Who benefits, who loses, from the carbon tax?
Carbon pollution, the emissions which make the climate heat up, come from burning oil and gas.
These days, all scientists agree on that. The climate getting hotter means more fires and floods, stronger storms and more land too dry to grow crops.
Is unpopularity a good reason for a government to drop the best tool it has for reducing the carbon pollution that makes the climate hotter and the disasters worse? Especially when the tool benefits most people with lower income?
I don’t think so.
Putting a higher price (it’s not really a tax) on burning oil and gas means less of it gets burned. That helps the climate.
Giving back most of the money in rebates means people with lower income usually get back more money than they spend paying for higher priced fuel. That helps these people.
Well-off people get the same rebate. But, with their big houses, frequent flying and so on, they usually burn so much oil and gas that the rebate does not cover all of the higher price they pay.
So, who would benefit from dropping the higher price — the tax — for oil and gas? Well-off and rich people. And the oil companies would benefit since we’d buy more oil and gas.
It is the oil and gas companies and the grocery chains’ big price increases and their enormous profits that increase the cost of living, not the carbon tax.
(Example: The five biggest oil companies’ combined profit in Canada in 2022 was $16 billion. They increased their prices and in 2023 it was $38 billion.)
Mary Amerongen Council of Canadians Yukon Chapter