[nmnrIjGB]

Magic Tax

Not increasing the price of gas

This is the new 'bread' portion of 'bread and circuses'... 'gas and football'?

[amehoubFomo]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ry/TPBusiness/

Knee-jerk taxes aren't the answer to the carbon dilemma
Headshot of Gwyn Morgan

GWYN MORGAN

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June 9, 2008

When Canada signed the Kyoto accord in 1998, gasoline pump prices averaged 65 cents a litre. One can well imagine the public outrage had the Liberal government combined that signing with announcement of a carbon tax that would double fuel prices. Yet, as a result of rising oil prices, average pump prices have more than doubled since 1998 to over $1.30 a litre. If the road to meeting Canada's Kyoto targets was to be driven by an unthinkably huge carbon tax, world oil prices have instead more than obliged and analysts are predicting that prices will keep on obliging without any help from government.

Curiously, while businesses and consumers reel from skyrocketing fuel costs, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell decides now is a good time to further tighten the screws. After a short period of basking in a green glow, B.C.'s allegedly "revenue neutral" tax is widening the rural-urban divide into a chasm. Already hammered by big cuts in fishery quotas and Depression-era conditions in the forest sector, the fuel tax hits communities throughout B.C.'s vast hinterlands disproportionately as they struggle to survive. In Ottawa, Stéphane Dion seems ready to apply the axiom "better late than never" as he muses about plans to fight the next election on the carbon tax he and his Liberal colleagues decided not to implement 10 years ago. I've tried my best to understand Mr. Dion's logic, but from any angle - economic, environmental or political - his reasoning is baffling.

These puzzling policy strategies come at a time when fuel taxes are being attacked in all the greenest places. Last week, I waited impatiently as big lorries blocked a major highway into London in protest of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's next carbon tax increase scheduled for July 1. Most of the motorists delayed by the congestion reacted by waving and yelling support for the truckers, which led to U.K. news headlines stating "Europe Cries 'Enough.' " Meanwhile, across the channel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is calling for an EU-wide cap on fuel taxes. With pump prices in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and U.K. ranging upward from $2.20 a litre, is it any wonder that Europeans have concluded that additional fuel tax increases are all pain with negligible environmental gain?

While our average pump price of around $1.30 a litre looks darned good against European prices, their shorter travel distances and fast, efficient passenger rail systems help a lot. In Canada, piling even more tax on top of the already rising cost of fuel just adds more pain for people whose commuting requirements or business activity leaves them without short-term options.

Creating those options will need co-operation and leadership. Knee-jerk policy reactions must be replaced by a thoughtful, holistic examination of needed structural changes. These include transforming urban transit from inefficient, smoke-spewing buses into the latest environmentally friendly light-rail transit, rethinking the "sprawl around the mall" urban commuting paradigm and best-practice approaches to urban densification. When it comes to hauling freight, rail is both safer and more energy efficient. None of these changes will be easy to get done. Urban design changes need the shared vision of municipal, provincial and federal leaders, and the move to more rail freight will have to overcome the powerful truckers' lobby. Mindlessly adding to the already doubled cost of fuel, while failing to act on these and other fundamental structural changes, sacrifices Canadian living standards and jobs without helping the environment.

Then there is the other side of the fuel tax coin: fuel subsidies. Half of our planet's population live in countries that subsidize fuel prices. Regular gasoline in Venezuela sells for 5 cents a litre; which not only stimulates demand but also means the oldest, highest-polluting vehicles stay on the road. I experienced the result first-hand travelling from the sea level airport to the mountain capital of Caracas on a road jammed with decrepit old vehicles spewing choking blue fumes.

In Nigeria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, pump prices are under 15 cents. Mexican, Malaysian, and Indonesian prices average about 65 cents while in China, now the world's biggest polluter, prices are about 75 cents a litre.

