EDITORIAL: Liberals and their carbon tax follies

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American author and social activist Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

This describes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals when it comes to their carbon tax.

Their salaries, indeed their government, depend on convincing Canadians in the next election that they’ve given us the straight goods on their carbon tax — aka the federal fuel charge that raises the cost of gasoline, natural gas and 20 other forms of fossil fuel energy.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says he will scrap it if he wins.

That’s the reason Liberals get so upset whenever independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux tells Canadians what the straight goods on their carbon tax are, as he did again in a report released Thursday, his third or fourth in recent years. We’ve lost count.

Giroux said if one considers only its fiscal impact — dollars in, dollars out — then about 80% of households paying it in the eight provinces where it applies — Quebec and B.C. are outside the system — receive more in annual carbon tax rebates than they pay in carbon taxes.

The Trudeau government has made the same argument for years.

But Giroux, unlike the Liberals, adds in the full story.

That is, that when one factors in the negative impact of the carbon tax on our economy — because it slows growth, reduces business investment and labour income, as well as the fact the government charges us GST on top of the carbon tax, which isn’t revenue neutral — about 60% of households paying the tax end up with less money in annual rebates than they pay in carbon taxes.

The tax is progressive and the difference for average families depends on what province they live in as the Trudeau government increases it annually from $80 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions today to $170 per tonne in 2030.

There’s nothing mysterious here  — it’s based on federal data.

Giroux’s latest report corrects a minor error his office identified earlier this year that, once eliminated, decreased some costs consumers face but, as Giroux noted, “the main finding from our updated analysis is, as we expected, consistent with our previous reports.”

We know who we believe.