OTTAWA — The Canadian government plans to increase the carbon tax to $170 per tonne by 2030 and, by consequence, kill thousands of jobs, take money from Canadians and decrease Canadian productivity, a Fraser Institute report says.
While Canada’s Environment Minister has said the carbon tax hike will have “almost zero” impact on the economy, the federal government has not released any analysis of the effects of the higher carbon tax.
Since the federal government won’t tell us how much it will really cost, the fiscally-conservative Vancouver-based think tank, Fraser Institute, did the hard work for them and published its results last month in Estimated Impacts of a $170 Carbon Tax in Canada – by researchers Ross McKitrick and Elmira Aliakbari.
The researchers found that the carbon tax will cost more than 200,000 jobs nationwide, and mean $1,800 less income for the average Canadian annually. It will also mean more government debt, higher energy costs and a massive $44 billion decline in GDP (or an 2.1 per cent annual drop in productivity).
The study found that almost half of the job losses will be in Ontario.
Last year, the parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux said that Canadians would be better off after receiving their carbon rebate but the Fraser Institute report argued that the benefit collapses after you factor in the provincial and federal sales taxes on carbon prices.
“The drop in GDP works out to about $1,800 in current dollars per employed person,” the researchers reported.
