Dan McTeague
New Carbon Tax, Same Price Tags
We must keep energy affordable for Canadian families. I have been saying this for years. But despite this simple message, some politicians still don’t get it.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government keeps insisting on one new expensive energy policy after another, and all of these efforts are designed to make energy unaffordable for Canadians.
One of Trudeau’s latest initiatives is his “Second Carbon Tax,” also known as the “Clean Fuel Standard,” or “CFS.”
We’ve dubbed the Clean Fuel Standard a Second Carbon Tax because that is exactly what it is – simply another tax grab that will only make life more unaffordable for Canadians.
Trudeau’s friends in the media barely mention this new tax, so it falls to Canadians for Affordable Energy and a few like-minded people to alert Canadians to this latest assault on your pocketbook.
To this end, CAE is publishing a new report authored by economist Ross McKitrick on the Clean Fuel Standard a.k.a the ‘Second Carbon Tax’. You may recall I wrote about the Clean Fuel Standard a few years ago when it was first proposed.
The Clean Fuel Standard is a tax that aims to reduce the carbon intensity of liquid fuels used in transportation (gasoline, diesel) by 15% by 2030. This will be done by blending ethanol into traditional liquid fuels, and by the use of carbon credits which will be available to those switching to electric vehicles or increasing EV infrastructure.
The report released by LFX Associates ‘Economic Analysis of the 2022 Federal Clean Fuels Standard’ shows us just how expensive and ineffective this policy will be.
The conservative estimate is an increase of 2.2-6.5% per household. In real money terms this will an extra tax of $1,277 a year per worker.
In provinces that rely more heavily on liquid fuel sources such as oil – like Newfoundland and New Brunswick- these prices will be higher.
What a time to increase energy bills for families.
This new carbon tax is being released at a time of soaring household costs. Grocery prices have skyrocketed. Families are struggling to afford the basic necessities for their home. Now the government is going to make it even more expensive.
And will this policy be effective? Will it reduce emissions and bring Canada into a green renewable future?
No. No, it will not.
While locally (in Canada) emissions may go down, there will be no global reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That is because the ethanol used to dilute our liquid fuels will most likely be imported from the United States. US based ethanol has a higher lifetime carbon intensity than gasoline. To extract, store it, ship it, etc. produces more emissions than what would be produced by using gasoline to fill our cars.
This new “Second Carbon Tax” will not reduce emissions. But it will allow Justin Trudeau to state that he has reduced Canada’s carbon intensity footprint. Unfortunately, any such reduction resulting from this tax will be achieved on the backs of working Canadians.
This policy will not help Canadians lead better lives. But it will make it more expensive to drive your car to the grocery store, to hockey practices, to medical appointments, and to work.
And, contrary to the government’s claim that there will be virtually no effect on GDP, the impact of this new tax on the Canadian economy will be significant. By 2030 the Canadian GDP will be about 1.3 percent lower than without the CFS. In other words, we can expect that Trudeau’s new CFS carbon tax will actually harm the Canadian economy. Unemployment, higher cost of living and further diversion of investments from Canada will put downward pressure on government revenue. This will lead to an increase in the consolidated government deficit in every year of the policy’s implementation. The extra government debt accumulated by 2040 because of the Clean Fuel Standard is estimated to reach as high as $95.2 billion.
You may feel like I am starting to sound like a broken record. Believe me, I feel like that too. My message is always consistent: bad government policies mean prices go up for Canadian families, and Canadian families should not be punished for the sake of our government’s phony global image as climate heroes.
But that is because policies like the Clean Fuel Standard will have real, serious, even detrimental effects for Canadian families.
A new tax on energy? A second carbon tax, on top of the already disastrous and ever-increasing carbon tax that Trudeau insists on forcing Canadians to pay? Yep. Because, well, because it’s 2022.
Well, he finally did it.
After literally years of rumours that he was preparing to run for parliament and being groomed as Justin Trudeau’s successor.
After he, reportedly, agreed to take over Chrystia Freeland’s job as Finance Minister in December, only to then, reportedly, pull back once her very public and pointed resignation made the job too toxic for someone with his ambitions.
After he even began telegraphing, through surrogates, an openness to joining a Conservative government, likely hoping to preserve some of his beloved environmentalist achievements if and when Pierre Poilievre leads his party into government.
After all that, Mark Carney has finally thrown his hat into the ring for the position of Liberal leader and prime minister of our beloved and beleaguered country.
And, as I’ve been predicting, the whole gang of Trudeau apologists are out in force, jumping for joy and saying this is the best thing since sliced bread. Carney is a breath of fresh air, a man who can finally turn the page on a difficult era in our history, a fighter, and — of all things! — an outsider.
Hogwash!
This narrative conveniently ignores the fact that Carney has been a key Trudeau confidant for years. As Pierre Poilievre pointed out on Twitter/X, he remains listed on the Liberal Party’s website as an advisor to the Prime Minister. He’s godfather to Chrystia Freeland’s son, for heaven’s sake!
Outsider?! This man is an insider’s insider.
But, more importantly, Carney has been a passionate supporter and promoter of the Trudeau government’s agenda, with the job-killing, economy-hobbling Net Zero program right at its heart. The Carbon Tax? He was for it before he was against it, which is to say, before it was clear the popular opposition to it isn’t going away, especially now that we all see what a bite it’s taken out of our household budgets.
Even his course correction was half-hearted. In Carney’s words, the Carbon Tax “served a purpose up until now.” What on earth does that even mean?
