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The federal Liberals – from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney – have sold Canadians on a climate strategy based on three myths.
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First, it will be a huge source of jobs.
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Second, Canada will meet the government's targets for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
Third, most Canadian households will be in a better financial position as a result.
By contrast, over the past decade, the federal, Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia governments spent or missed out on $158 billion in inflation-adjusted 2024 dollars to create just 68,000 “clean energy” jobs, according to a recent study by the fiscally conservative Fraser Institute.
This is an estimated cost of $2.3 million per seat.
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“Governments, activists and special interest groups are making many claims about the possibilities of a clean economic transition, but after a decade of policy interventions and more than $150 billion in taxpayer money, the results are underwhelming,” said Elmira Aliakbari, co-author of the study titled Fiscal costs of Canada's low-carbon economy.
Second Fraser Institute Study – Estimating Canada's Clean Economy – concluded that after nearly a decade in which federal and provincial governments funneled billions of dollars into the “clean economy” from 2014 to 2023, its share of Canada's overall $3.3 trillion economy barely changed from 3.1% of GDP to 3.6%.
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In terms of meeting federal emissions targets, the Canadian Climate Institute and the Trottier Energy Institute at the Polytechnique of Montreal recently concluded that the Liberals' goal of reducing Canada's emissions by at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 is unattainable, and that the government will achieve at best half of that goal.
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The Parliamentary Budget Office, a federal spending watchdog, reported that before Carney repealed the consumer carbon tax, most Canadian households actually paid more in carbon taxes than they received in rebates when the negative impact of the carbon tax on the Canadian economy is taken into account.
During the last election, Carney promised to replace the consumer carbon tax with a “improved and stronger” industrial carbon tax that would benefit both consumers and businesses. But his recent budget, while containing nine pages dedicated to his so-called climate competitiveness strategy, contained no details on how it would work.
Call it a myth in the making.
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