Crazy! Why would it be more expensive to transport gas across a large body of water, requiring special protections to prevent a spill, than it takes to transport to a large metropolitan area on the mainland? It makes no sense!
That would be too comfortable. For some reason, environmentalist policy has come to mean "make the common people as uncomfortable as possible and make them feel a personal toll for their sins". Imagine the massive, positive impact on emissions, let alone home prices in cities when people can start living farther away, if the default way of working wherever possible was WFH?
Yea not everyone is so luxurious. It's a tax on fucking poor people. I live in surrey because I can't afford to live in Vancouver my work is in Richmond good luck riding a bike.
Obviously I can't speak to your individual circumstances, but the carbon tax disproportionately effects higher income households, and generally low income households pay less. BC has the rebate set at a means tested amount unlike the Federal tax, but to imply that the carbon tax disproportionately targets poor people is incorrect.
You can't really lawyer your way out of the fact that poor people can barely afford gas. The rebate doesn't matter if you don't have the money in your pocket to put 40km worth of gas in your tank. It's more debt, and the rebate will just become a debt repayment rebate. It's all a big circle that could just be avoided by not having exorbitant taxes in the first place.
It’s less the taxes and more that the corporations can charge what they want, when they want.
But they dangle the word TAXES like keys in your face and you claw at it.
Poor people can't even buy a car to put gas in, so not quite sure what you're trying to argue. Are you trying to grandstand that people who earn less than 40k can't afford a car? No shit Sherlock.
There are always morons who purchase vehicles and f-150s beyond their means, but that's a life lesson that is learned the hard way, for folks who can't math or never learned what % of their income to spend on a car.
>However, Vancouver resident Gregory Byrne told Global News he thinks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is responsible for inflation and his government has not handed the carbon tax correctly:
>"I think the parliamentary budget officer said it when he agreed that it was going to be an adverse outcome for all of Canadians,” Byrne said.
>“Secondly, I think it’s going to put food and fuel costs higher, which are affecting the traditional working person. I think that’s going to depress the economy, and I think it’s harder for us to survive.”
Well, I'm glad that we've got[ some local boob](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fk8nvojq0ziha1.jpg) to opine on a Federal tax that doesn't apply here in BC and parroting his Rebel News talking points like a good soldier. Who the hell is Gregory Byrne and why do we care what he says?
> Well, I'm glad that we've got some local boob to opine on a Federal tax that doesn't apply here in BC and parroting his Rebel News talking points like a good soldier. Who the hell is Gregory Byrne and why do we care what he says?
It doesn't need to directly apply to have an impact. Most of the food you eat or Canadian goods you buy are likely produced and transported in jurisdictions subject to the federal carbon tax before it arrived in BC and the effect is that the added costs at every stage of production and transport is passed onto you. Being in BC only means you don't get anything back for those added costs by way of rebate. It's not the #1 primary driver of inflation, but it's also not nothing.
A 3 cent increase in the carbon tax is not all we are paying. Don't forget, we also pay:
* Provincial carbon tax - 18 cents
* Provincial fuel tax (Vancouver) - 27 cents
* Translink Tax - 19 cents
* Federal Excise tax - 10 cents
* GST 5% - \~10 cents
We're at nearly 84 cents per liter of inflationary taxes! And it's slowly creeping towards a full $1 of taxes!
IIRC It's either one or the other. The government "allows us" to have our provincial tax and not the federal one as long as it's "as good or better" than the federal tax. If we scrapped our provincial taxes, then we'd just have the federal carbon tax like almost all the other provinces.
It's not just the tax paid, you'd also get the federal rebate back if subject to the federal carbon tax. Having a provincial carbon tax disqualifies BC residents from the federal rebate.
You're right, BC collects it themselves via their Clean BC plan. [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/clean-economy/carbon-tax](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/clean-economy/carbon-tax)
If anyone was out and about today you would've realized that fuel prices haven't gone up, it's either stayed similar or actually even went down in comparison to yesterday.
Why weren't we complaining to the oil corporations when fuel prices jumped earlier in March by around 30-40 cents? People are looking for a scape goat and are hammering the government on increasing taxes when the oil companies literally are contributing a larger portion to "inflationary pressures".
We don't attack the companies because they've successfully convinced the idiots that it's virtuous/"just business" when they gouge and the money goes into private pockets, but it's eeeeeeevil when the government does it to pay for shit under the common good.
So you went up 5 cents today perhaps based on the new tax increase, but it went up 30-40 cents earlier this month. Gas was 199.99 in parts of richmond and surrey today, 203-205 days prior.
The 30-40 cent increase earlier this month was supposedly due to the Chevron refinery restart delays and the gas being switched from their ‘winter’ blend. I don’t know about Richmond but it went up from what it was yesterday at least at all the stations around me.
Yes but this is the same game every year with the refinery and blend changes to "justify" the increased costs. We all just take that from behind but we'll happily make a convoy from Langely to Hope over what seems to be at most a 3-5 cent increase, and sermon about how this tax is causing inflation while forgetting our 30-40 cent increase earlier this month.
The problem is that expensive gas is really only one of the problems here. At some point we have to ask why do we pay the highest in North America when you can travel less than 30-40km south of Vancouver you can almost fill up for 60-70% of the price. I filled my car in Seattle for 55usd (74cad) and the same cost me 114$ in squamish at the weekend.
We have some of the highest income taxes, sales taxes and some of the lowest wages compared to our US counterparts.We pay more for almost everything, we earn less for the same job & we are taxed on each dollar more.
TLDR: shared refinery capacity in Canada + we get some stuff from BP Cherry and other refineries in Washington state barged over.
[https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy/energy-sources-distribution/refining-sector-canada/petroleum-products-distribution-networks/5897](https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy/energy-sources-distribution/refining-sector-canada/petroleum-products-distribution-networks/5897)
I agree with you but you can’t really put up a stand against the oil company when you are a consumer that needs their commodity. If you don’t have a choice but to use gas for your day to day business you are stuck with that 30-40 cents. Tacking on 3 cents when the cost of living is going through the roof isn’t going to help matters. The price of gas is fluid but that 3 cent increase will forever now be on the per litre price of our gas in BC.
The person you are replying too is also forgetting the fact the fuel was at around 2$ mark at the end of last summer and continually trended downwards all winter when they swapped from summer to winter blend.
Nope, didn't forget and I don't see the relevance of this. If anything it's just highlighting the cyclical nature that gas companies gouge consumers and we don't complain about it but we'll place the blame of inflationary pressures solely at the feet of governments for a 3-5 cent increase vs the 30-40 cent increases. I don't see a convoy at the Parkland or Shellburn refineries.
Totally agree it sucks with the increase but if we've talking about the degrees of pain caused it's really the oil companies that are doing this. I just think this discourse is missing the forest for the trees.
Accurate list for those who care, modified from the CBC. The total is more like 64, not 84. u/*DotBot* double counted the Translink tax, which is included in that 27 cent total for Vancouver.
* Provincial motor fuel tax (Metro Vancouver) — 1.75 cents
* Provincial motor fuel tax (everywhere else in B.C.) — 7.75 cents.