Meanwhile, EV mandates, Emission Caps, the War on Pipelines, tax dollars for so-called renewables, and all of the other policies designed to stifle our natural resources imposed on us by the activists in the Trudeau government? They’re right up Carney’s ally.
Plus his record at the Banks of Canada and England, his role as the U.N.’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, and his passion projects like the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), and its subgroup the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), point to a concerning willingness to achieve his ideological goals by even the most sneaky, underhanded routes.
Take, for instance, the question of whether we need to “phase out” Canada’s oil and gas industry. Politicians who want real power can’t just come out and endorse that position without experiencing major blowback, as Justin Trudeau found out back in 2017. Despite years of activist propaganda, Canadians still recognize that hydrocarbon energy is the backbone of our economy.
But what if oil and gas companies started having trouble getting loans or attracting investment, no matter how profitable they are? Over time they, and the jobs and other economic benefits they provide, would simply disappear.
That is, in essence, the goal of GFANZ. It’s what they mean when they require their members – including Canadian banks like BMO, TD, CIBC, Scotiabank and RBC – to commit to “align[ing] their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century or sooner.”
And Mark Carney is their founder and chairman. GFANZ is Mark Carney’s baby.
In truth, Mark Carney is less an outsider than he is the man behind the curtain, the man pulling the strings and poking the levers of power. Not that he will put it this way, but his campaign pitch can be boiled down to, “Trudeau, but without the scandals or baggage.” Well, relatively speaking.
But the thing is, it wasn’t those scandals – as much of an embarrassment as they were — which has brought an unceremonious end to Justin Trudeau’s political career. What laid him low, in the end, was bad policy and governmental mismanagement.
To choose Mark Carney would be to ask for more of the same. Thanks, but no thanks.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Carney is a champion of ESG, and the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) which seeks to harness the might of global finance to bring about a Net-Zero global economy
Whether Carney will actually throw his hat in the ring is hard to predict. He did announce that he will “be considering this decision closely with my family over the coming few days.” But his years-long flirtation with electoral politics suggests that Carney is politically ambitious. And in the tradition of the politically ambitious, he’s lining up his constituents. At this very moment he’s busy making calls, and promises, to Liberal MPs looking for their support. Over the next several days we will hear an unending stream of praise for Carney, that he’s a ‘breath of fresh air,’ that he’s ‘just what Canada needs,’ and on and on.
Well don’t you believe it. Because one thing is for certain — Canada does not need another uber-elite, WEF hobnobbing, Green Agenda-pushing leader at the helm of any political party.
Let’s not forget who Carney is.
The former Governor of the Banks of Canada and England, Carney currently runs the megafirm Brookfield, whose offices he recently moved from Canada to the U.S., and serves as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Leadership and Finance.
Rich, established, and part of the green elite: that is Mark Carney.
I warned about Carney during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when he — along with climate activist and Trudeau-whisperer Gerald Butts — was pushing hard for what he called a ‘green recovery.’ At the time Carney was framing the economic and health crisis as an opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ into a new economy. Four years later and we have all experienced first hand the real meaning of this utopian green vision — soaring energy costs which have made it harder to heat our homes, gas up our cars and buy groceries.
Conservatives call him “Carbon Tax Carney,” a nickname which his apologists have started to say is unfair, since after years of championing the Carbon Tax, he has recently distanced himself from it.
Well, of course he has! Support for the Carbon Tax has cratered across the country, and Carney is just one of many long-time supporters jumping ship in the hope that their reputation — and their wider agenda — doesn’t get sucked down with it.
Carney has been, and continues to be, a carnival barker for interventionist policies and regulation to control carbon emissions. When it comes to action on the environment and the economy Carney is of the “just do what we smart people say” school. He constantly talks of an impending climate crisis, and supports his alarmist fellow travellers like climate doomster Greta Thunberg, whom he has praised for her “many positive contributions.”
Carney has persistently advocated for strict controls on corporate governance to direct support — that is, money — towards his favored fuels and technologies. In fact, his apparent “about face” on the Carbon Tax (he said it “served a purpose up until now”) came about in the context of his Senate testimony in favor of Bill S-243, the “Climate-Aligned Finance Act,” which seeks to make it nearly impossible for banks to invest in, or loan money to, oil and gas projects in Canada, and tries to force financial institutions to appoint board members ideologically opposed to hydrocarbon energy.
Carney is a champion of ESG, and the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) which seeks to harness the might of global finance to bring about a Net-Zero global economy. After a lot of initial excitement and acclaim (at least from the Davos-brigade), GFANZ has had trouble coping with the difficult economic times which Carney’s preferred policies have contributed to bringing about, not to mention the potential for antitrust litigation from the U.S. Department of Justice, which seems increasingly likely. Some of the group’s biggest members — Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo — have dropped out of the alliance just in the past month.
That might mean that GFANZ is not long for this world, but even so it should remain as a black mark on Carney’s résumé. It demonstrates that his economic instincts, whichsome are praising, are always towards more control, by the likes of him, over how the rest of us live our lives. And its downfall likely foreshadows what a Prime Minister Carney would do to Canada’s economy.
On energy and the environment, Carney is Trudeau with Wall Street and central bank experience: a green ideologue, but a more sophisticated one.
Canadians are fed up with green ideologues, polished or otherwise. Their ideas undermine our economic well-being, by making energy a lot more expensive. Ultimately, a Liberal Party under Mark Carney’s leadership would represent more of the same green grifting policies we saw under Justin Trudeau.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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Canadians for Affordable Energy is run by Dan McTeague, former MP and founder of Gas Wizard. We stand up and fight for more affordable energy.
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