As part of a wide-reaching Conservative Party of Canada push against the carbon tax, Parry Sound—Muskoka Conservative MP Scott Aitchison visited Greater Sudbury on March 28.
The visit preempted the Liberals’ annual scheduled April 1 carbon tax increase, when it will jump from $65 per tonne to $80. These jumps are scheduled to continue until it hits $170 by 2030.
Aitchison stopped by Nickel Belt Liberal MP Marc Serré’s office in Val Caron to speak with local media before meeting with the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.
“This is a system that is really a tax system, it’s not reducing the carbon footprint of the country,” he told Sudbury.com.
A recent analysis published by the Canadian Climate Institute estimates the carbon price could slash greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100 million tonnes a year by 2030.
“We believe, fundamentally, that if you want to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere you need to make greener options easier to get going,” Aitchison added.
“We’re here in Sudbury, there aren’t as many options to get to work as there are in downtown Toronto,” he said, adding the carbon tax is “a system that is particularly punitive to people who live in rural and northern climates.”
Rather than “punish Canadians” with a carbon tax, he said it’d be more beneficial to boost the Canadian economy by increasing the production of liquified natural gas to be exported globally to help higher-emitting countries lower their carbon footprints.
It’s a global issue, he said, adding that Canada’s contribution to global emissions is negligible.
According to the federal government, Canada ranked as the 11th largest greenhouse gas emitting country/region in the world in 2020.
Canada emitted an estimated 678 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that year, which was 1.5 per cent of global emissions. China topped the list at 28.1 per cent of global emissions (12,943 megatonnes).
During Aitchison’s meeting with local media, local environmental advocate Cathy Orlando stood behind him holding a sign which read “Carbon pricing makes my life more affordable.”
“The inflation we’re facing is caused by climate change, corporate greed and the wars around the world,” she said, citing a Bank of Canada report which attributed 0.15 per cent of inflation to the carbon tax.
Orlando also raised an open letter supportive of the carbon tax, which was signed by more than 200 economists, as evidence that experts support the Liberals’ plan.
“My daughter (fellow advocate Sophia Mathur) has just asked that adults listen to the experts and co-operate,” Orlando said.
“This is the Canadian way of doing things, it’s the polite way, and I trust Canadians will do that.”
In response to the open letter, a Conservative Party of Canada spokesperson dismissed its signatories as “so-called experts.”
If not them, who are the experts Conservatives believe Canadians should listen to?
In conversation with Sudbury.com, Aitchison cited the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer’s (PBO) reporting as a viable source of information.
The PBO reported that eight out of 10 Ontarian families are going to pay more in carbon tax than they get back in rebates, Aitchison relayed.
This is true, depending on which PBO report you read.
A March 2022 report notes that by the time the full carbon tax is realized in 2030-31, the average Ontarian will receive $113 more in rebates than they pay in carbon tax.
The lowest-income quintile (20 per cent of households) would take home an extra $592, followed by $328 for quintile two, $128 for quintile three, $87 for quintile four, and the top-earning 20 per cent of households would pay $599.
According to this report, 80 per cent of Ontario households are slated to take home more in rebates than they pay in carbon tax. This is the finding Liberals tend to cite.
The PBO report which Conservatives tend to cite came out in March 2023, which adds “economic impacts” to the formula for calculating costs, which “reflect the loss in real, or inflation-adjusted, employment and investment income due to the federal fuel change.”
The carbon tax’s annual net cost using this formula indicates that 80 per cent of the highest-earning Ontario households will pay more in carbon tax than they get back in rebates by 2030-31.
The lowest-earning quintile would take home $461 per year, while the four higher-earning quintiles would spend a range from $134 to $4,866, with the higher-earning households paying the most.
Neither report accounts for the economic and environmental costs of climate change.
Canadians are in an affordability crisis, Aitchison said, citing the Conservatives’ pledge to eliminate the carbon tax as one method of addressing it.
Following the March 2023 PBO report which Conservatives lean on, the lowest-earning 20 per cent of Ontario household would lose $408 per year by 2030-31 if the carbon tax were axed.
If it were axed today, this household would be down $275 in 2024-25.
Presumptive Sudbury Conservative candidate Ian Symington attended Friday’s media event, where he criticized the carbon tax for its punitive nature.
“It is designed to punish you for using resources with a tax based on that, and Northern Ontarians and northerners in general are going to be hit harder because we live in colder temperatures,” he said.
“Most of us can’t walk to work, we can't take the bus to work ... so we have to rely on our automobiles.”
Sudbury.com connected with Serré by phone after Friday’s media event.
Dismissing the event as a “gimmick,” he said the costs associated with climate change, including fires, floods and other extreme weather events, far outshadow the carbon tax.
“That is a harder number to calculate in this whole exercise, but that’s a reality that obviously the Conservatives don’t believe in there being an issue with the planet burning and the planet warming up,” he said.
Even so, Serré said he understands where local carbon tax opponents are coming from.
After all, he added, many of the people slated to pay more in carbon tax than they receive in rebates are from rural areas such as Nickel Belt, where they have no choice but to use fossil fuels.
“We have to drive further in rural areas,” he said. “I drive an hour to my office in Val Caron, and people do hockey, they travel.”
These added pressures for rural residents, Serré said, is why he pushed hard for the rural rebate to double to 20 per cent effective April 1.
“I know it’s difficult on a few individuals who are in outlying areas, but the vast majority of people are making more money,” he said of carbon tax impacts versus associated rebates.
On this front, Serré said that missing from Conservatives’ talking points is the fact that carbon tax rebates are also increasing on April 1, from $900 for a family of four to $1,200.
The 23 per cent carbon tax hike scheduled to take effect April 1 will increase it from $65 to $80 per tonne, which will mean a jump from 14.31 cents per litre of gasoline to 17.61. A full list of price-change impacts can be found by clicking here.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
