The carbon tax is going up (as expected)!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.40913
Summary
The carbon tax is not standing still. It's not going to stand still any longer, and it's time to pay the price for all the carbon taxes that the government has been promising since 2016. And the price we pay is going to go up.
Transcript
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there's been one major argument at the core of how the Liberal government has
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gotten people to stop worrying and learn to love the carbon tax now that obviously
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hasn't happened in many cases but for those who have been placated what's done
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it for them is the promise that don't worry it's only going to be a $50 per
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ton tax starting pretty small about $25 and then we'll slowly increase it year
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by year to ease it into place oh and by the way we'll give you a little rebate
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a climate action incentive to make it easy for you and in some families cases
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it'll make you better off wow it's gonna clean the environment and make people
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richer why didn't I think of that is surely what every politician should be
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wondering hold on a second though a bit of a spanner in the works Environment
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Minister Catherine McKenna so headlines tell us this week she's fessed up and
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she said that well $50 per ton it may not be the absolute final tally maybe a
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little later it might go up a bit hmm and this is where things start to fall apart
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where the wheels come off the bus because the higher it gets well the greater the
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carbon taxes the more that the average family is gonna have to shell out the
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the current estimates say it's gonna cost families depending what province you're in
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and what your usage is somewhere between $700 a month to $1,500 a month or so but
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will still give you that rebate don't worry well part of the problem with that is you
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still have to float the costs until tax time you're talking about a whole lot of
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money and the higher the tax goes the higher the rebate goes the higher this
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becomes a pretty elaborate shell game can we handle it can the government keep
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it all together Catherine McKenna she's being pretty wishy-washy on all of this
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but we should not be surprised by this I wrote a column a year ago saying that
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government documents have made it clear for years now since 2016 for three years
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that they were never actually planning to keep it at $50 per ton so they go from
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now until 2022 and that's where they increase it to $50 per ton but their
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various different memoranda say come 2022 they will do a review that looks at
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increasing the stringency they use language like that they don't actually
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say we're gonna increase the tax but they make it pretty clear oh is this
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doing everything it should be doing if not well we'll take another look we'll
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review the program increase it it's rather funny that once they get to 50 it's
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probably not gonna sit at 50 almost right away they go we've got to increase it
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further what will it be to the $102 per ton that one government document says
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what about the $300 per ton that one UN report says should be the minimum amount
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and then they go much much higher well folks it's all on the table and as you
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know I've been warning and predicting that a meat tax will be a thing that we
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might see soon because there's a lot of conversation about how livestock and just
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the general creation of meat and high protein diets they have a major carbon
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footprint they'll be looking at going after that next so the carbon tax it's
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not standing still and unfortunately this is something of an I told you say so
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moment so be warned because next time around they'll be looking to jack it up