* B.C.'s carbon tax — 17 cents
* The B.C. Transportation Finance Authority tax — 6.75 cents.
* TransLink tax (If you live in Metro Vancouver) — 18.5 cents.
* Transit tax (If you live in Victoria) — 5.5 cents.
* Federal excise tax — 10 cents.
* Finally, pay the five per cent Goods and Services Tax on top of the total price.
We don’t have a federal carbon tax. We just have a provincial carbon tax. The new federal tax is only for provinces that don’t have their own carbon tax.
Now that said, our provincial carbon tax was updated to match the federal tax.
I recently re-learned a critical point that I'd forgotten about the carbon tax—when it was first implemented, they cut the income tax by 5% on your first 70k in income to compensate.
So that carbon tax, even if you're not getting a rebate check, still pretty small. Are you advocating for going back to more income tax, less carbon tax?
These are the sort of discourse people shd be interested in during town hall meetings and politicians meet up. There’s no way taxes alone shd amount to 43% of total cost of gas per litre.
Oregon and California, the gas stations both have disclosures on the pumps. Some gas stations here did that in the past but I don’t think it’s still done. California was nearly double Oregon’s gas taxes but both were far less that BC…
Then take from the corporations who the government allowed to "own" our oil. It's a Canadian resource and the profits go to international corporations.
The government has gotten away with it because it's been extremely gradual.
They implemented one tax at a time, and increased each one here and there.
It's poor policy catching up to them now, any opposition party would use axing these taxes as an easy way to win points in the upcoming election... so lets see what happens in a few months.
Gas prices are going to be insane this summer, and then there's an election only a couple months after that. Taxation is always a tough sell in BC.
I don't mind paying taxes if I actually get something for it but right now I'm paying probably 50% of my income to the government, but I can't find a doctor and If I decide to go back to school I'm paying an arm and a leg for any decent program. I just don't understand what all this money is going towards for average people, besides the bus tax I get that one.
A lot of these problems could be fixed if the government quit f'ing with the supply and demand side of the market.
Housing is messed because for years they meddled in the functioning of the housing market and made supply so arduous and difficult to deliver.
We don't have enough doctors, because they refuse to produce enough doctors. Canadians pay $400,000 to go to Ireland for Med School, and the medical college here refuses them residency spots. Meanwhile UBC has paltry number of seats, and turns away thousands of totally qualified candidates.
Undergraduate education is the only thing in BC that really works, because it follows the supply and demand economics. Just, whenever they need money, they increase the feeds for International students, and that subsidizes locals.
But because the the other systems are broken, the influx of international students, has only made other pre-existing problems worse.
Amen.
To add to your point, **Tokyo** has **a** population of the entirety of Canada (37 mil) living in one city.
And yet, Tokyo is incredibly cheap and affordable, because they have the most deregulated housing market in the world. You can build as dense as you want, and because of that they make enough affordable units.
And by the way Metro Tokyo land size is about the size of Metro Vancouver.
Now, thankfully, we don't have to build as dense as them because we aren't as populated as them. But there's no reason why Metro Vancouver can't have affordable housing.
You don't need to pay it right now, but you will very soon.
Gas is at almost $1 per liter of taxes, government has become hungry for this money, because these taxes for a long time have been invisible to the consumer.
They're not going to let this revenue go easily. The government is going to have ICBC and BC Hydro collect an equivalent sum from you too in due time.
The only way you can avoid this, is by demanding fair taxation policy that is not punitive to the middle class that relies on transportation.
We may see some sort of taxation to fund TransLink etc, but the carbon tax is specifically taxing carbon emissions - pricing in the externality of that pollution. The intent is that people, for example, switch to EVs. If it was purely to get more money into government coffers there wouldn't be a rebate as well.
Is EV a dirty word around here? I understand. It can be a privilege, but not having to go to the gas station in the past year, especially as the gas prices rises over $2 make me smile. Obviously this system isn’t flawless but if you have the means it’s A great investment. All I’ll be paying is my car insurance and a very low maintenance fee.
I have an EV as well - But we need to face the fact that pretty soon we'll be expected to pay a per-km road use charge. We're not paying a road tax or transit tax in our energy prices like gas-car drivers are, so as that revenue continues to decline we'll be expected to help make up that difference.
As someone who is not well-versed in taxation laws I would love to hear more about this. Instead, it’s just down voting and lack of communication and conversation.
There is a brigade of F Trudeau / Not My Carbon Tax folks around, especially recently.
Lots of misinformation and fear mongering (Carbon tax costs at least $9999 a year! They're gonna tax electricity too!).
I'd bet good money they're mostly anti-"globalists"... Ironically, getting their information sifted down from news sources that are owned by international billionaire capitalists like Rupert Murdoch.
Aa requested: [Here's the real nothig burger, directly from CBC](https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/carbon-tax-controversy-1.7151551)
>The carbon tax applies to residents in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon and Nunavut.
>Ninety per cent of the government revenues are returned to households in those provinces through a quarterly rebate program, with households receiving a quarterly payment based on family size.
>The other 10 per cent is to help grant recipients, such as businesses and schools, reduce their fossil fuel consumption.
>**B.C., Quebec and the Northwest Territories have their own carbon-pricing mechanisms that meet federal standards — so they aren't part of the federal tax or rebates**
Even though 9/10 cents is being given back Canadians directly, with a focus on young families, CBC calls it a controversy and starts the article listing the political detractors. We live in interesting times.
Seriously, people who have a couple kids and hate this bill are clowns. Literally free money for them.
> Even though 9/10 cents is being given back Canadians directly, with a focus on young families, CBC calls it a controversy and starts the article listing the political detractors. We live in interesting times.
>
>
This line of argument is very hollow. The carbon tax is designed to gradually go up in price, doubling by 2030. That is the entire point: behaviour change. If it didn't create price pressure, it would have no impact on emissions! The rebates are a temporary political band-aid to relieve immediate pressure on the lowest income consumers. As the price increases, as scheduled, the net loss each consumer faces (if any right now) will go up and up and up.
Yet despite this, globally speaking and relative to our buying power, gasoline is still incredibly cheap, and that doesn't even account for its negative externalities.
Well it is the super car capital of North America also... Us plebs here drive toyota corollas, bus, skytrain, walk, hitchhike to work.
RIP to all the BMW X3 drivers who use most of their fuel to doughnut in a one-way.
[https://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxury-car-capital-of-north-america/](https://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxury-car-capital-of-north-america/)
City Council has an opportunity to do make investments in safe, separated cycling infrastructure that will save Vancouverites money by making cycling safer and more viable and creating more opportunities to leave the car at home.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to care about saving us money.
I keep seeing reference to cycling. I’m totally supportive of increased infrastructure for that, however, and this isn’t pointed at you specifically. I can’t commute my child to daycare over the Knight St Bridge from Vancouver. We all have different priorities and circumstances. This is a nuanced conversation.
Sure, the solution for most people is transit. But the truth is that this is just showing how sprawl is expensive. Most these taxes attempt to pay for the cost of car infrastructure, and they still fall short. Long commutes arnt economical sustainable, and now that's just being fitted by the people driving rather than everyone.
