2008-06-17

Liberal Solution to Global Warming: Punish Parents

Liberal Solution to Global Warming: Punish Parents.
According to the CBC's the National, the Liberal's plan to announce their carbon tax tomorrow. According to the report, the tax would be $40 per ton of carbon, or about 10 cents per liter of heating oil. It would not apply to transportation. This is obviously a very modest tax and won't have much impact at all on people who can afford large homes. So what is the point?

Isn't this punishing people who have kids? The childless can drive around, fly to the other end of the world and back and not be worried about the carbon tax. They can also load up on electronics made in China. No carbon tax (or even duty).

If you opt for the extravagance of having a bedroom for each of your children, and the Liberals get elected, prepare to pay a carbon tax on the energy to heat and light your home. You won't exactly have much choice.

And what will the Liberals do with the money collected? Maybe more "Canada" signs on the top of federal buildings in Hull to show Quebeckers their Federal government is relevant ( and maybe a couple of global warming research grants to the political science department at the University of Montreal).

Most Quebeckers won't be paying the carbon tax because most of them heat and light their homes with some of the cheapest hydro-electricity in the world. Surpluss Quebec electricity is sold, at a huge premium, to New England, where they use it to reduce their oil and coal dependency. So I'm not sure there will be any environmental benefit to encouraging Quebeckers to switch from heating with oil and natural gas to heating with electricity. Hydro-Quebec may in fact have to build more natural gas thermal plants to cope with the higher peek consumption in the winter.

The real kicker is that the Liberal Government of Jean Chrétien encouraged/subsidized large home buying by allowing people to dip into their RRSP money, tax free, to buy homes (granted, the Conservatives haven't repealed the subsidy). The GST is also lower on new homes then it is on everything else except food (Spending $100,000 to renovate your house is taxed higher than spending $100,000 on a new home).

This is what should be done to combat global warming:
-Ban first class on airplanes;
-Ban private jets;
-Ban the use of diamonds as jewelry;
-Tax capital gains on homes.
-Drop the tax free RRSP dipping (which, by the way, is unfair to people who have pension funds instead of RRSPs)
-Get rid of the ridiculous tax credits the Conservatives came up with that rewards people for buying certain cars and for having large monthly transit bills (why should I pay more income tax if I walk to work or telecommute?).

If you want a carbon tax, then tax carbon, and that includes gas used for transportation. Tax it high enough so people notice and redistribute the money equally among all Canadians, including children. Then impose a carbon duty on products from China.

2 comments:

Stephen K said...

I'm waiting to see the details of the tax tomorrow. If there are sufficient low-income and rural tax-credits, then it will probably have my full support.

Altavistagoogle said...

Rural tax credits? Rural residents are among the worst offenders when it comes to global warming. The more people who live in New York city type places the better.

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