A "neutral" carbon tax would be fine. The Liberal carbon tax isn't a carbon tax:
1) It plays favorites by deeming certain provinces' existing levies to be adequate. The carbon tax should be applied equally across the country
2) It provides politically motivated exemptions to certain activities. Molecules should be taxed equally (except 3 below) regardless of their source
3) It ignores the competitive disadvantage of taxing exports. Like the GST, carbon taxes paid to create exported products and services should be rebated
4) Through tax refunds, it transfers wealth from the corporate sectors to individuals to make the tax more palatable
5) By explicitly providing a tax rebate to individuals tied to the carbon tax, it negates the behavioral impact of the tax, and incurs extra administrative overhead. Instead, the government should have increased the existing GST rebates to compensate low income earners
6) All carbon tax should go into general revenue and not be tagged to alleged green programs, which will be prone to pork-barrel politics, and again dull the behavioral impact of the tax
I understand and agree with the general point of this article. However, I would like to see more examples and specifics when trying to make such a broad point. Apart from EV, fuel mandate, and more red tape, this article does not provide any details on what they term as "wasteful". Expenditure of $40B or more is concerning, so please provide some additional information on where that is going to further provide basis for your point.
It'd be awesome if Conservatives were to switch their critical focus from measures which are unpopular but cost-effective (carbon pricing) to measures which are popular but ineffective (like home retrofits). But despite losing vote share in Ontario and Quebec in the 2019 election, the Conservatives are still committed to scrapping carbon pricing the next time they win an election, as happened in Australia, Ontario, and Alberta.
Given political reality, it's not surprising that the Liberals have included popular measures in the climate plan. As Mark Jaccard points out in "The Citizen's Guide to Climate Action," carbon pricing has the lowest economic cost, but it has a very high political cost. Measures like the Clean Fuel Standard and zero-emission vehicle mandates have a higher economic cost, but there's a far smaller number of people who strongly oppose them.
In short, the Liberal climate plan includes popular measures as well as one that's opposed by a lot of people. Asking them to drop the popular measures and just keep the unpopular one seems pretty unrealistic.
A "neutral" carbon tax would be fine. The Liberal carbon tax isn't a carbon tax:
1) It plays favorites by deeming certain provinces' existing levies to be adequate. The carbon tax should be applied equally across the country
2) It provides politically motivated exemptions to certain activities. Molecules should be taxed equally (except 3 below) regardless of their source
3) It ignores the competitive disadvantage of taxing exports. Like the GST, carbon taxes paid to create exported products and services should be rebated
4) Through tax refunds, it transfers wealth from the corporate sectors to individuals to make the tax more palatable
5) By explicitly providing a tax rebate to individuals tied to the carbon tax, it negates the behavioral impact of the tax, and incurs extra administrative overhead. Instead, the government should have increased the existing GST rebates to compensate low income earners
6) All carbon tax should go into general revenue and not be tagged to alleged green programs, which will be prone to pork-barrel politics, and again dull the behavioral impact of the tax
7) It isn't high enough to change behavior
I understand and agree with the general point of this article. However, I would like to see more examples and specifics when trying to make such a broad point. Apart from EV, fuel mandate, and more red tape, this article does not provide any details on what they term as "wasteful". Expenditure of $40B or more is concerning, so please provide some additional information on where that is going to further provide basis for your point.
It'd be awesome if Conservatives were to switch their critical focus from measures which are unpopular but cost-effective (carbon pricing) to measures which are popular but ineffective (like home retrofits). But despite losing vote share in Ontario and Quebec in the 2019 election, the Conservatives are still committed to scrapping carbon pricing the next time they win an election, as happened in Australia, Ontario, and Alberta.
Given political reality, it's not surprising that the Liberals have included popular measures in the climate plan. As Mark Jaccard points out in "The Citizen's Guide to Climate Action," carbon pricing has the lowest economic cost, but it has a very high political cost. Measures like the Clean Fuel Standard and zero-emission vehicle mandates have a higher economic cost, but there's a far smaller number of people who strongly oppose them.
In short, the Liberal climate plan includes popular measures as well as one that's opposed by a lot of people. Asking them to drop the popular measures and just keep the unpopular one seems pretty unrealistic.
Thanks for the background information and perspective.