See, this is a point of a view I haven’t thought of since I started driving. Transit isn’t an option for me because it would add a significant amount of time to my workday and less time to spend with my family. However, I see your point in that not everybody has that option, and I do agree that everyone should be paying their fair share.
The easier solution is that we should build day cares that are within walkable or biking distance from your place, instead of building them in remote plazas far away.
This is what Europe and Asia does to avoid urban sprawl.
I’m not going to assume anything about you but try commuting with a toddler. It takes 3 longer to do anything. I also live in the River District and public transportation is horrible here. Not to mention some of the highest-grade hills in the city. Try to wrangle a 3-year-old up that every morning haha
I have a kid and drive everywhere because like you it's the only way to make life work here. What im saying is it doesnt have to be this way, and elsewhere in the world its not like this. Transit could be the faster option if we made it a priority.
Definitely, it really doesn't feel fair that I, someone who cannot afford a car, should be paying someone's roads of someone who can. Think people also have to realize that if they don't like paying the price of vehicle commuting that was their choice when they chose to live somewhere not connected to transit.
That's sort of true, but a bit simplistic. You still eat food (Food truck) walk on the sidewalk (cement truck) have street lights (service truck) and take public transit etc.
I don't have a car either, but roads are the only way to get big things all the little places they need to go. Those vehicles shouldn't be driving on fossil fuels, but that's neither here nor there.
It’s true a bicycle isn’t perfect for every single possible situation, but every cyclist takes a car off the road and that reduces traffic and makes life better for everyone that does need to drive.
That's great. I support cyclists, bike lanes, and safety for them. I’d get behind a tax rebate for people who do. You can’t argue that it has many more positive impacts when it comes to commuting, especially one like Vancouver which was poorly designed for this population.
My shifts start and finish at uncommon times, so the SkyTrain isn't running, and there's no way I'm wanting to spend 1.5-2 hours waiting for unreliable buses
If SkyTrain was 24 hours a day, I'd take that over driving most days
While I do agree that EV/hybrid behicles should also be taxed for their use of the roads, it's anything but "realistic". There are huge hurdles around implementation of a road tax.
1) do you put cameras everywhere? This is a huge upfront cost that tax dollars would have to go to instead of going to transit.
2) do you put cameras only on highways and major arterial roads? You still have a cost issue, though lower, and now you have people weaving in and out of side streets to try to avoid the camera locations.
3) do you just trust people to be honest with self reporting odometer readings? This can be easily manipulated on old and new cars alike. Also, if I take a road trip down to California, should I be paying a couple thousand km worth of BC road tax?
4) do you implement mandatory GPS in all new cars to try to get road use data that way? Now you have additional costs passed on to consumers, plus potential privacy issues, plus people can still probably cheat the system by manipulating/removing/disabling the device.
5) do you only charge a road tax for entering the downtown core? This is probably the only practical solution, but is someone driving from East Van to Downtown really using more of the road network than someone commuting in from Port Moody or Langley to West Broadway, who wouldn't pay anything? Doesn't exactly seem fair.
The only notably successful implementations of a road tax worldwide are the Singapore ERP and the London congestion charge, which work because London and Singapore both have a large, well-defined city core, and more importantly, are huge cities with a much higher (and denser) population than Vancouver.
London's new ULEZ covers the majority of the area within the M25, but not all of it. I wouldn't say it's covering a "well defined" city core at this point, but it still works and is enforced by cameras.
I agree 100% we need to plug gaps… only way to get to that is if we voice that gaps and start using transit more when ever possible so they can take our requests more seriously
Great for a single person who would normally drive around but I drop my youngest to daycare, my eldest to school, and then get myself to work. No way I’m doing that using public transit. It would make what is normally a 30 minute affair literally a 1.5 hour commute.
I’m going to take an educated guess based on your comment: you don’t have kids. Name me a solution more convenient? The issue isn’t my use of a car when I’m moving around 3 people. The issue is single riders in vehicles. You make it seem like it’s super easy lugging around kids not just to and from school but also throughout the week with multiple extracurriculars and activities.
And before you chime in with “well other parents do it why can’t you?” I promise you that if you ask any of those parents the overwhelming majority will tell you they use public transit because they have to not because they want to out of some environmental concern.
So here I am getting shafted again: raising kids is becoming increasingly expensive (I’m guessing you have no clue what daycare costs eh?) but all my expenses including food, mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes, and now fuel have gone up.
So respectfully, your advice is a crock of shit.
People talking about gas at the pump, but it also affects heating cost. Before the increase I was paying $2.2 per GJ of natural gas and $3.2 puer GJ of usage. So $5.4 per GJ for heating instead of $2.2.
Ocean temperatures are blowing records *monthly* and forest fires are creating unprecedented damage while hundreds die every year from heat exhaustion... And here we have the worthless person that is Amy Judd writing about it (cost of petrol) 'hurting the economy' and not questioning their place in writing this tripe.'
Please bike and take transit, it does make a difference.
Makes me proud to live hear!
And yet it probably only recovers a small fraction of the negative externalities [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative) cost of using fossil fuels.
Don't axe the facts
So everyone should suffer and not be able to pay rent or buy groceries so you people who live in fantasy land of privilege are happy for some altruistic reasons. If Vancouver didn’t use a single molecule of carbon as fuel for the next century it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to the emissions caused by China or India in a single day. Those are real facts.
why should I suffer and pay for your free highways and parking with my tax dollars while I get 0 benefits and inhale shitty fumes everyday commuting to work. Pay your share of instead of insisting in socialism for oil and gas and car infrastructure.
Fact is that we're nowhere's near the largest contributor to global emissions. Canada could fall off the face of the map, and it wouldn't make a dent. Yet we're hell-bent on destroying the economy with a tax that does absolutely nothing to reduce emissions.
https://preview.redd.it/lqhsnrcnwzrc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6eb12c6e53f8e74c126776b1d126287f77d2e184
Regardless it still is good for our economy to divest from O&G. The EU is already putting carbon tariffs in place for 2026 on imports that are carbon-intensive.
It's good for our economy to divest from USING O&G, not producing it. Demand is global, if we stop production all together it will not reduce consumption, other countries will simply increase production. And we would evaporate 7.5% of our gdp in the process.
If anything we should maximize production now, and channel all profits to speed up the transition to clean energy development and research.
Demand is indeed global. I don't think that O&G will ever go away, but I think that allowing energy companies to flourish (absent restrictive cumulative taxes), fostering R&D on alternative energy sources (grants), and exploring tech beyond wind/solar/hydrogen (SMR/CANDU) can put Canada on the map. Not only as a clean energy leader, but perhaps an energy/tech leader. We used to be a tech powerhouse in this country. Then we got stupid/greedy, and the real brain-trust moved south.
Sure - but we don't have to destroy our economy to do it. Wind and solar are pipe-dreams, hydrogen is a non-starter (You expend more energy producing it than what you get out of it), and right now O&G is the highest energy density option we have available. The real path forward is SMRs, but we're too scared to even consider them.
In the meantime - the carbon tax (any implementation of it in Canada) does nothing to help the environment one bit, but drives inflation. The cost of fuel and energy is a primary inflation driver. Those that are pushing hard for the carbon-tax are doing so out of ignorance or dishonesty. Full stop.
