Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Opinion

PBO Report Reveals Trudeau’s Carbon Tax Crushes Middle-Class Canadians

Published

7 minute read

The Opposition with Dan Knight

PBO Report Exposes Trudeau’s Carbon Tax as a Middle-Class Burden, With Net Economic Losses, Crushed Job Prospects, and Hollow Rebates

In a bombshell report dated October 10, 2024, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) exposes the cold reality of Trudeau’s carbon tax policy: it’s making life harder for middle-class Canadians. While the Prime Minister continues to tout the virtues of his climate plan, the PBO’s findings show that far from protecting the environment, the federal fuel charge is crippling Canadian families—especially those in the middle income brackets.

Let’s be clear: Trudeau’s carbon tax isn’t just a simple “polluter pays” system. According to the PBO’s distributional analysis of the federal fuel charge, average Canadian households will face substantial net economic costs by 2030, despite government-issued rebates. Trudeau loves to parade the fact that Canadians get rebates through the Canada Carbon Rebate (CCR), but the numbers tell a different story when you dig into the real economic impact.

The Middle-Class Burden

For middle-class Canadians, the so-called “climate action” of the Trudeau government comes with serious consequences. By 2030-31, the carbon price will hit $170 per tonne, with devastating effects on household incomes. Even though rebates are supposed to offset the pain, the PBO’s analysis shows that once you factor in the economic fallout—job losses, reduced wages, and weaker investments—middle-class families end up worse off.

For example, in Ontario, a province Trudeau regularly visits to promote his policies, middle-income households will face steep costs. According to the PBO, households in the third quintile (middle income) will see $588 in net costs—and that’s just after factoring in rebates. When you look at the combined hit from job losses and reduced income, the overall financial burden for middle-class families grows even larger​.

In Saskatchewan, things are even more dire. The average household in the third income quintile will suffer from a $1,205 net loss by 2030-31. For working families who depend on stable employment in energy, agriculture, and manufacturing, this tax punishes them more than it rewards them​.

Trudeau’s Rebate Shell Game

Trudeau’s government spins the carbon rebate as some kind of economic miracle, suggesting families get back more than they pay. But as the PBO’s report shows, this claim is little more than political smoke and mirrors. The rebates might look good on paper for the lowest-income Canadians, but for everyone else—especially middle-income earners—it’s a losing game.

Even with rebates factored in, the economic damage of Trudeau’s carbon tax results in net losses for most families. By 2030, the federal fuel charge will contribute to an overall reduction of 0.6% in real GDP across the backstop provinces, which excludes Quebec and British Columbia. Middle-class families are stuck dealing with reduced employment opportunities, lower investment incomes, and weaker wage growth—all while Trudeau’s elite friends and the liberal establishment pat themselves on the back for “going green”​​.

Crushing Investments and Jobs

What Trudeau doesn’t want you to know is that this tax doesn’t just hurt family finances. It’s killing jobs. The PBO report shows that by 2030, the carbon tax will reduce capital income—that’s the money people earn from investments—by as much as 2.4% in provinces like Alberta. Worse, it will slash labor income—the wages people depend on—by over 1.4% in places like Saskatchewan. That’s devastating for middle-income earners whose livelihoods depend on industries targeted by the Liberals’ climate agenda​.

While low-income Canadians might see minimal gains from Trudeau’s rebates, middle-class families face the harsh reality of stagnant wages, diminished savings, and a lack of economic opportunity. Trudeau’s tax isn’t just a burden on polluters, it’s a punishment for working Canadians trying to get by.

A Failed Experiment – Just Look at British Columbia

If you want to see where Trudeau’s carbon tax will lead, just look at British Columbia. They’ve had a carbon tax since 2008, and it hasn’t stopped a single wildfire, flood, or heat dome. Did that carbon tax prevent the devastating atmospheric river? Not a chance. This so-called climate solution has done nothing to shield British Columbians from environmental disasters.

Even worse, while the federal government has been collecting billions in carbon tax revenue, they’ve neglected to address the fuel buildup in forests around places like Jasper. For years, experts have warned about the dangers, and yet not a dime of that tax money was spent on controlled burns or preventive measures. The result? Our beautiful Jasper National Park was left to burn. Trudeau and his government couldn’t save our park, they couldn’t save our forests, and they certainly couldn’t save Jasper​.

A Sacrifice for Nothing

My fellow Canadians, governments have been trying to control the weather since the dawn of time. Ancient civilizations sacrificed animals to the gods, hoping for good weather. Today, the sacrifice is your money. Yesterday, it was a goat to Zeus; today, it’s a carbon tax to Trudeau. In the end, it’s just another way for the government to take from you, promising it will fix things it simply cannot control.

