Fossil fuel subsidies cost Canadians a lot more money than the carbon tax

[Pelican Press 0]

Fossil fuel subsidies cost Canadians a lot more money than the carbon tax

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The federal carbon tax increase is now in effect, and will raise gas prices by

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in most ********* provinces.

The hike prompted complaints from

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and a

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, culminating in a

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in the ******** government.

Yet this ongoing debate overlooks a far costlier carbon tax: fossil fuel subsidies.

Fossil fuel subsidies cost us big bucks

Every year, federal and provincial governments use taxpayer dollars to provide financial support or tax breaks to fossil fuel companies.

These subsidies cost ********* taxpayers at least

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, or roughly $214 per taxpayer every year. And unlike the federal

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, Canadians don’t get a rebate on this tax.

Fossil fuel subsidies are a big problem across Canada. The federal government has spent

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on the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and

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on a liquefied natural gas facility. The ********* oil and natural gas sector also benefits from

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under the Income Tax Act.

British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan give more than

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in royalty reductions and tax exemptions to the fossil fuel industry every year. Ontario gives

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in tax breaks to aviation and agricultural fuels. Manitoba, Québec and the Atlantic provinces give similar tax exemptions to

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.

Big costs to taxpayers

A billion here, a few billion there—all these subsidies add up to a big cost to ********* taxpayers. While oil and gas companies boast about

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, ********* taxpayers are footing the bill.

These explicit fossil fuel subsidies are

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.

They don’t include the health-care costs of air pollution, which is responsible for

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. They also don’t include the future costs of cleaning

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, unpaid

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and other costs abandoned by fossil fuel companies.

Multi-level problems

Fossil fuel subsidies are a problem at

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. They frustrate climate change mitigation efforts because they increase the profitability of fossil fuels.

This creates a perverse incentive that

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.

They also create artificially lower prices for fossil fuels, which is why libertarians and free market conservatives have opposed these so-called fossil fuel ******** payments.

Fossil fuel subsidies also impose an opportunity cost. The taxpayer money used for fossil fuel subsidies could go to more valuable projects, such as building more homes, just as the federal government

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.

Just the federal portion of the subsidies over the last four years could have

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. The money could also

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.

For these reasons, there is a mounting consensus that

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and elsewhere should be eliminated.

Ending fossil fuel subsidies

There have been various attempts to

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. In 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other G20 leaders pledged to

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.

At the 2022 ******* Nations climate change conference, all UN member states committed to “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of …

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.”

In the past few years, ******* States President Joe Biden has sought to

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.

Last June, the House of Commons studied

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. Following the report, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault

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.

Despite these calls for reform, many

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and continue to cost us billions. Indeed,

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to support oil and gas extraction than Australia, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the ******* States.

Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies may not be a

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to solve climate change, but can make a big difference in

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. It just makes dollars and sense.

Provided by
The Conversation

This article is republished from

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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. This article is republished from

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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Citation:
Viewpoint: Fossil fuel subsidies cost Canadians a lot more money than the carbon tax (2024, April 2)
retrieved 2 April 2024
from

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