Examination of oil consumption data tells a consistent story. Demand growth is led by the subsidizing countries. Ironically, these countries have no emissions reduction obligations under the Kyoto accord. London-based Global Insight estimates the world's fleet will grow from the current 887 million vehicles to over a billion in the next four years. Virtually all of this will occur in Kyoto-exempt countries, where the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts almost 4-per-cent growth in oil demand this year. Meanwhile, in the Western developed countries with much higher fuel prices, the IEA expects oil demand to fall by nearly 1 per cent. Even the much-maligned Americans are driving less - by 11 billion fewer miles in March compared with March, 2007. And in both the U.S. and Canada, SUV sales have tanked while dealers can't keep up with the demand for fuel-friendly vehicles.

Emissions are a global issue. Inflicting more tax pain on those already trying to adjust to rising fuel prices, while exempting the subsidizers of any responsibility, is a recipe for economic and environmental failure.

[xyznicks]

Aww, I thought this thread would be about a new tax on doves, trick decks of cards & rubber saws.

[nobodyhere]

It's a ridiculously stupid idea.

What is the point of "carbon tax" if it doesn't hit at the pumps or in air travel? The reason that Dion has these two OBVIOUS exemptions is this: Ontario has the auto industry, Air Canada is based in Montreal...

Once again, a central Canadian politician is legislating stupid laws that hurt the people out West and provide exemptions for people out East.

WTF do we have carbon taxes if one of the biggest polluters is exempt? It's a retarded idea. Dion is more than happy to tax the **** out of the energy companies out West but when it comes to passing on the same kind of taxes that hurt Ontario and Quebec, he's sure to provide exemptions there. What a joke.

And of course this is "fine by you". You're an example of what is wrong with Canada, and you're proud of it. Take a hike.

Edit: Not to mention that Quebec and Ontario (and BC) have the luxury of generating electricity via Hydro. Something Alberta does not have the luxury of. Why should Alberta be punished because we don't have the ability to use hydro for power?

[Cheeniandab]

Yes. I like how all of the Liberal-leaning papers are hyping how Dion has a 10% tax cut coming.

They don't mention that the Carbon Tax will more than offset that...especially to people in middle class or higher.

[WaicurtaitfuT]

Well, normally I don't enjoy trolling, but there's something about aggravating Albertans

[ZZtop]

It is starting...

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=599732

Western Canada in the crosshairs of Liberal 'Green Shift'

End result could look a lot like the National Energy Program

Kevin Libin, National Post Published: Thursday, June 19, 2008

CALGARY -- It appears the Conservative party's cheeky nickname for Stéphane Dion's carbon tax plan can no longer be considered accurate. The "Green Shift" policy platform released on Thursday will not, it turns out, be a "tax on everything," as the government claims. Quebec's hydro powered electricity will, by all accounts, go untaxed. Ontario's nuclear power, too, appears to be in line for none of Mr. Dion's proposed penalties. A more appropriate title might be to call the Liberals' scheme a tax on everything made or fuelled using energy resources produced in Western Canada, and possibly Newfoundland.

This is not, to be sure, anything like the last bold Liberal energy realignment project, maintains University of Calgary economist Frank Atkins - though he's certain that suspicions of another National Energy Program are, as always, bound to surface here. Coal, natural gas and oil dug out of Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. soil are, after all, just as vital to the productivity of Ontario factories and Quebec's truckers (nor will either be soothed by the insinuation in the "Green Shift" handbook that goods traded between Canada and its largest trading partner, the U.S., will "likely not" face tariffs under his plan, provided that the Americans are willing to impose comparable carbon taxes of their own).

And despite Mr. Dion's promises to exempt petrol at the pump from his carbon taxes - something Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at Calgary's Ross Smith Energy Group presumes is a nakedly political move, since automobiles count among the country's largest CO2 source - drivers across the country are bound to pay more, as gasoline production costs rise. "It will get into the equation, though not directly," Ms. Dwarkin says. "The cost to make the gasoline, to transport it, to sell it, those costs are all going to go up to the extent that at retail, that's all going to get folded into the price."

Mr. Dion assures us that low-income consumers and businesses will see that money again in the form of tax cuts. The tax burden falls most heavily on three groups, Mr. Atkins figures:

"They're going to tax upper income Canadians and large [emitting] firms and the oil industry," a list overrepresented by Western, particularly Alberta-based corporations. "And they're going to redistribute this money to people at the lower end of the socioeconomic status," who just happen to exist in the largest concentrations east of here. As a political plan, it may have some merit, he suggests. "There are a lot of people in Ontario who think that ‘it's about time we stuck it to the oil companies,' and that's how they'll view this."