But here’s the truth: this tax won’t change the climate, won’t stop the floods, and certainly won’t bring back our forests. The only thing it’s doing is draining your household to feed a bloated government. The PBO report is clear: Trudeau’s carbon tax is hurting middle-class families while delivering nothing in return.

Subscribe to The Opposition with Dan Knight . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.

International

U.S. Army names new long-range hypersonic weapon ‘Dark Eagle’

Published on

One of the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon Transporter Erector Launchers assigned to Bravo Battery, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery, Long Range Fires Battalion, 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, participates in exercise Bamboo Eagle 24-3 on Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Aug. 5, 2024.

From The Center Square

By 

The U.S. Army’s newest long-range hypersonic weapon will be called “Dark Eagle” the Pentagon announced Thursday after a successful test flight.

The land-based, truck-launched system is armed with hypersonic missiles that travel 3,800 miles per hour with a range of 1,725 miles. They can reach the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and “remain just beyond the range of air and missile defense systems until they are ready to strike, and by then it’s too late to react,” according to Army statements in a March 2023 Congressional Research Service report.

In December, the U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, in collaboration with the U.S. Navy Strategic Systems Programs, completed a successful end-to-end flight test of a conventional hypersonic missile from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

“Hypersonic weapons will complicate adversaries’ decision calculus, strengthening deterrence,” said Patrick Mason, senior official performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology. “Their speed, accuracy and versatility are befitting its new popular name, Dark Eagle.”

Army officials repeatedly delayed tests of the Dark Eagle system after failures in 2021 and 2022, according to the CRS report.

The U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and the U.S. Navy Strategic Systems Programs partnered to get land and sea variants of a hypersonic weapon system.

The use of a common hypersonic missile and joint test opportunities allow the services to pursue a more aggressive timeline for delivery and to realize cost savings, according to the Pentagon.

A Congressional Budget Office study from January 2023, buying 300 Intermediate-Range Hypersonic Boost-Glide Missiles, which are similar to the LRHW, was estimated to cost $41 million per missile in 2023 dollars.

But that’s just an estimate. Since the 2023 CBO cost estimate, the Pentagon has said little about the per missile cost of the LRHW.

With the Army planning to field LRHWs to units by the end of FY2025 – if the Army’s new leadership team concurs – an actual per missile cost should be available for policymakers,” according to the CRS note. “With an established per missile cost, the Army should also be able to provide Congress with details about the total LRHW stockpile it intends to procure and how long it will take to ‘grow’ the LRHW stockpile.”

The prime contractors on the project are Lockheed Martin, Dynetics Inc. and Dynetics Technical Solutions, according to the CBO report.

Continue Reading

2025 Federal Election

Canada is squandering the greatest oil opportunity on Earth

Published on

Canada has 3X US oil reserves but less than 40% the production. Why? Anti-oil politicians like Mark Carney who say they’re protecting Earth’s coldest country from global warming.

  • Canada has 170 billion barrels of proven oil reserves—by far the largest of any free country. And its producers can profit at $44 oil, vs. >$57 for US shale.
  • Canadian oil production is also continuing to get cheaper. Oil sands operating costs have dropped 19% over the past five years, and the industry—which is still fine-tuning how to coax oil-like bitumen out of oil sands—has substantial room for further cost reductions.
  • In addition to its massive proven oil reserves, Canada also has massive unexplored oil resources. Canada’s Northwest Territories may contain up to 37% of Canada’s total oil reserves, much of it light crude, which is even cheaper to extract and transport than bitumen from oil sands.

Canada is squandering this opportunity, with < 40% of US production and much slower growth

  • Given Canada’s massive oil reserves and lower production costs, Canadian oil should have been growing far faster than US oil—on a path to producing even more oil than the US does.

    Instead, Canada is totally squandering its oil opportunity, with less than 40% of US production and slower growth since 2010.

The lost opportunity is costing Canadians 100s of billions of dollars a year—and undermining global security

  • In 2023, oil sands directly contributed C$38 billion to GDP—while total economic impact was 100s of billions of dollars. It could have been far, far greater.
  • Canada’s oil underproduction is undermining both Canadian prosperity and global security. E.g., Europe’s dependence on Russian oil triggered an energy crisis after Russia invaded Ukraine. By doubling its oil production, Canada could make oil dictators weaker, the free world stronger—and Canada more powerful.

