Newsflash: People do not change their behaviour in the face of rising prices when the product is essential to their economic success
“Be it resolved that a carbon tax is the policy Canada needs to fight climate change.”
Terence Corcoran and Andrew Coyne go head-to-head on whether a carbon tax is the proper tool to fight climate change.
According to the oracles of carbon economics, a carbon tax must be applauded because it is a “market-based” tax that acts just like a “market price” which, under the infallible economic laws of supply and demand, will automatically produce reductions in carbon dioxide emissions more efficiently than regulations and other big-government measures.
As the current $20-a-tonne federal carbon tax — about 4.4 cents per litre of gasoline at the pump — rises to $50 or $100 or even $200 in years to come, fossil fuel consumption will fall, an outcome allegedly guaranteed by economic theory.
None of this carbon tax dogma stands up well in the real world, as I will demonstrate shortly.
Nor should Canadians fall for the new-found carbon tax miracle revealed by the Parliamentary Budget Office and embraced by such carbon tax enthusiasts as Calgary’s Pembina Institute and Toronto’s Globe and Mail, which recently said that “more taxpayers will get back more in carbon tax rebates than they’ll pay in carbon tax.”
Sounds amazing: You pay a tax and the government gives you back more than you pay. Fantastic. Let’s have a bigger carbon tax! Imagine: If a $20 carbon tax produces a refund of $307, then a $200 carbon tax will mean an annual tax refund of more than $3,000.
Terence Corcoran – National Post – May 25, 2019.
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