Environmentally, though, the outcomes may not be what the Liberals envision. Reducing profitability and with it production in the oilsands will not alleviate the world's energy consumption, Alberta's treasurer Iris Evans points out, but merely displace production and revenue to other jurisdictions - particularly those with much lower environmental standards - driving investment away from Western Canadian resources. Besides, it remains to be seen how much elasticity the Liberal experiment will find even here, notes Ms. Evans: Roughly 99% of Albertans heat their homes using natural gas; its energy sector is wholly reliant on fossil fuels to make more fossil fuels. Given the lack of waterfalls in the vicinity, there is little on offer that might prove suitably substitutable - no solar powered hydraulic shovels are on the horizon - regardless of federal penalties, at least until someone erects a nuclear facility nearby. If that's what Mr. Dion has in mind, there is no mention of funding transfers to encourage such a thing in his Green Shift report.

Instead, the projected $15 billion the Liberal plan will generate, largely from this region that is home to a considerable grouping of the country's 700 largest industrial CO2 emitters, is earmarked for low-income tax cuts and credits, child care benefits and handouts to Northern Canadians. Where Alberta's own greenhouse gas penalties, imposed last summer, stay within the province and are spent primarily within the energy patch on projects aimed at cutting emissions, Ms. Evans explains, the "Green Shift" looks to her like dollars shifting from the pockets of Western industry to other parts of the country. "Obviously, Mr. Dion is not looking for votes in Alberta," she says. While this may not be another National Energy Program, if Mr. Dion gets his way, the political and economic results could end up looking awfully similar.

[DumnEuronoumn]

MAGIC taxes

[newspetty]

Federal Liberals

I hate Canadian Federal politics in general though.

[RichardFG435]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
I've never been a fan of the conservative government but I may be out campaigning for them AND voting for them next election if Dion keeps with this plan.

[TeftyJokip]

And he quotes Atkins, my macroeconomics prof from school.

What a small world!

[UHlVExs7]

Uh, wouldn't that be a bit of a NAFTA issue?

[FinanseMikky]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
It is starting... I love how that article mentions Quebec hydro, but neglects to mention BC, Manitoba, and Newfoundland also generate their electricity mainly through hydro.

[Payodcapy542fro]

33,000 MW--- QUEBEC

54,000 MW--- BC

127,000 MW---ONTARIO

BC >>> Quebec.

but the reality is hydro isn't possible in Alberta You've got a 100 MW project on the go for Dunvegan. There's no reason why AB can't generate more hydro then Saskatchewan.

Pound for pound, BC is the biggest beneficiary.

[AnimeThat]

Not as much as Hydro. Wind kinda sucks.

Only 500 MW of Wind.

[Dwencejed]

Originally posted by Arrian
Is it windy out there in Alberta?

-Arrian Meh. There's some. The LRT in Calgary is powered entirely by wind power. But it's nowhere near being big enough, and environmentalists are already *****ing about bird deaths.

[Bobdilan]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Yeah, those numbers are way, way off. BC Hydro has an installed capacity of 11,300 MW, Ontario has 7,700 MW and Quebec has 35,190 MW. Figure. I'm not sure Ben has been right about anything in all the years he's been on Apolyton.

[sEe]

Yeah, those numbers are way, way off. BC Hydro has an installed capacity of 11,300 MW, Ontario has 7,700 MW and Quebec has 35,190 MW.

Edit: Ontario only generates a little over 31,000 MW from all sources. No idea where Ben got his pie-in-the-sky-numbers. 35,190 MW from Quebec?

Where's that source?

[ptmQqoxw]

Wikipedia.

Where's the like actual source? From Hydro Quebec no?

You guys gonna keep *****ing about how I'm wrong eh?

[Opislossy]

35,647 MW.

Yay.

Actual like real sources.

Wow.

Thank you Kontiki.