We’re finally told what the carbon tax will cost us. Are you sitting down?
Kenneth Green writes in Financial Post. Excerpts below in italics with my bolds.
Households in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia will be hit with more than $1,000 of carbon tax per year, while those in British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba will pay around $650
It took some poking and prodding and (finally) committee testimony, but now we know what the bill will be for a $50-per-tonne carbon tax, similar to one the federal Liberals plan to impose. In a report to the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, University of Calgary economics professor Jennifer Winter revealed the bottom line of a $50-per-tonne carbon price.
Tax advocates say it is a small % of GDP. But it is still $10 Billion extracted from Canadian households.
Using energy-consumption data from Statistics Canada, and imputing prices from average household expenditure on transportation fuels and provincial gasoline prices, Winter calculated the impact of a a $50-per-tonne model of a carbon tax on a typical Canadian household across different provinces. Far from being painless as advertised, the costs to households will be significant.
Three provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia — will be hit with more than $1,000 of carbon tax per year to comply with the $50-per-tonne carbon tax Ottawa has mandated for 2022. Nova Scotia ($1,120) and Alberta ($1,111) will have the highest bills, followed by Saskatchewan ($1,032), New Brunswick ($963), Newfoundland ($859) and Prince Edward Island ($788). The average household in Ontario will pay $707 a year to comply with the carbon tax once its fully implemented.
Who gets the lowest bill? British Columbia ($603 per year), Quebec ($662) and Manitoba ($683). Simply put, households in provinces with the lowest bills will pay just a bit more than half compared to households in the hardest-hit provinces.
But it gets worse, since most experts say carbon prices must continue to increase sharply to effectively lower emissions. At $100 a tonne, for example, households in Alberta will pony up $2,223, in Saskatchewan they’ll pay $2,065 and in Nova Scotia, $2,240. In fact, at $100 a tonne, the average price for households in all provinces is well north of $1,000 per year.
Already across Canada, particularly in the Maritimes, a significant number of households fit the definition of “energy poverty” — that is, 10 per cent or more of household expenditures are spent simply procuring the energy needed to live (to power the home and transportation). In 2016, the Fraser Institute measured energy poverty in Canada and found that when you add up the costs to power the home and cars, 19.4 per cent of Canadian households devoted at least 10 per cent or more of their expenditures to energy.
Science Matters 
Ron:
Please email me your contact info.
Thanks
Mark
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Done.
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I hope they tax the gas supplies with the CO2 inherent in Natural Gas Fields! Hope they tax each airline with CO2 content produced with each flight! Of course they could actually lower CO2 by building Nuclear plants, but that is beyond their mental capability.
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Have they included the impact of the tax on the costs of food, goods and services? The tax will be embedded in the cost of anything that is transported or that requires energy for its production. They can “fight climate change” by dramatically increasing the cost of energy. Or they can help the poor. But they can’t do both.
I don’t believe that all of this will impact the planet’s weather in 50 years. We would benefit from a few extra days in the growing season.
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Kiron, the study analyzed carbon taxes on direct purchase of fuels to power the home and cars. So no, higher transport costs embedded in higher prices for goods and services is not included.
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Of course, I am sure that the policy-makers have realized the embedded cost will imply effectively mean a negative tariff on imports. So Canada will be offsetting this unintended consequence with a carbon-based tariff system?
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Surely the justification for a carbon tax is to mitigate the potential harms of dangerous global warming. The costs are massively exceeded by the potential benefits. Using the World Resources Institute CAIT data for “Total GHG Emissions Excluding Land-Use Change and Forestry”, Canada’s emissions from 1990 to 2014 increased from 560 to 745 MtCO2e. In the same period global emissions increased from 29,964 to 45,741 MtCO2e. Despite a 33% growth in emissions, Canada’s global share fell from 1.9% to 1.6%. If the carbon tax even reduces emissions by 10% in Canada (unlikely), and the more extreme versions of CAGW are true (a truly heroic assumption), I do not comprehend how the future generations either in Canada or globally are noticeably benefited by the burden’s being imposed on Canada’s current generation.
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Email your local polly and ask if they are aware of the Provincial elections in Ontario Canada. It should scare many politicians that the general public are waking up to their scams.
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