Letter: Blaming carbon tax for inflation in Canada is ludicrous

A reader offers his opinion about those claiming that Canada’s carbon pricing system is responsible for inflation.

Published Apr 07, 2024 • Last updated 16 hours ago • 2 minute read

Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre holds a “Spike the Hike — Axe the Tax” rally, in Edmonton on March 27, 2024. Photo by David Bloom /David Bloom/PostmediaPierre Poilievre and a number of premiers are campaigning hard to gather votes around the consumer carbon tax. And make no mistake, this is — for the federal Conservative Party particularly — the wedge issue that has found traction and boosted their election chances in 2025.

Blaming the carbon tax for inflation is simply ludicrous. Eighty per cent of Canadians are better off financially because of the carbon tax rebates; the rebates are buying food, shelter; they’re contributing to the economies of the countryside, towns and cities.

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The tax is less than one tenth of the price of car gasoline. My price per litre went from $1.25 to $1.49 recently; none of that hefty increase was driven by a change in the carbon tax. This year’s increase in the tax will add three cents per litre.

Fossil fuel burning to supply energy has to wind down; even diehard conservatives concede this. But it’s the insistence that there must be a way to make the important changes without a cost that’s most frustrating.

So far, no alternative strategies of any consequence have been proposed and if we don’t know it by now, we never will: as a human species, we don’t co-operate with necessary change unless it hits our wallets.

Most importantly, citizens’ votes are easily bought with promises of more money, less expense. It may take another few years of soaring temperatures, fire and smoke, drought and severe storms to let the urgency of global warming finally sink in.

Voting Conservative Party of Canada makes a contribution to laxness about the dangers of climate change by terminating a program that works.

George G. Epp, Rosthern

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