The cause: False climate ideas have led Canada to senselessly strangle its oil industry

Canada is squandering its oil opportunity by preventing its abundant oil from being transported to world markets

  • With 3X US oil reserves but 1/8 the people, Canada can produce far more oil than it can use. So it needs a lot of transportation. Yet it wages war on pipelines, which are the cheapest, fastest, safest way to transport oil.
  • In 2016, the Canadian government rejected the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to B.C. after nearly a decade of review, citing insufficient Indigenous consultation. The pipeline would have carried 535K barrels of oil per day to Asia-Pacific markets, generating ~C$300B in GDP over 30 years.
  • To make matters worse, several years after the cancellation of the Northern Gateway pipeline, Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-48 (the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act), banning large oil tankers from calling at northern B.C. ports and effectively shutting the door on any future pipeline to that region.
  • In 2017, TC Energy canceled their Energy East pipeline project after the Canadian government demanded they calculate all of its indirect GHG emissions. The pipeline would have carried 1.1M barrels per day of Albertan and Saskatchewan oil to Eastern Canada, generating ~C$55B in GDP over 20 years.
  • The Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX), operational in 2024, is Canada’s only new major pipeline in over a decade. Proposed in 2012, it barely survived years of political hurdles, progressing only after the federal government bought it in 2018. By completion, its costs had ballooned from the projected C$7.4B to C$34B.
  • The main government-created obstacle for pipelines in Canada is the onerous federal “environmental review” process called the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), and before that, its precursor, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA).
  • Under the Impact Assessment Act, the Canadian government can effectively veto a pipeline project by deeming it not in the “public interest,” as determined by factors including “sustainability,” alignment with climate goals, and impacts on Indigenous groups—but not economic benefits (!)
    • Before the Impact Assessment Act was instituted in 2019, pipelines faced similarly onerous environmental reviews under its precursor, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). Under CEAA, government could veto projects it judged to cause “significant adverse environmental effects,” a vague and open-ended criteria.
    • Even if a pipeline project isn’t formally rejected by the Canadian government, the environmental review process can stretch on for years—often causing projects to collapse from escalating costs or investors withdrawing amid uncertainty. This is exactly what happened with the Energy East pipeline in 2017.
  • If Canada built ample transportation, it would have the potential to produce even more oil than the US does and sell it around the world. Instead, its production is < 40% of the US’s, and 97% of its exports are to the US—at below-market prices.

Canada is also strangling oil investment, production, and refining

  • Canada isn’t just strangling oil transport, it’s sabotaging oil at every stage—from Mark Carney’s proposed emissions cap to “Clean Fuel Regulations” to EV mandates to drilling bans to refinery restrictions.
  • Investment in Canadian oil plunged over 50% (C$76B to C$35B) between 2014-2023—with investors pointing to regulatory uncertainty, inconsistencies, and compliance costs as major barriers to investments.
  • A further looming threat to oil investment is the proposed cap on oil and gas sector GHG emissions. If implemented, as promised by Mark Carney’s government, this proposal will require the oil industry to reduce its GHG emissions to 35% of the 2019 level, which would significantly discourage investment and production.
  • The Clean Fuel Regulations (CFRs), which mandate that Canadian fossil fuel producers reduce the emissions from fuels to 15% lower than 2016 levels by 2030, harms Canadian oil production by significantly increasing the cost of production and thus decreasing the domestic demand for gasoline and diesel.
  • Canada’s EV mandate, which requires that 20% of vehicles sold in 2026, at least 60% of vehicles sold in 2030, and all new vehicles sold in 2035 are electric, harms Canadian oil production by greatly reducing the demand for gasoline and diesel.
  • Canada’s consumer carbon tax, which until earlier this month imposed a fee of C$80 per ton of CO2, harmed Canadian oil production by raising gasoline prices by 17.6 cents per litre, thereby decreasing demand. Though this tax has been repealed, gasoline and diesel remain subject to the industrial carbon tax.
  • In addition to measures that heavily disincentivize oil production, the federal government also directly limits production through moratoria on oil development on Canada’s Pacific and Arctic coasts, blocking access to hundreds of billions of barrels of oil.
  • On top of Canada’s oil underinvestment and underproduction, Canadian oil refining has stagnated, with Canada’s refineries able to process less than half of the oil it produces and only one new refinery built since the 1980s.

The leading stranglers of Canadian oil, such as Trudeau and Carney, say they are protecting Canada and the world from a climate crisis

  • The root cause of Canada’s squandered oil opportunity is leaders’ belief that world’s coldest country must stop global warming at all costs.

    That’s why they advocate pursuing “net zero” by 2050—which necessarily means destroying Canada’s domestic oil industry.