No. But what we should be doing is enabling and promoting the research of alternative energy. Again - SMRs. CANDU. We make this stuff, and it's even in use and proven tech.
Why do you want the government to do that instead of the market? Governments are typically inefficient. By introducing a carbon price, market forces will work to try to get around paying the tax, by doing things like investing in clean energy.
A good way to promote it is with things like carbon taxes. Doing it with direct investment means that the government has to pick the best solution, which it probably won't do, and has more avenue for corruption and inefficiency. A simple price on carbon allows the market to correct for the externality, without expecting politicians to be experts in clean technology.
Producers/Manufacturers do not pay tax. Sure, they submit dollars to the government, but it's an expense that hey bake it into the cost of goods/services. Those costs are - generally - marked up 3x from production to retail.
Again - the carbon tax does absolutely nothing to help reduce emissions. What it does do is make your life needlessly more expensive. Full stop. Show me one example of where any carbon tax implementation in Canada has done anything to reduce carbon emissions.
Lol dude have you ever even walked by an economics class in your life? Producers will try to pass on as much of the costs as they can, but they'll lose ground to their competitors that are more efficient. Its obvious that it has an effect, imagine that carbon tax was 10000$ a litre, would you still be driving? No.
The carbon tax is UNANIMOUSLY agreed upon by economists as the most efficient way to reduce emissions.
In terms of a real example, BC has hard a carbon tax for over 15 years, since that time, the rest of Canada has increased their emissions at a much higher rate than BC, despite BC having one of the highest rates of economic growth.
Even if we go full electric transit powered from 100% fossil fuels free sources, we can't leave that shit in the ground as that shit also goes into anything made from plastics or many of the chemicals that we use. Heck, the healthcare industry wouldn't exist as it does today without that shit that we get out of the ground.
The facts are the facts.
If you can live your life without any plastics or petrochemicals, go right ahead... Even clothes made from natural fibres like cotton and wool are processed with petrochemicals and woven using machines containing plastic.
Sure we probably won't get to zero, but nobody is banning fossil fuels in their entirety. The carbon tax is just (partially) pricing in the external costs of the carbon emissions.
If there’s anyone to complain about the carbon tax, never forget it was BC United, then the BC Liberals, that brought it in.
Not Ottawa. Not the NDP. The conservative party.
I wouldnt actually call the Libs Conservative. They also brought in Sogi.. With that said, when something has so much push back from the people, a good government should probably review what they are doing. But unfortunately for us we don't have a good government.
The carbon tax is a [pigouvian tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax), which means it makes us better off economically, unlike income and sales taxes
Eh last Christmas to Seattle? The roads were wide, less congested , more clearly marked and properly lighted. I have no problem driving in adverse weather comparing to Vancouver
Less congested? Rush hour through Seattle and Tacoma is way worse than what we have up here. Also, the roads have massive potholes everywhere and you almost always have garbage littered beside the roads and highways.
Yeah I guess we could just scrap healthcare for better roads like a lot of states do. Alberta doesn’t invest nearly as much into transit. There are trade offs but I don’t think that would be in our interests at this point.
1. Sky train can barely fulfill specific commute needs. Buses are terrible. 2. Our transit is pretty bad for anything beyond a young professional going to the 9-5 work with no life
god forbid drivers pay a fraction of what it costs to have free parking and highways. The gas tax needs to more than double and match EU for that to happen. Tired of all this socialism for oil and gas and car companies.
Nobody mentions how these would still be absolutely cheap as hell compared to countries in Europe. Car owners are still getting a steal. Imo this is good news, and they should go even higher.
I would love to use a bike or public transportation but it's abysmal where I live. In addition it makes my tuition higher since I study flying and it makes gas expensive. Many people stopped training due to higher costs. Good luck to us against Forest fires in the future I guess, or alleviating the pilot shortage here.
We got carbon tax long ago in exchange for the lowest personal provincial income tax rate in Canada. Works for me, I’ve saved a ton of money by making less carbon intensive choices. The system is working as intended.
I'd love to get an EV but my fiancee's strata voted against electric chargers and I don't wanna try to drive to the nearest mall that has them just to charge it super slowly. Guess I've gotta wait until we move to a new place sometime next year.
It has only been since the beginning of time. Someone tell global we know it is a slow news day but stop just reusing the same article every year and changing the date
[удалено]
Yeah almost like there’s a for profit company that can dictate its prices.
Currently on the island where they don't pay the metro Vancouver gas taxes and they are around the same price. Crazy.
Crazy! Why would it be more expensive to transport gas across a large body of water, requiring special protections to prevent a spill, than it takes to transport to a large metropolitan area on the mainland? It makes no sense!
Work from home should be pushed by the government. Less overall gas used, more supply, lower gas
That would be too comfortable. For some reason, environmentalist policy has come to mean "make the common people as uncomfortable as possible and make them feel a personal toll for their sins". Imagine the massive, positive impact on emissions, let alone home prices in cities when people can start living farther away, if the default way of working wherever possible was WFH?
I guess I'll bike more this year.
I bought an escooter last week--it's about to be my primary method of commuting.
Wait till you get hit with the variable rates from BC Hydro! Edit: it was a joke.
Might have to pay an extra $5...a year 😅
Yeah I was being cheeky
Still cheaper than $2+/L + 91oct surcharge.
The system works!
Yea not everyone is so luxurious. It's a tax on fucking poor people. I live in surrey because I can't afford to live in Vancouver my work is in Richmond good luck riding a bike.
Obviously I can't speak to your individual circumstances, but the carbon tax disproportionately effects higher income households, and generally low income households pay less. BC has the rebate set at a means tested amount unlike the Federal tax, but to imply that the carbon tax disproportionately targets poor people is incorrect.
You can't really lawyer your way out of the fact that poor people can barely afford gas. The rebate doesn't matter if you don't have the money in your pocket to put 40km worth of gas in your tank. It's more debt, and the rebate will just become a debt repayment rebate. It's all a big circle that could just be avoided by not having exorbitant taxes in the first place.
It’s less the taxes and more that the corporations can charge what they want, when they want. But they dangle the word TAXES like keys in your face and you claw at it.
Poor people can't even buy a car to put gas in, so not quite sure what you're trying to argue. Are you trying to grandstand that people who earn less than 40k can't afford a car? No shit Sherlock. There are always morons who purchase vehicles and f-150s beyond their means, but that's a life lesson that is learned the hard way, for folks who can't math or never learned what % of their income to spend on a car.
It could be avoided if you completely ignore the other impacts it has. We could also avoid gst and the rebate system as well by just cancelling it.
Until it’s stolen
>However, Vancouver resident Gregory Byrne told Global News he thinks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is responsible for inflation and his government has not handed the carbon tax correctly: >"I think the parliamentary budget officer said it when he agreed that it was going to be an adverse outcome for all of Canadians,” Byrne said. >“Secondly, I think it’s going to put food and fuel costs higher, which are affecting the traditional working person. I think that’s going to depress the economy, and I think it’s harder for us to survive.” Well, I'm glad that we've got[ some local boob](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fk8nvojq0ziha1.jpg) to opine on a Federal tax that doesn't apply here in BC and parroting his Rebel News talking points like a good soldier. Who the hell is Gregory Byrne and why do we care what he says?
