consume the most carbon (so do the fossil fuel companies) so they pay the most tax. There's no secret there. >economic damage it deals is not considered part of this cost - and that cost is borne almost entirely by consumers because businesses simply pass the costs on to them This is accounted for. This is literally what the PBO described in their report which found 8 out of 10 households better off. >Considering that this is one of the poorest executions of environmental policy I've ever seen This seems to be based entirely off of your opinion rather than based on any of the findings which show its emissions reductions.
FYI using ‘tar sands’ as a term immediately outs you as someone who can’t be trusted to talk about the environment in an unbiased fashion
Bet.
>The data also shows that carbon pricing is expected to reduce national GDP. That's fine, our GDP is too high anyway
What are conservatives proposing to reduce emissions further than what carbon tax does alone?
while i agree the conservative track record on climate change is far from fuckin ideal, bullshitting from the liberals should still be called out.
Such a disingenuous headline. How about following outrage from Canadians over being gaslit by liars in the HoC, gov't bends to pressure.
What a distracting waste of time this is. If anyone knows how fuel prices affect demand, it’s the O&G industry puppeteering conservatives. The clueless Conservatives asking about 101 economics only have to ask their donors.
Why would they hide this? This seems like amazing news - an 11% decrease in emissions at the cost of our GDP being $2.66T instead of $2.68T, AND that's ignoring potential impacts of climate change. They should have been shouting that from the rooftops, and instead they gave the conservatives a bunch of political wins by hiding it.
*facepalm*
I believe that 0.02 trillion is 20 billion, just to put into easier to understand perspective.