  • Canada has embraced climate catastrophism for over 3 decades now. For example, it was one of the original signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. The UNFCCC has been the driving force behind “net zero” policies.
  • Justin Trudeau took Canadian anti-oil policy to a new level, making the destruction of Canada’s oil opportunity a central focus: “We need to phase [oil sands] out,” he said in 2017, “We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.”
  • While Trudeau’s opposition to Canadian oil and therefore its economy is well-known, most Canadians do not know that Mark Carney is a far more committed opponent of Canadian oil than Justin Trudeau ever was. Indeed, Carney is one of the world’s leading “net zero” advocates.
  • The last several decades of Mark Carney’s career have been focused on pressuring countries like Canada to adopt “net zero” policies that have proved ruinous. He did this as the head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action.
  • Mark Carney’s past statements on climate include:

    “investing for a net-zero world must go mainstream” (2019)

    “those that fail to adapt [to net-zero] will cease to exist”​ (2019)

    “build a financial system in which every decision takes climate change into account” (2021)

  • Myth: Mark Carney used to be for carbon taxes but has changed his mind, as shown by his elimination of Canada’s carbon tax.

    Truth: Carney is still for carbon taxes—because he is still for the net-zero agenda that requires taxing CO2 along with all other means to eliminate fossil fuels.

But while climate change is real, it is not a crisis—thanks to increasing resilience—nor is it addressed by unilateral Canadian sacrifice

  • Far from facing a catastrophic climate crisis, Canada and the world are safer than ever from climate.

    The global rate of climate disaster-related deaths has fallen 98% in the last 100 years—thanks to increasing climate resilience from reliable, affordable energy, including oil.

  • Myth: Even if climate-related disaster deaths are down, climate-related damages are way up, pointing to a bankrupting climate future.

    Truth: Even though there are many incentives for climate damages to go up—preferences for riskier areas, government bailouts—GDP-adjusted damages are flat.

  • Sacrificing Canadian oil won’t make the coldest country in an increasingly climate-resilient world safer from global warming—since countries like China and India will never follow suit. What it will do is leave Canada far poorer, weaker, and more endangered from lack of energy.

The solution: Unleashing responsible oil development will make Canada rich, resilient, and secure

The rational path forward on climate is to embrace prosperity, which drives resilience and energy innovation

  • Canada is safer than ever from climate, and other countries won’t cut emissions until it’s truly cost-effective to do so. The path forward is to embrace prosperity.
  • The more prosperous Canada is, the more it can make itself more and more resilient to all manner of climate dangers. And the more prosperous Canada is, the more it can innovate new forms of energy that have the long-term prospect of outcompeting fossil fuels.

The number one path to Canadian prosperity is unleashing responsible development in the oil industry and other energy industries

  • Canada must finally seize its enormous oil opportunity, unleashing investment, production, refining, and transport from irrational restrictions. Only then can Canada can deliver oil to eager markets worldwide.
  • Canada should renounce its pledge to achieve “net zero by 2050” by repealing the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act where it is enshrined and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. This will massively increase investor certainty about the future viability of the oil industry.
  • Canada should reject the proposed GHG emissions cap for the oil industry. Canadian provinces that have their own carbon taxes and emission credit trading schemes should eliminate them too. This will improve investor expectations about the oil industry’s future viability.
  • Canada should repeal the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) and replace it with a framework that minimizes the cost and duration of reviews and enshrines clear and narrow criteria for rejecting projects. This will help build more oil pipelines and reduce investor uncertainty about environmental regulations.
  • Canada should revise the Canadian Energy Regulator Act (CERA) by limiting the certification review of the covered oil pipeline projects to the question of whether there is sufficient proven demand for the oil they are planning to transport. This will expedite pipeline approval.
  • Canada should repeal the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (Bill C-48), which bans large oil tankers off the northern and central coast of British Columbia. This will open the door to building pipelines to B.C. that can transfer oil to crucial Asian markets.
  • Canada should repeal the Clean Fuel Regulations (CFR) and the EV mandate. This will boost investor confidence in oil by increasing both current and anticipated domestic demand for oil-derived fuels.
  • Canada should repeal the federal moratoria on offshore oil drilling on the Pacific Coast and in the Canadian Arctic. This will unlock up to hundreds of billions of barrels of Canadian oil.
  • To stop squandering the world’s greatest energy opportunity, Canada must start electing leaders who value Canadian energy, and stop electing leaders with a proven track record of destroying it.

Daniil Gorbatenko, Steffen Henne, and Michelle Hung contributed to this piece.

Share


“Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein” is my free Substack newsletter designed to give as many people as possible access to concise, powerful, well-referenced talking points on the latest energy, environmental, and climate issues from a pro-human, pro-energy perspective.

Continue Reading

Trending

X