The Canadian government believes renaming their ‘Climate Action Incentive Payments’ as ‘Canada Carbon Rebates’ will satisfy the national disgust about what carbon taxes have done to daily life.
The carbon tax is, after all, nothing more than a disincentive penalty fine for choosing the wrong behaviour – as decided by the Liberal-NDP regime … We buy alternatives and don’t use the products we need because they are now too expensive. Thus are we fined and penalised into environmental virtue,” Western Standard wrote.
Last year we published an article explaining that Canada is one of the few countries that has managed to impose a carbon tax without getting a backlash. The trick Canada deployed was the use of language; to package it as a “price on pollution,” not a tax. It seems the Trudeau regime is deploying the same psychological tactics it boasted of last year as a success story by renaming ‘Climate Action Incentive Payments’ as ‘Canada Carbon Rebates’.
What alternatives to so-called “fossil fuels” do Canadians have? None. Since petroleum is the reason we have an advanced civilisation, the virtue-signalling about living green without oil is disingenuous, Western Standard noted.
(Related: They are lying to you; fossil fuel emissions do not cause global warming)
The government’s attempt to promote the green agenda has distorted the marketplace and the green agenda is not achieving the intended results. Instead, Canadians are experiencing reduced access to healthcare, education and public safety, and are facing the negative impact of rising food prices. Essentially, Canadians are just getting poorer.
Climate catastrophists claim that water vapour, CO2 and methane are the most significant greenhouse gases and trap heat, aggravating global warming. They claim that man-made CO2 is to blame which leads to the fundamentally flawed conclusion that if humans didn’t exist, the climate would stabilise.
(Related: Very few scientists agree that climate change is driven by human activity)
“As yet, there is no agreed predictive link between CO2 and temperature rise,” Western Standard pointed out. “We actually don’t even know whether the measured rise in CO2 is the cause of warming – or a consequence.”
What we do know is that CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s plant food without which all life on Earth would die.
(Related: Carbon dioxide, nitrogen and climate change are greening the Earth and Carbon dioxide is the elixir of life, let’s celebrate it not demonise it)
Likewise, without water, the planet is dead. And methane is simply the by-product of animals and the decay of vegetable matter. Contrary to what the climate change alarmists claim, biogenic methane has a short lifespan and is part of the natural carbon cycle.
(Related: We shouldn’t demonise cows for burping and farting; we should be thanking them)
Considering the above, “Mr. Trudeau is far from honest when he says in the House of Commons that the government has ‘put a price on pollution’,” Western Standard said. “This penalty tax is neither good climate policy nor good fiscal policy.”
The government and its collaborators don’t measure the effects of CO2 reduction because the results won’t support their policies and the Canadian public won’t like the answer.
“The latest federal government data indicate that Canada’s CO2 emissions in 2021 went up by 1.8% to 670 million tonnes compared to 2020. Questions about estimated benefits are avoided with scoldings about leadership, spurring innovation and the social conscience of Canadians,” Western Standard wrote.
If the Trudeau regime was honest, it would admit their carbon tax was not a “price on pollution,” but cost added to almost all goods and services Canadians purchase which the government relies on for revenue, just as with any other tax.
Western Standard reports that the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, said in 2022 that when the negative impact of the carbon tax on the economy is factored in, 60% of households paid more in carbon taxes than they received in rebates. This will rise to 80% in Nova Scotia in 2025; 80% in Ontario in 2026; 80% in Manitoba in 2029; and, 80% in Alberta and P.E.I. in 2030.
It’s absurd that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal-NDPs believe renaming the ‘Climate Action Incentive Payments’ as ‘Canada Carbon Rebates’ will fool Canadians.
“Just get rid of the whole scam and stop trying to bribe us with our own money, the rebate,” Western Standard said.
Sources for this article include: Carbon tax is bad policy, not a communications problem, Western Standard, 20 February 2024