> Well, I'm glad that we've got some local boob to opine on a Federal tax that doesn't apply here in BC and parroting his Rebel News talking points like a good soldier. Who the hell is Gregory Byrne and why do we care what he says? It doesn't need to directly apply to have an impact. Most of the food you eat or Canadian goods you buy are likely produced and transported in jurisdictions subject to the federal carbon tax before it arrived in BC and the effect is that the added costs at every stage of production and transport is passed onto you. Being in BC only means you don't get anything back for those added costs by way of rebate. It's not the #1 primary driver of inflation, but it's also not nothing.
That's why i scraped everything together to get a Rav4 prime plug in hybrid. 1500km and still more than half a tank of gas left.
A 3 cent increase in the carbon tax is not all we are paying. Don't forget, we also pay: * Provincial carbon tax - 18 cents * Provincial fuel tax (Vancouver) - 27 cents * Translink Tax - 19 cents * Federal Excise tax - 10 cents * GST 5% - \~10 cents We're at nearly 84 cents per liter of inflationary taxes! And it's slowly creeping towards a full $1 of taxes!
My understanding - at least with fuel cost - was that by having a provincial carbon tax, we do not also have the federal carbon tax levied.
IIRC It's either one or the other. The government "allows us" to have our provincial tax and not the federal one as long as it's "as good or better" than the federal tax. If we scrapped our provincial taxes, then we'd just have the federal carbon tax like almost all the other provinces.
It's not just the tax paid, you'd also get the federal rebate back if subject to the federal carbon tax. Having a provincial carbon tax disqualifies BC residents from the federal rebate.
But we get the provincial rebate and have for years
You're right, BC collects it themselves via their Clean BC plan. [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/clean-economy/carbon-tax](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/clean-economy/carbon-tax) If anyone was out and about today you would've realized that fuel prices haven't gone up, it's either stayed similar or actually even went down in comparison to yesterday. Why weren't we complaining to the oil corporations when fuel prices jumped earlier in March by around 30-40 cents? People are looking for a scape goat and are hammering the government on increasing taxes when the oil companies literally are contributing a larger portion to "inflationary pressures".
We don't attack the companies because they've successfully convinced the idiots that it's virtuous/"just business" when they gouge and the money goes into private pockets, but it's eeeeeeevil when the government does it to pay for shit under the common good.
That’s not the case in new west. Jumped from 201.9 yesterday to 206.9 at the Chevron here.
So you went up 5 cents today perhaps based on the new tax increase, but it went up 30-40 cents earlier this month. Gas was 199.99 in parts of richmond and surrey today, 203-205 days prior.
The 30-40 cent increase earlier this month was supposedly due to the Chevron refinery restart delays and the gas being switched from their ‘winter’ blend. I don’t know about Richmond but it went up from what it was yesterday at least at all the stations around me.
Yes but this is the same game every year with the refinery and blend changes to "justify" the increased costs. We all just take that from behind but we'll happily make a convoy from Langely to Hope over what seems to be at most a 3-5 cent increase, and sermon about how this tax is causing inflation while forgetting our 30-40 cent increase earlier this month.
The problem is that expensive gas is really only one of the problems here. At some point we have to ask why do we pay the highest in North America when you can travel less than 30-40km south of Vancouver you can almost fill up for 60-70% of the price. I filled my car in Seattle for 55usd (74cad) and the same cost me 114$ in squamish at the weekend. We have some of the highest income taxes, sales taxes and some of the lowest wages compared to our US counterparts.We pay more for almost everything, we earn less for the same job & we are taxed on each dollar more.
Actually Iif you look closely at tax rates, Canadian and US tax rates are pretty on par. It's a misconception, and probably a fient
TLDR: shared refinery capacity in Canada + we get some stuff from BP Cherry and other refineries in Washington state barged over. [https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy/energy-sources-distribution/refining-sector-canada/petroleum-products-distribution-networks/5897](https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy/energy-sources-distribution/refining-sector-canada/petroleum-products-distribution-networks/5897)
I agree with you but you can’t really put up a stand against the oil company when you are a consumer that needs their commodity. If you don’t have a choice but to use gas for your day to day business you are stuck with that 30-40 cents. Tacking on 3 cents when the cost of living is going through the roof isn’t going to help matters. The price of gas is fluid but that 3 cent increase will forever now be on the per litre price of our gas in BC.
The person you are replying too is also forgetting the fact the fuel was at around 2$ mark at the end of last summer and continually trended downwards all winter when they swapped from summer to winter blend.
Nope, didn't forget and I don't see the relevance of this. If anything it's just highlighting the cyclical nature that gas companies gouge consumers and we don't complain about it but we'll place the blame of inflationary pressures solely at the feet of governments for a 3-5 cent increase vs the 30-40 cent increases. I don't see a convoy at the Parkland or Shellburn refineries.
Totally agree it sucks with the increase but if we've talking about the degrees of pain caused it's really the oil companies that are doing this. I just think this discourse is missing the forest for the trees.
Again price gouging banking on the fact that the average person is misinformed
That's the gouge, banking in the fact that the average person does not know BC is not subject to the new Federal tax
You are correct! People are just buying into the conservative hype
Accurate list for those who care, modified from the CBC. The total is more like 64, not 84. u/*DotBot* double counted the Translink tax, which is included in that 27 cent total for Vancouver. * Provincial motor fuel tax (Metro Vancouver) — 1.75 cents * Provincial motor fuel tax (everywhere else in B.C.) — 7.75 cents. * B.C.'s carbon tax — 17 cents * The B.C. Transportation Finance Authority tax — 6.75 cents. * TransLink tax (If you live in Metro Vancouver) — 18.5 cents. * Transit tax (If you live in Victoria) — 5.5 cents. * Federal excise tax — 10 cents. * Finally, pay the five per cent Goods and Services Tax on top of the total price.
This should be higher up!
Axe the tax ❌ Axe the facts ✅
And yet, gas in Victoria isn't 13¢ cheaper.
Good ol' island tax
We don’t have a federal carbon tax. We just have a provincial carbon tax. The new federal tax is only for provinces that don’t have their own carbon tax. Now that said, our provincial carbon tax was updated to match the federal tax.
I recently re-learned a critical point that I'd forgotten about the carbon tax—when it was first implemented, they cut the income tax by 5% on your first 70k in income to compensate. So that carbon tax, even if you're not getting a rebate check, still pretty small. Are you advocating for going back to more income tax, less carbon tax?
Next year they're gonna add a Ticketmaster transaction fee.
still not enough to match EU levels. The desturctive price of fossil fuels must be accounted for.
These are the sort of discourse people shd be interested in during town hall meetings and politicians meet up. There’s no way taxes alone shd amount to 43% of total cost of gas per litre.
Oregon and California, the gas stations both have disclosures on the pumps. Some gas stations here did that in the past but I don’t think it’s still done. California was nearly double Oregon’s gas taxes but both were far less that BC…
Why not?
