So it’s been over 8 years now that I haven’t been voting Liberal, but come the next election, I may be willing to change that. While Mr. Dion’s plan is not everything I want, it goes a long way towards putting something reasonable into place, and will bring Canada up to speed with, or at least get us facing in the same direction as most of the rest of the developed world.
I’m somewhat upset that Dion’s plan does not increase taxes on gas at the pump. That is one of the areas where people should be feeling the pain. As much as some argue that driving is a necessity, I think heating your home is more so. Current economic and political circumstances seemingly prevent more taxes on gas, but if oil prices fall before the plan is implemented, I would hope that this could be reconsidered.
Finally, I’m not sure how much I agree with giving a lot of this money back to Canadians in the form of tax breaks. For families making less than $50,000 a year, sure. The costs of this program will likely accrue disproportionately on them, and they are the least capable of shifting their consumption patters since so much of their income is spent on necessary expenses. For people making more money than that, the option of consuming as much carbon as they currently do should be taken off the table entirely. Instead of refunding such a high portion of the tax in the form of tax cuts, the government should run a sovereign wealth fund for carbon tax revenue which it could use to invest in Canadian clean technology. Sure there would be waste, and the government would pick bad projects to fund, but it would be creating high paying, high tech, green jobs in
The Liberals have at last given me something I can believe in. Don’t buy into the Conservative BS that somehow their plan where the “polluter pays” magically avoids the polluter passing those costs on to the consumer. Without consumers, there would be no polluters.
I may feel odd ticking the Liberal box when the time comes, but after today, I think that time has indeed come.
2 comments:
My biggest concern with this is the fact that I'm sure it won't be revenue neutral and will actually significantly increase taxes (as well as inflation). The only way I could see this being agreeable is that if it was accompanied by legislation explicitly preventing the government from raising more than $235 billion (adjusted for inflation) to guarantee that it remains revenue neutral.
It also seems as though they will need a lot more bureaucrats to manage another parallel tax system.
As much as the plan apparently doesn't increase the price at the gas pump, it will essentially increase the price of everything else either through the direct taxes or when businesses end up passing the extra costs on to consumers.
Well, nothing in life is free. You think a series of intensity-based targets enforced via large fines wont get passed onto consumers? Fact is any carbon reduction plan floated so far functions on the premise that carbon be monetized, and thus things that produce carbon or see carbon produced as a by-product become more expensive (reflecting the hidden non-monetary and economic costs carbon imposes on society) and thus encourages people to change their consumption habits and reward low-carbon producers and providers of goods and services.
This basic fact holds true of carbon taxes, cap and trade systems, or escalating fine systems, and this includes the Conservative plan to "make polluters pay."
I'm not convinced that the Liberal policy is the best policy, but these ought to be debated on their merits, rather than upon some fallacious assumption that one plan to monetize carbon will increase prices across the board whereas others wont.
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