Carbon Tax Impact Canada

What is the real impact of the carbon tax in Canada? The carbon tax only contributes a fraction of a percent towards inflation, even with knock-on effects, whether you’re in Alberta or Ontario, or Nova Scotia. Meanwhile 25 cents of every dollar of inflation over the past two years in Canada has gone to oil and gas and mining industry profits. What the carbon tax does do is help bring down air pollution from burning fossil fuels which has a serious benefit to people’s health in Canada.

Carbon Tax Impact on The Economy and Canadian Households

Over 200 Canadian economists back carbon pricing as having minimal economic impact, being a benefit to the climate, being the cheapest way to deal with climate change, and have confirmed that most families get more back.

Numbers you may be hearing quoted from the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report confirm that the impact on inflation is a fraction of a percent. References to numbers on the “costs to the economy” are being used out of context and don’t account for costs of climate change (billions) or the benefits of a green economy. Using the PBO’s carbon tax numbers this way would be like an early 20th century person calculating the costs of moving away from an economy based on horse-drawn carriages without including the benefits of having access to motorized transport. We deal with this more in the podcast below. And again no, the run on effects of the carbon prices do not add significantly more to inflation.

Climate change is already costing Canadian households billions of dollars, and people in flood prone areas will have trouble getting mortgages for their homes.

Health, Air Pollution, Fine Particles, and Carbon Pricing

One in 7 deaths of Canadians are due to fossil fuel particles, and carbon pricing helps prevent these deaths by diminishing the amount of fossil fuels burned.

By 2018, “for every household in the BC metropolitan areas – after the carbon tax (was introduced) – we have a five per cent to 11 per cent reduction in local air pollution,” said Lorenzo Sileci, the author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher at the London School of Economics. – Global News.

And yes, fossil fuels are the cause of this pollution.

Climate Change, Renewable Energy, and CO2 Myths – does the Carbon Tax Work?

Yes, carbon pricing is a highly effective way to reduce emissions in Canada. How the tax works is covered in the podcast below.

A renewable energy transition is completely possible and people won’t freeze because of it. We deal with this in a different podcast episode.

Yes, CO2 is a pollutant in the case of climate change and human caused CO2 causes climate change – it’s not just plant food.

No, volcanoes are not to blame for more emissions that humans. Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.

When it comes to Canada’s wildfires last year it is NOT arson that’s to blame and the climate crisis made the spate of Canada wildfires twice as likely, read more in untangling climate misinformation around Canada’s raging wildfire.

Finally, Canada’s forests haven’t absorbed more carbon than they’ve released since 2001.

You can find more on other common climate myths at this website. And you can read more about our work on climate change on our program page.

We deal with even more aspects of carbon pricing, including details on how it works, in the most recent edition of our podcast, which you can listen to below on Youtube or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to more on carbon pricing below!