By Chris Beach

Northern View

The Northern View: The Carbon Tax Fail

Mar 28, 2024 | 5:18 AM

There has been a lot of debate around the Carbon Tax lately, particularly since it’s increasing from $65 to $80 a ton on April 1st, and specifically up to 17 cents on a litre of gas. The whole point of this tax was to get people to stop buying gas by making fuel so expensive that we would stop driving conventional cars. But then for this to work we would have to buy an electric car that costs on average $14,000 more than its gas counterpart. Make it a 4-wheel drive model and this is simply out of reach for most people.

And herein lies the problem with this carbon tax policy: It simply doesn’t work. All it’s done is make life a lot more expensive for, well, everyone actually, because even if you don’t drive a car, everything you buy has gone up in price due to increased shipping costs which include carbon tax.

So what would move the needle for most people? Simple. Provide a carrot rather than a stick. Eliminate taxes on behaviors and products that are good for the environment so we could afford them, on those things that would give us at least a choice to stop using more fossil fuels, like eliminating the huge taxes on EVs or solar panels for your roof.

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Imagine if electric cars were the same price as normal cars… Many more people would try them out, if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have to fill up at the pump anymore and empty out their wallets. Other countries have done this and have achieved extraordinary success. Nearly 80% of Norwegians drive EVs.

When Environment Ministers in Ottawa and Victoria have to stand up in Question Period and state that 80% of Canadians (and I highly doubt this because like many of you I’ve never seen a cheque in the mail) are getting more back in carbon tax rebates than they are paying out, they’ve already lost the battle.

Why charge Canadians a tax, then spend tax-payer dollars to create a bureaucratic system to administer the rebate cheques, only adding to exploding government debt, if you’re going to give them back the money anyways?

Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of the policy in the first place, to motivate people to stop buying gas? It’s completely counter-productive. I’m Chris Beach and this is the Northern View.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.