The green agenda comes at a high cost for Canadians
In a 1999 interview, the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman remarked that there were good arguments for having government take action to reduce pollution, like smoke from power plants.
That’s because the smoke imposes costs on third parties – for example, by dirtying property as well as surrounding public spaces. A power plant produces the smoke but doesn’t pay for all the costs. This might justify government taking action to reduce the amount of smoke or make the power plant pay for the right to emit the smoke.
“But you have to qualify that by noting that when the government enters in,” Friedman warned, “it also is emitting smoke, it’s also imposing costs on third parties. … There’s a smokestack on the back of every government program.”
What Friedman meant was that just like a chimney emitting smoke, government programs impose costs on third parties. Consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay for those government actions.