How hungry are the Conservatives for Power, does the Truth mean

anything to the leader Pierre Poilievre? He is Brainstorming with Tucker

Calson. Wow can you believe his is get advice from the one and only Fox News,
famous Lier Don Trumpone Cult mastermind.
Why do we allow climate deniers to continue on Fake News on Carbon Tax.
"Axe the tax" (or its American counterpart, "ax the tax") has been used as a slogan in countless political
campaigns over the decades.

It's a simple message, often a popular one and, hey, it rhymes.

Back in 1989, there were "Axe the Tax" rallies over the proposed GST. The events had a way of uniting
political rivals who shared an opponent in prime minister Brian Mulroney. Speakers at a rally in
Kindersley, Sask., included the Reform Party's Preston Manning, the Liberals' Lloyd Axworthy, and the
Saskatchewan NDP's Roy Romanow. Today, the latest target of the perennial catchphrase is
the federal carbon tax. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been hosting his
own

"Axe the Tax" rallies across the country for months now, similarly uniting
opponents of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The costs of the carbon tax typically take centre stage at these rallies. Less often
mentioned are the associated rebates, which are worth roughly $70 to $140 per
month for a family of four, depending on where they live. (Larger or smaller
households receive proportionally more or less, respectively.)

This makes the carbon tax different from other forms of taxation. While there are
modest GST rebates for low-income households, the carbon-tax rebates are
universal and significantly larger.

Axing the carbon tax would, presumably, also axe the rebates. So, on balance, how
would that shake out for Canadians?
The answer will vary — quite a lot — from household to household, depending on
consumption habits. But numerous analyses over the years have shown that most households receive
more in rebates than they pay in direct and indirect carbon-tax costs, combined. (This includes
reports from the Parliamentary Budget Office that the Conservatives often cite in their opposition to
the carbon tax, which may seem confusing, but we'll get to that in a moment.)

How much money, exactly, we are talking about here — and for whom?
1
Statistics Canada's Social Policy Simulation Database and Model offers some answers to those
questions. That may sound extraordinarily nerdy but, rest assured, it's actually not as complicated as
the name makes it out to be.

Here's how it breaks down.

A model based on actual Canadians

The SPSD/M (as it's known for short) is specialized software created and maintained by Statistics
Canada that is used by economists, researchers, politicians and anyone interested in analyzing tax
and transfer policies in the country.

The software is freely available and regarded as the pre-eminent tool for this type of analysis, said
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe. While no model is perfect, this one is as good as it
gets.

The tool combines a variety of information on income, taxes, spending, and other economic
measures collected from real Canadians and combined into a single database that's anonymized
but representative of the population as a whole.

Trevor Tombe is an economics professor at the University of Calgary and a research fellow and the university's
School of Public Policy. (Colin Hall/CBC) © Provided by cbc.ca

Tombe extracted data from the latest version of the model and shared it with CBC News to illustrate how a
hypothetical axing of the federal carbon tax would affect different households.

2
As it stands, there is some minor variation from province to province, but Tombe says the general trend is the
same: "A clear majority of households do receive rebates that are larger than the carbon taxes they pay for."

One thing that sets households apart, however, is their income level.

"If we got rid of the carbon tax and the rebate," Tombe said, "then this would harm a much larger fraction of
lower- and middle-income households than it would higher-income households."

Why income matters

The more fossil fuels you consume, the more carbon tax you pay directly. These costs are tacked on to the
purchase price of gasoline, diesel, natural gas, propane, etc.

Then there are the indirect carbon-tax costs in other things you purchase. These come in the form of increased
prices on the goods and services you buy, as companies pass along the costs of their own carbon taxes to
consumers.

Rich folks tend to pay more on both fronts.

"Naturally, their incomes are higher and so they purchase more energy, more goods and services across the
board," Tombe said. "And so they do have higher carbon tax costs, just as a function of higher levels of
expenditure."

The rebates, however, aren't affected by income.

A family of four living in a 4,000-square-foot home with three cars in the garage and an RV in the driveway
gets the same rebate as a family of four in the same city living in a 500-square-foot apartment and relying on
public transit.

As a result, the rebates tend to have an outsized effect on lower-income folks. Firstly, they make up a larger
share of their total income. And secondly, they tend to exceed their carbon tax costs more often.

According to the Statistics Canada model, 94 per cent of households with incomes below $50,000 receive
rebates that exceed their carbon-tax costs in 2023.

Roughly half of households in this income category see a net gain of between $20 and $40 per month. About
four per cent see a net gain of $70 per month or more.

At the other end of the spectrum, only about 55 per cent of households with incomes above $250,000 receive
more in rebates than they pay in costs, according to the data.

Roughly half of households in this income category see somewhere between a net loss of $20 per month and a
net gain of $30 per month. About five per cent see a net loss of $100 per month or more.

These high-income households stand to gain the most if the tax were axed tomorrow.

Lower-income folks who are enjoying more in rebates than carbon-tax costs, meanwhile, stand to lose the
most — both in absolute dollars and, especially, as a proportion of their total income.
3
Details, details ...
For these purposes, the model is only applicable to four provinces: Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta, which accounts for the vast majority of Canadians paying the federal carbon tax and receiving the
rebates.

British Columbia and Quebec have their own carbon-pricing systems.

The Atlantic provinces are not yet included in the modelling in the same way because the federal carbon tax
was only recently introduced in these jurisdictions. (An update to the model is expected next year.)

A separate analysis released by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) in March found households in Nova
Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, on average, will also receive more in rebates
this year than they pay in direct and indirect carbon-tax costs combined. (New Brunswick was not included in
the analysis because it had its own carbon-pricing system at the time.)

(It's also important to note the analysis was conducted before the Liberal government's decision to exempt home
heating oil from the carbon tax, a move that disproportionately benefits people in Atlantic Canada.)

Given all that, you might think the PBO report would be welcome news to supporters of the carbon tax
but (because nothing is simple when it comes to this stuff) it's actually cited more often by critics of the federal
policy.

On the Conservative Party's "Axe The Tax" website, for example, it says the "Parliamentary Budget Officer
report proves that the carbon tax will cost most households more than they ever get back."

These seemingly contradictory claims coming out of the same report have been a source of confusion.

But Tombe says they're not actually at odds; they're simply referring to two different things.

If not a carbon tax, then what?

In addition to looking at the "fiscal impact" on households (which weighs rebates against carbon-tax costs), the
PBO also looked at "economic impacts."

This other section of its report estimates how the carbon tax affects the Canadian economy as a whole,
including changes in employment and returns on capital, compared to a hypothetical scenario with no carbon
tax and no other climate policy to replace it.

Under that scenario, the combined "fiscal and economic impacts" are a net negative for a majority of
households by 2030, according to the PBO's analysis. (Although even then, lower-income households still enjoy
a net gain.)

"It's best to think about both of these estimates as being true," Tombe said of the two sections in the PBO report.

He also said, however, that it's hard to imagine a real-life scenario with no form of national climate policy.

4
"If we were to think about eliminating the carbon tax today, we shouldn't be thinking about replacing it with
nothing," Tombe said.

"We still have targets around lowering emissions, targets that all parties at least rhetorically support … and so if
we're going to be achieving the same target but with tools other than carbon pricing, which is generally the most
efficient way to incentivize emissions reductions by individuals and businesses, then we'll be replacing that
system with something that has greater economic costs."

For now, at least, the federal carbon tax remains in effect.

And if you want to figure out how the rebates and costs balance out for your own household, you can plug your
info into the interactive calculator below to find out.