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I was surprised this week to read in an Angus Reid poll referenced in a CBC article that almost 40 per cent of people think they did not get or don’t know if they got the Carbon Tax Credit rebate payment this month.
If you or someone in your household filed income tax last year, you will have received the rebate. The amount depends on the number of people in your household. It will be a direct deposit if you are signed up for that with Revenue Canada or will be a cheque in the mail if not.
In a household of more than one person, it will go to the bank account of the person who signed up to get it when filing income tax. Unfortunately, it does not say “this is your carbon tax rebate!” Ours (a two-person household) came today. It says “Canada - $182”.
It is a different amount for single people and people with children. Everyone in Ontario and seven other provinces receives it because we are signed on to the Federal Carbon Reduction Plan. The other provinces have their own plans for the price on carbon.
The tax was implemented as part of the climate change strategy. It is intended to encourage people to make changes and stop burning fossil fuels. Reducing how much you drive your car and how you heat your home is the best way to reduce how much you pay in carbon tax.
Taking transit, walking, carpooling, hybrid and electric vehicles and home heat pumps all help to reduce your carbon footprint. There are other government programs and strategies to help pay some of the costs to make these changes.
You actually make money on the rebate if you lower your actual fossil fuel use.
“Axing the tax” will put more money in the pockets of those who already have the most money. They are often the folks who have access to more than one car and live in bigger houses requiring more fossil fuel to heat, thus paying more carbon tax than they get rebated.
Low and middle-income earners, in most cases, end up in a positive cash flow — they get more carbon tax back in the rebate than they spend. So once more, a Conservative government would implement policies that favour those who already have more than enough money.
Some kind of carbon tax is paid in 40 countries throughout the world and the data shows that the use of these taxes is actually lowering the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is one of the things that is working. Not slowing the pending disaster that is climate change will end up costing billions more than a rebated tax program.
There is much we are not doing to halt the disaster that is climate change and time is running out to reverse the catastrophic changes we are experiencing. Forest fires, no snowpack in the bush or on the prairies, massive rainstorms, increasingly ferocious hurricanes, drought … the list goes on.
Electing politicians who would have you believe that “axing the tax” will put a whole bunch of money back in your pockets and who have no climate change mitigation strategy of their own will be a colossal disaster for our children and grandchildren.
Janet Gasparini
Chair, Sudbury Federal Liberal Association