EDITORIAL: Thumbs down on the carbon tax

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Supporters of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax keep insisting that if only the Liberals could explain it properly, most Canadians would support it.

In reality, Trudeau and the Liberals have explained it.

That’s their problem.

The Liberals say their carbon tax is the most economically efficient way to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.

But if that’s true, why don’t the Liberals keep track of how much the carbon tax reduces emissions?

Even if they did, why does the carbon tax (meaning the federal fuel charge and the output-based pricing system for large industrial emitters) account for no more than one-third of the Liberals’ planned emission cuts in 2030?

If the carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions, why are less efficient ways of reducing them responsible for making at least two-thirds of the cuts by 2030, costing Canadians more than $200 billion spent on more than 100 government programs?

Why do the Liberals call the carbon tax a price on pollution when in reality it’s a tax on Canadians paid for when they purchase almost all goods and services, because almost all goods and services use fossil fuel energy?

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The Liberals say their carbon tax will help reduce severe weather in Canada, which is absurd given that Canada’s emissions, at 1.5% of the global total, are not large enough to materially impact climate change.

If the Liberals want to argue that having a carbon tax gives Canada the moral authority to lecture countries like China to lower their emissions, that’s fair.

But it is nonsense to suggest that paying the carbon tax in the eight provinces where it applies from now until 2030 — because we don’t know what the Liberals plan after that — is going to make the weather less severe in Canada by 2030.

Finally, since the Liberals praised the Parliamentary Budget Officer in 2019 when he agreed with them that most households paying the carbon tax received more in rebates than they paid in carbon taxes when considering its fiscal impact, why are they attacking him now when he says most households pay more, when one considers not only the fiscal impact, but the negative impact of the tax on the economy?