Do you ever feel good when someone won’t tell you how much something costs – something you have to pay for?
No? Me neither.
But, when it comes to the Canadian government’s climate change agenda, and in particular the “Net Zero by 2050” strategy, that is where we are.
It is being forced on Canadians, who will end up paying the bill, but we are not being told what the price is today, or what the price will be tomorrow.
I will continue to dig to find out more. But in the meantime, let me share what an expert on the climate file says about what “doing nothing” would cost.
Yes, doing nothing.
But don’t take my word for it.
President Obama was (and remains) quite outspoken as an alarmist on the issue of climate change, talking often about the impending crisis.
But the former Democratic President’s senior Department of Energy official, Stephen Koonin, has just come out with a most sensible and distinctly non-alarmist perspective. His recently published book, Unsettled, suggests the alarmist climate change narrative is unfounded.
Stephen Koonin served as Undersecretary of Energy in former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration. A PhD Physicist, he is a smart guy.
Referencing materials from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – an organization that is widely viewed by governments and media as the single most important source for information on climate change – Koonin demonstrates that the science of climate change is anything but settled, and that we are not in, nor should we anticipate, a crisis.
In fact, despite decades of apocalyptic warnings there is in fact remarkably little knowledge of what might happen. Over the last 5 decades of apocalyptic warning, life on earth has dramatically improved as our management of countless environmental challenges has improved.
What the evidence really shows is that as the global economy improves, our ability to deal with whatever mother nature throws at us improves. On that point, Koonin draws attention to what the IPCC experts say about the possible economic impacts of possible climate change-induced temperature changes.
Koonin notes that, according to the IPCC, a temperature increase of 3 degrees centigrade by 2100 – which some scientists say might happen – might create some negative environmental effects, which in turn would cause an estimated 3% hit to the economy in 2100.
But even as it makes these claims, the IPCC further predicts that the economy, in 2100, will be several times the size of the economy today (unless, of course, we interfere with it as the Net Zero by 2050 crowd wants us to do). In other words, a strategy of doing nothing may or may not mean a temperature increase, the effects of which if bad, are expected to represent a small economic hit to the economy, but that economy will be much, much larger.
In Koonin’s words, this “translates to a decrease in the annual growth rate by an average of 3 percent divided by 80, or about 0.04 percent per year. The IPCC scenarios…assume an average global annual growth rate of about 2 percent through 2100; the climate impact would then be a 0.04 percent decrease in that 2 percent growth rate, for a resulting growth rate of 1.96 percent. In other words, the U.N. report says that the economic impact of human-induced climate change is negligible, at most a bump in the road.”
So this doesn’t sound like a crisis to me. It sounds like a very modest reduction in extraordinary economic growth. So from extraordinary economic growth to slightly less extraordinary economic growth.
Why do I draw attention to this?
Because Canada is pursuing a Net Zero by 2050 target with a whole bunch of policies that will kill economic growth.
The IPCC predicts significant global economic growth without all the things Trudeau and other Net Zero by 2050 advocates are pursuing – massive carbon taxes, additional carbon taxes called clean fuel standards (CFS), building code changes that will make a new home unaffordable, huge subsidies for pet projects, etc. In other words, the IPCC predicts growth without crazy and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars that will hurt citizens.
So why are we allowing Trudeau and co to pursue these things?
We don’t know the full costs of Net Zero by 2050, but every signal we have is that it is absurdly expensive. AND (thank you Stephen Koonin for making this explicitly clear) the International Panel on Climate Change says ignoring the Net Zero by 2050 target and doing nothing will mean a much bigger economy.
Prime Minister Trudeau and the activists won’t tell you that.
Nor will they acknowledge what the IPCC actually says.
Let’s all applaud Stephen Koonin for trying to do so.
Green activists are driving a radical agenda screaming at us that the science is settled. As courageous scientists like Stephen Koonin note, science is never settled and to say it is settled is irresponsible. The activists say we have to radically change our economy, but don’t tell us how much that will cost – but the IPCC tells us doing absolutely nothing would result in only slightly less economic growth than we would otherwise have.
Governments are spending massive sums of your money on Net Zero by 2050.
Corporate interests commit to this radical agenda and hide behind rhetoric of doing the right thing, while they also seek out government subsidies (which taxpayers will pay for) to meet their absurd Net Zero by 2050 commitments.
An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions.
Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.
An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions.
Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.
Recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced several short-term initiatives related to tax policy. Most notably, the package includes a two-month GST holiday on certain items and a one-time $250 cheque that will be sent to all Canadians with incomes under $150,000.