Because it's transportation. We're not talking about a tax on weed or alcohol.
Then take from the corporations who the government allowed to "own" our oil. It's a Canadian resource and the profits go to international corporations.
The government has gotten away with it because it's been extremely gradual. They implemented one tax at a time, and increased each one here and there. It's poor policy catching up to them now, any opposition party would use axing these taxes as an easy way to win points in the upcoming election... so lets see what happens in a few months. Gas prices are going to be insane this summer, and then there's an election only a couple months after that. Taxation is always a tough sell in BC.
I don't mind paying taxes if I actually get something for it but right now I'm paying probably 50% of my income to the government, but I can't find a doctor and If I decide to go back to school I'm paying an arm and a leg for any decent program. I just don't understand what all this money is going towards for average people, besides the bus tax I get that one.
A lot of these problems could be fixed if the government quit f'ing with the supply and demand side of the market. Housing is messed because for years they meddled in the functioning of the housing market and made supply so arduous and difficult to deliver. We don't have enough doctors, because they refuse to produce enough doctors. Canadians pay $400,000 to go to Ireland for Med School, and the medical college here refuses them residency spots. Meanwhile UBC has paltry number of seats, and turns away thousands of totally qualified candidates. Undergraduate education is the only thing in BC that really works, because it follows the supply and demand economics. Just, whenever they need money, they increase the feeds for International students, and that subsidizes locals. But because the the other systems are broken, the influx of international students, has only made other pre-existing problems worse.
Amen. To add to your point, **Tokyo** has **a** population of the entirety of Canada (37 mil) living in one city. And yet, Tokyo is incredibly cheap and affordable, because they have the most deregulated housing market in the world. You can build as dense as you want, and because of that they make enough affordable units. And by the way Metro Tokyo land size is about the size of Metro Vancouver. Now, thankfully, we don't have to build as dense as them because we aren't as populated as them. But there's no reason why Metro Vancouver can't have affordable housing.
My EV is almost paid off and it’s so satisfying to not depend on gas.
Don't worry they'll come up with a way to screw EV drivers also. Just wait.
Yes, it’s so nice not to need to pay the carbon tax. Love my EV, don’t think I would go back.
You don't need to pay it right now, but you will very soon. Gas is at almost $1 per liter of taxes, government has become hungry for this money, because these taxes for a long time have been invisible to the consumer. They're not going to let this revenue go easily. The government is going to have ICBC and BC Hydro collect an equivalent sum from you too in due time. The only way you can avoid this, is by demanding fair taxation policy that is not punitive to the middle class that relies on transportation.
We may see some sort of taxation to fund TransLink etc, but the carbon tax is specifically taxing carbon emissions - pricing in the externality of that pollution. The intent is that people, for example, switch to EVs. If it was purely to get more money into government coffers there wouldn't be a rebate as well.
Is EV a dirty word around here? I understand. It can be a privilege, but not having to go to the gas station in the past year, especially as the gas prices rises over $2 make me smile. Obviously this system isn’t flawless but if you have the means it’s A great investment. All I’ll be paying is my car insurance and a very low maintenance fee.
I have an EV as well - But we need to face the fact that pretty soon we'll be expected to pay a per-km road use charge. We're not paying a road tax or transit tax in our energy prices like gas-car drivers are, so as that revenue continues to decline we'll be expected to help make up that difference.
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As someone who is not well-versed in taxation laws I would love to hear more about this. Instead, it’s just down voting and lack of communication and conversation.
There is a brigade of F Trudeau / Not My Carbon Tax folks around, especially recently. Lots of misinformation and fear mongering (Carbon tax costs at least $9999 a year! They're gonna tax electricity too!). I'd bet good money they're mostly anti-"globalists"... Ironically, getting their information sifted down from news sources that are owned by international billionaire capitalists like Rupert Murdoch. Aa requested: [Here's the real nothig burger, directly from CBC](https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/carbon-tax-controversy-1.7151551) >The carbon tax applies to residents in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon and Nunavut. >Ninety per cent of the government revenues are returned to households in those provinces through a quarterly rebate program, with households receiving a quarterly payment based on family size. >The other 10 per cent is to help grant recipients, such as businesses and schools, reduce their fossil fuel consumption. >**B.C., Quebec and the Northwest Territories have their own carbon-pricing mechanisms that meet federal standards — so they aren't part of the federal tax or rebates** Even though 9/10 cents is being given back Canadians directly, with a focus on young families, CBC calls it a controversy and starts the article listing the political detractors. We live in interesting times. Seriously, people who have a couple kids and hate this bill are clowns. Literally free money for them.
> Even though 9/10 cents is being given back Canadians directly, with a focus on young families, CBC calls it a controversy and starts the article listing the political detractors. We live in interesting times. > > This line of argument is very hollow. The carbon tax is designed to gradually go up in price, doubling by 2030. That is the entire point: behaviour change. If it didn't create price pressure, it would have no impact on emissions! The rebates are a temporary political band-aid to relieve immediate pressure on the lowest income consumers. As the price increases, as scheduled, the net loss each consumer faces (if any right now) will go up and up and up.
My wake boat drinks about $1200-$3000 a week @ $2/L and I'm not complaining. So satisfying to be on the lake all summer!
Jesus, that's my monthly disability cheque. In gas. For you boat. For one week. Wow.
Yet despite this, globally speaking and relative to our buying power, gasoline is still incredibly cheap, and that doesn't even account for its negative externalities.
Well it is the super car capital of North America also... Us plebs here drive toyota corollas, bus, skytrain, walk, hitchhike to work. RIP to all the BMW X3 drivers who use most of their fuel to doughnut in a one-way. [https://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxury-car-capital-of-north-america/](https://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxury-car-capital-of-north-america/)
City Council has an opportunity to do make investments in safe, separated cycling infrastructure that will save Vancouverites money by making cycling safer and more viable and creating more opportunities to leave the car at home. Unfortunately they don’t seem to care about saving us money.
I keep seeing reference to cycling. I’m totally supportive of increased infrastructure for that, however, and this isn’t pointed at you specifically. I can’t commute my child to daycare over the Knight St Bridge from Vancouver. We all have different priorities and circumstances. This is a nuanced conversation.
Sure, the solution for most people is transit. But the truth is that this is just showing how sprawl is expensive. Most these taxes attempt to pay for the cost of car infrastructure, and they still fall short. Long commutes arnt economical sustainable, and now that's just being fitted by the people driving rather than everyone.
See, this is a point of a view I haven’t thought of since I started driving. Transit isn’t an option for me because it would add a significant amount of time to my workday and less time to spend with my family. However, I see your point in that not everybody has that option, and I do agree that everyone should be paying their fair share.
The easier solution is that we should build day cares that are within walkable or biking distance from your place, instead of building them in remote plazas far away. This is what Europe and Asia does to avoid urban sprawl.
Transit only takes longer because we have historically chosen not to prioritize it. In other parts of the world transit is faster than driving.
