Why doesn’t Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ever criticize U.S. President Joe Biden for failing to impose a national carbon tax on Americans?
Aren’t we constantly being told putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions is the best way to combat climate change?
If so, why doesn’t our largest trading partner have one?
Why are Canadian families in the provinces paying the federal carbon tax ending up hundreds of dollars in the hole annually — rising to thousands of dollars by 2030 — even with the carbon tax’s rebate system, according to Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux?
The other question is why has the U.S. been more successful at lowering emissions, without a carbon tax, than Canada has with one?
While Trudeau implemented Canada’s carbon tax in 2019, the U.S. has rejected one going all the way back to when climate change guru Al Gore was vice-president in the Bill Clinton administration, a policy that continued through the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden administrations.
The U.S., unlike Canada, also rejected the Kyoto accord, which laid the foundation for international carbon pricing.
Clinton tried to put a tax on fossil fuel energy and failed.
Obama tried to pass a cap-and-trade bill — another form of a carbon tax — and failed.
That was the only time the Conservatives, then under prime minister Stephen Harper, supported carbon pricing in the form of cap-and-trade, campaigning on it in the 2008 federal election.
Harper reasoned that if our largest trading partner was going to put a price on emissions eventually, it was inevitable that Canada would have to do so as well.
When Obama’s bid ultimately failed in 2010, Harper dropped cap-and-trade and today the situation has reversed — Canada has a national carbon tax while the U.S. does not.
Biden’s climate change policy was contained in his 2022 legislation, bizarrely named the Inflation Reduction Act — because it fuels inflation — which earmarked almost U.S. $400 billion in incentives and tax credits for everything from clean technologies to support for the fossil fuel industry.
Except for putting a price on some methane emissions from the oil and gas sector starting in 2024, the IRA is all carrot and no stick when it comes to cutting emissions.
That’s resulted in Canada having to get into bidding wars with the U.S. by providing massive public subsidies to entice international developers of so-called clean energy technologies, such as the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles, to Canada.
On July 1, the Trudeau government is imposing another cost on emissions called the clean fuel regulations, which will raise the price of gasoline by up to 17-cents-per-litre by 2030, according to the PBO, on top of a 37.57-cents-per-litre increase due to the federal carbon tax at that time.
All of this raises the question of why the U.S. by relying on technological innovation, without a carbon ax, has been more successful at cutting emissions than Canada with one.
Both countries had targets of reducing emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. The Americans hit their target, reducing emissions by 21%. Canada missed it with a 9% cut.
While both U.S. and Canadian emissions rose in 2021 as the global economy began to recover from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, Canadian emissions were down 8.4% compared to 2005, America’s double that.
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