Unfortunately, the Trudeau government’s package is a grab bag of bad ideas that will not do anything to get Canada out of the long-term growth rut in which our economy is mired. There are too many to list all in one place, but here are four of the biggest problems with Prime Minister Trudeau’s tax plan.
It reduces the wrong taxes. When it comes to economic growth, not all taxes are created equal. Some cause far more economic harm per dollar of government revenue raised than others. The government’s package creates a holiday on the GST for some items (only for two months) which is a mistake given that the GST is one of the least economically harmful components of the tax mix. Canada’s recent growth record is abysmal, and boosting growth should be a primary goal of any changes to tax policy. A GST cut of any duration fails this test relative to other tax cuts.
Temporary tax holidays shift consumption in time, they don’t boost growth. The government’s GST reduction is actually a short-term tax holiday on certain items that will last two months. There are decades worth of economic research showing that when governments create short-term tax breaks, they may change the timing of consumption, but they won’t contribute to actual economic growth. Shifting consumption from the future to the present won’t help get Canada out of the economic doldrums. This is particularly true of the Trudeau tax holiday since purchases that Canadians may have made after the two-month holiday period will simply be shifted forward to take advantage of the absence of the GST. As noted above, there are better taxes to cut than the GST, but no matter what taxes we are talking about permanent reductions are vastly superior to temporary tax cuts like short-term holidays.
One-time tax rebates don’t improve economic incentives. Perhaps the worst element of the Trudeau government’s announcement was a plan to send $250 cheques to all Canadians earning under $150,000. One-time tax rebates are a terrible way to provide tax relief. When you cut income tax rates, you improve incentives for people to work and invest because they get to keep a larger share of their earnings. This helps the economy grow. One-time rebates that you get regardless of the economic choices you make has no similar effect. This means that the rebate with its $4.7 billion price tag won’t help Canada’s poor growth performance.
It borrows from the future to give to the present. The federal government is currently running a large deficit. This raises the question of who will have to pay the $4.7 billion bill for the one-time payments announced today. The answer is that the government will have to borrow the money and therefore future taxpayers will have to either pay it off or service the extra debt indefinitely. The money the Trudeau government will send out won’t come out of thin air, it’ll have to be borrowed with the burden falling on future taxpayers.
The Trudeau government got one thing conceptually right, which is that there are advantages to reducing the tax burden on Canadians. Unfortunately, the policy package it has put forward to provide tax relief gets everything wrong. It reduces the wrong taxes, shifts taxes temporally rather than cutting them, does nothing to improve economic incentives, and burdens future taxpayers. With the holiday season around the corner, this attempt at a gift to Canadian taxpayers is the economic equivalent of a lump of coal in the stocking.
The cost of administering the federal carbon tax and rebate scheme has risen to $283 million since it was imposed in 2019, according to government records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
By 2030, the cost of administering the carbon tax is expected to total $796 million, according to the records.
“Not only does the carbon tax make our gas, heating and groceries more expensive, but taxpayers are also hit with a big bill to fund Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s battalion of carbon tax bureaucrats,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Trudeau should make life more affordable and slash the cost of the bureaucracy by scrapping the carbon tax.”
The government records were released in response to an order paper question from Conservative MP John Barlow (Foothills).
The carbon tax and rebate scheme cost taxpayers $84 million in 2023, according to the records.
There were 461 federal bureaucrats tasked with administering the carbon tax and rebate scheme last year, according to the records.
The CTF previously reported administering the carbon tax cost taxpayers $199 million between 2019 and 2022.
Projected costs for administering the carbon tax and rebate scheme between 2024 and 2030 are $513 million, according to the records.
That would bring total administration costs for the carbon tax and rebate scheme up to $796 million by 2030.
But the true hit to taxpayers is even higher, as the records do not include costs associated with the Fuel Charge Tax Credit for Farmers or the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses.
“It’s magic math to believe the feds can raise taxes, skim hundreds-of-millions off the top to hire hundreds of new bureaucrats and then somehow make everyone better off with rebates,” Terrazzano said.
The carbon tax will cost the average household up to $399 this year more than the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government’s independent, non-partisan budget watchdog.
The PBO also notes that, “Canada’s own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change.”
The government also charges its GST on top of the carbon tax. The PBO report shows this carbon tax-on-tax will cost taxpayers $400 million this year. That money isn’t rebated back to Canadians.
The carbon tax currently costs 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.
By 2030, the carbon tax will cost 37 cents per litre of gasoline, 45 cents per litre of diesel and 32 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.