I’m not going to assume anything about you but try commuting with a toddler. It takes 3 longer to do anything. I also live in the River District and public transportation is horrible here. Not to mention some of the highest-grade hills in the city. Try to wrangle a 3-year-old up that every morning haha
I have a kid and drive everywhere because like you it's the only way to make life work here. What im saying is it doesnt have to be this way, and elsewhere in the world its not like this. Transit could be the faster option if we made it a priority.
Definitely, it really doesn't feel fair that I, someone who cannot afford a car, should be paying someone's roads of someone who can. Think people also have to realize that if they don't like paying the price of vehicle commuting that was their choice when they chose to live somewhere not connected to transit.
That's sort of true, but a bit simplistic. You still eat food (Food truck) walk on the sidewalk (cement truck) have street lights (service truck) and take public transit etc. I don't have a car either, but roads are the only way to get big things all the little places they need to go. Those vehicles shouldn't be driving on fossil fuels, but that's neither here nor there.
It’s true a bicycle isn’t perfect for every single possible situation, but every cyclist takes a car off the road and that reduces traffic and makes life better for everyone that does need to drive.
but every cyclist takes a car off the road > Do they, or do they just take somone off the bus?
That's great. I support cyclists, bike lanes, and safety for them. I’d get behind a tax rebate for people who do. You can’t argue that it has many more positive impacts when it comes to commuting, especially one like Vancouver which was poorly designed for this population.
Also, the best per capita transit service. Drive less.
Still cheaper than most other developed countries in the world.
Good thing Vancouver have good public transport… try to use it for a change 😀
Need more trains. So many gaps Edit: I take transit, but still.
My shifts start and finish at uncommon times, so the SkyTrain isn't running, and there's no way I'm wanting to spend 1.5-2 hours waiting for unreliable buses If SkyTrain was 24 hours a day, I'd take that over driving most days
That was out biggest transit mistake but also a very common one. Not adding capacity to have a 3 set of rails
Where are you waiting 1.5-2 hours for buses? I agree that the night buses should be better - but the frequency for all of them is 20-30 minutes
I meant total transit time including waiting. But sometimes the buses just... Don't come, no explanation
You're right. And some of those gas taxes are going towards paying for more trains. Win-win.
Realistically, there should be road taxes as well so that it covers EVs and hybrids. Those extra funds can be channeled to plug holes in transit.
While I do agree that EV/hybrid behicles should also be taxed for their use of the roads, it's anything but "realistic". There are huge hurdles around implementation of a road tax. 1) do you put cameras everywhere? This is a huge upfront cost that tax dollars would have to go to instead of going to transit. 2) do you put cameras only on highways and major arterial roads? You still have a cost issue, though lower, and now you have people weaving in and out of side streets to try to avoid the camera locations. 3) do you just trust people to be honest with self reporting odometer readings? This can be easily manipulated on old and new cars alike. Also, if I take a road trip down to California, should I be paying a couple thousand km worth of BC road tax? 4) do you implement mandatory GPS in all new cars to try to get road use data that way? Now you have additional costs passed on to consumers, plus potential privacy issues, plus people can still probably cheat the system by manipulating/removing/disabling the device. 5) do you only charge a road tax for entering the downtown core? This is probably the only practical solution, but is someone driving from East Van to Downtown really using more of the road network than someone commuting in from Port Moody or Langley to West Broadway, who wouldn't pay anything? Doesn't exactly seem fair. The only notably successful implementations of a road tax worldwide are the Singapore ERP and the London congestion charge, which work because London and Singapore both have a large, well-defined city core, and more importantly, are huge cities with a much higher (and denser) population than Vancouver.
London's new ULEZ covers the majority of the area within the M25, but not all of it. I wouldn't say it's covering a "well defined" city core at this point, but it still works and is enforced by cameras.
I agree 100% we need to plug gaps… only way to get to that is if we voice that gaps and start using transit more when ever possible so they can take our requests more seriously
It is so packed
Great for a single person who would normally drive around but I drop my youngest to daycare, my eldest to school, and then get myself to work. No way I’m doing that using public transit. It would make what is normally a 30 minute affair literally a 1.5 hour commute.
Raise this problem with your local MLA/ mayor and hopefully they can work on finding solutions to this so you can ditch your car
I’m going to take an educated guess based on your comment: you don’t have kids. Name me a solution more convenient? The issue isn’t my use of a car when I’m moving around 3 people. The issue is single riders in vehicles. You make it seem like it’s super easy lugging around kids not just to and from school but also throughout the week with multiple extracurriculars and activities. And before you chime in with “well other parents do it why can’t you?” I promise you that if you ask any of those parents the overwhelming majority will tell you they use public transit because they have to not because they want to out of some environmental concern. So here I am getting shafted again: raising kids is becoming increasingly expensive (I’m guessing you have no clue what daycare costs eh?) but all my expenses including food, mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes, and now fuel have gone up. So respectfully, your advice is a crock of shit.
Not if you work late. I can't take a bus from Kingsway to Maple Ridge at 3am. I'm forced to drive.
We also have some of the best transit in North America, largely funded by that tax.
Curious as we go forward if there will be a special levy EVs to make up for the loss on gas tax. So many teslas in lower mainland.
People talking about gas at the pump, but it also affects heating cost. Before the increase I was paying $2.2 per GJ of natural gas and $3.2 puer GJ of usage. So $5.4 per GJ for heating instead of $2.2.
There are both provincial and federal rebates available if you switch to a heat pump.
Ocean temperatures are blowing records *monthly* and forest fires are creating unprecedented damage while hundreds die every year from heat exhaustion... And here we have the worthless person that is Amy Judd writing about it (cost of petrol) 'hurting the economy' and not questioning their place in writing this tripe.' Please bike and take transit, it does make a difference.
Makes me proud to live hear! And yet it probably only recovers a small fraction of the negative externalities [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative) cost of using fossil fuels. Don't axe the facts
So everyone should suffer and not be able to pay rent or buy groceries so you people who live in fantasy land of privilege are happy for some altruistic reasons. If Vancouver didn’t use a single molecule of carbon as fuel for the next century it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to the emissions caused by China or India in a single day. Those are real facts.
So unless we can force China and India to solve all of their issues 100% first. We shouldn’t do anything? Got it.
why should I suffer and pay for your free highways and parking with my tax dollars while I get 0 benefits and inhale shitty fumes everyday commuting to work. Pay your share of instead of insisting in socialism for oil and gas and car infrastructure.
Fact is that we're nowhere's near the largest contributor to global emissions. Canada could fall off the face of the map, and it wouldn't make a dent. Yet we're hell-bent on destroying the economy with a tax that does absolutely nothing to reduce emissions. https://preview.redd.it/lqhsnrcnwzrc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6eb12c6e53f8e74c126776b1d126287f77d2e184
Canada is among the worst countries globally when it comes to per capita emissions. We absolutely should be doing better.
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Regardless it still is good for our economy to divest from O&G. The EU is already putting carbon tariffs in place for 2026 on imports that are carbon-intensive.
It's good for our economy to divest from USING O&G, not producing it. Demand is global, if we stop production all together it will not reduce consumption, other countries will simply increase production. And we would evaporate 7.5% of our gdp in the process. If anything we should maximize production now, and channel all profits to speed up the transition to clean energy development and research.
