This always should have been the case. Even if you “get it back” come tax time, life is getting expensive the point you can’t necessarily wait until tax time and also you’re giving massive opportunity to the “loons” to scream government conspiracy
It will prevent the collection of resources that can be used to fund conversion programmes for 3 years, so at best it’s kicking the can down the road a bit. But
It opens it up for more exemptions
we don’t have the time
And, worst of all, all the problems will be the same and it will be harder to restart the tax to find conversion programmes.
The carbon tax has two great benefits, but only when it’s properly funded. Now we still wear it around our necks because people who can’t do math and are being told it’s bad will still “know” it’s bad, and the benefits won’t be as obvious.
We can either have the cake or eat it. Conservatives say with no cake we’re better off, but now we’re due at the birthday party with no cake, no gifts, and starving.
Exactly my thoughts, it’ll only be effective if it’s done properly. Otherwise it’s just another half-measure that is more burden than benefit.
That said though, I wonder how much carbon/money rural heating oil specifically generated. It’s possible this is just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme and is an acceptable loss to help these folks out. Although I might prefer a bigger push to get people off heating oil altogether (which is where it’s going to have to go eventually).
It’s not about how much it generated, but about nudging people who are already looking at doing something, to chose the lower carbon option. If people are suffering, the rebate should be increased.
Now that the Liberals have done this once, our next conservative government will be able to butcher it with vanity exemptions all over the place, just like Harper loved the vanity tax credits to buy various voter segments. It will be useless before long, and just a bunch of unnecessary administrative baggage. They won’t even need to cancel it, because handing out exemptions will be so politically profitable.
The whole point with a carbon tax and rebate is that it doesn’t come with all the administration and inefficiencies of picking and choosing things to subsidize and things to penalize. As soon as you start exempting this and that, you blow that out of the water.
The correct response is increasing the rebate to rural households, who statistically, rely more on oil heating, or increase the rebate across the board temporarily.
All this does is take away a very solid incentive for people who are currently looking at upgrading their home heating to chose a lower carbon option. It’s also not fair to people who recently did upgrade their heating systems, based on the expected costs.
Unless I’m missing something, it’s been close to a century since a minority government made it the full 4 years. I suspect we’ll see another election prematurely.
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