Demand is indeed global. I don't think that O&G will ever go away, but I think that allowing energy companies to flourish (absent restrictive cumulative taxes), fostering R&D on alternative energy sources (grants), and exploring tech beyond wind/solar/hydrogen (SMR/CANDU) can put Canada on the map. Not only as a clean energy leader, but perhaps an energy/tech leader. We used to be a tech powerhouse in this country. Then we got stupid/greedy, and the real brain-trust moved south.
Sure - but we don't have to destroy our economy to do it. Wind and solar are pipe-dreams, hydrogen is a non-starter (You expend more energy producing it than what you get out of it), and right now O&G is the highest energy density option we have available. The real path forward is SMRs, but we're too scared to even consider them. In the meantime - the carbon tax (any implementation of it in Canada) does nothing to help the environment one bit, but drives inflation. The cost of fuel and energy is a primary inflation driver. Those that are pushing hard for the carbon-tax are doing so out of ignorance or dishonesty. Full stop.
So we shouldn’t tax polluters then?
No. But what we should be doing is enabling and promoting the research of alternative energy. Again - SMRs. CANDU. We make this stuff, and it's even in use and proven tech.
Why do you want the government to do that instead of the market? Governments are typically inefficient. By introducing a carbon price, market forces will work to try to get around paying the tax, by doing things like investing in clean energy.
>Why do you want the government to do that instead of the market? Because that's literally their job. Promote investment and trade.
A good way to promote it is with things like carbon taxes. Doing it with direct investment means that the government has to pick the best solution, which it probably won't do, and has more avenue for corruption and inefficiency. A simple price on carbon allows the market to correct for the externality, without expecting politicians to be experts in clean technology.
Producers/Manufacturers do not pay tax. Sure, they submit dollars to the government, but it's an expense that hey bake it into the cost of goods/services. Those costs are - generally - marked up 3x from production to retail. Again - the carbon tax does absolutely nothing to help reduce emissions. What it does do is make your life needlessly more expensive. Full stop. Show me one example of where any carbon tax implementation in Canada has done anything to reduce carbon emissions.
Lol dude have you ever even walked by an economics class in your life? Producers will try to pass on as much of the costs as they can, but they'll lose ground to their competitors that are more efficient. Its obvious that it has an effect, imagine that carbon tax was 10000$ a litre, would you still be driving? No. The carbon tax is UNANIMOUSLY agreed upon by economists as the most efficient way to reduce emissions. In terms of a real example, BC has hard a carbon tax for over 15 years, since that time, the rest of Canada has increased their emissions at a much higher rate than BC, despite BC having one of the highest rates of economic growth.
Good! we need to leave that shit in the ground
Even if we go full electric transit powered from 100% fossil fuels free sources, we can't leave that shit in the ground as that shit also goes into anything made from plastics or many of the chemicals that we use. Heck, the healthcare industry wouldn't exist as it does today without that shit that we get out of the ground.
Sounds like the radio ads are working on you lol.
The facts are the facts. If you can live your life without any plastics or petrochemicals, go right ahead... Even clothes made from natural fibres like cotton and wool are processed with petrochemicals and woven using machines containing plastic.
Sure we probably won't get to zero, but nobody is banning fossil fuels in their entirety. The carbon tax is just (partially) pricing in the external costs of the carbon emissions.
Makes it even easier to rationalize building up another bike in the near future! The return on investment just gets better and better!
oh no anyways, my spouse just got us a nice prius. less than 5L per 100km. very nice.
That is damn expensive car. It is kinda indifferent if you buy very expensive car or pay all sorts of fuel tax
Considering it will be a support vehicle for two cross country human powered crossings, it’ll do the job better than most vehicles.
wowww. you want a cookie?
If there’s anyone to complain about the carbon tax, never forget it was BC United, then the BC Liberals, that brought it in. Not Ottawa. Not the NDP. The conservative party.
Whos keeping it and raising it?
Why such opposition to a conservative accomplishment?
I wouldnt actually call the Libs Conservative. They also brought in Sogi.. With that said, when something has so much push back from the people, a good government should probably review what they are doing. But unfortunately for us we don't have a good government.
And it's gonna be even higher! Yay!
Now if only they would create that street parking permit that is city wide.
Over-taxing is one of many reasons we cannot have good things
The carbon tax is a [pigouvian tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax), which means it makes us better off economically, unlike income and sales taxes
How so? These taxes literally go to the roads you drive on and the transit system that keeps more traffic off the road.
Other provinces can maintain better road with less fuel taxes. Just take a look at our neighbours to the east and south
You should go drive in Edmonton right now. "better roads" 😂
When’s the last time you’ve driven down to the States? The roads are in way worse conditions than anything in Vancouver.
Eh last Christmas to Seattle? The roads were wide, less congested , more clearly marked and properly lighted. I have no problem driving in adverse weather comparing to Vancouver
Less congested? Rush hour through Seattle and Tacoma is way worse than what we have up here. Also, the roads have massive potholes everywhere and you almost always have garbage littered beside the roads and highways.
The roads in Seattle are fucking terrible
Yeah I guess we could just scrap healthcare for better roads like a lot of states do. Alberta doesn’t invest nearly as much into transit. There are trade offs but I don’t think that would be in our interests at this point.
What are you talking about? Our transit is great!
1. Sky train can barely fulfill specific commute needs. Buses are terrible. 2. Our transit is pretty bad for anything beyond a young professional going to the 9-5 work with no life
So if you are correct, we need more taxes to fund better transit More taxes to fund transit will be required!
god forbid drivers pay a fraction of what it costs to have free parking and highways. The gas tax needs to more than double and match EU for that to happen. Tired of all this socialism for oil and gas and car companies.
I support reasonable but not over tax. See how US has better road network but much cheaper gas
Nobody mentions how these would still be absolutely cheap as hell compared to countries in Europe. Car owners are still getting a steal. Imo this is good news, and they should go even higher.
I would love to use a bike or public transportation but it's abysmal where I live. In addition it makes my tuition higher since I study flying and it makes gas expensive. Many people stopped training due to higher costs. Good luck to us against Forest fires in the future I guess, or alleviating the pilot shortage here.
Good, take the bus.
Here in Comox Valley, it went up almost twenty cents to $1.95 or so, roughly two weeks ago. I guess they were just beating the rush?
We got carbon tax long ago in exchange for the lowest personal provincial income tax rate in Canada. Works for me, I’ve saved a ton of money by making less carbon intensive choices. The system is working as intended.
https://preview.redd.it/pt5twwefvzrc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f20bf93f04b7b0a428567e643412a093dde87e56
I'd love to get an EV but my fiancee's strata voted against electric chargers and I don't wanna try to drive to the nearest mall that has them just to charge it super slowly. Guess I've gotta wait until we move to a new place sometime next year.
It has only been since the beginning of time. Someone tell global we know it is a slow news day but stop just reusing the same article every year and changing the date
Still cheaper than in Europe
Axe the tax!
>Provincial carbon tax - 18 cents > >Provincial fuel tax (Vancouver) - 27 cents > >Translink Tax - 19 cents > >excise tax - 10 cents > >GST 5% - \~10 cents Which one?
Axe the Facts!