It's good that Jean Charaest isn't running for the Federal Liberal Leadership, or he might not get very far with his proposal for reducing Quebec's greenhouse gas emissions.
Amazing how the knives came out today after Michael Ignatieff dared to suggest that a carbon tax might be an option to consider in the fight against global warming! We sure wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of the Alberta oil companies, would we.
2 comments:
A reader asked via email:
"One of the articles stated the following...
"It's an important precedent," said Bramley. "A large proportion of European countries have put in place eco-taxes and Canada has not gone significantly down that road and here we're seeing a political will attached to that.
What is the difference between Canada's proposed taxes and the European's?"
I'm not very familiar with European carbon tax schemes, and I'm not sure what the details of the Quebec tax will be. But as an
example, I found this in a publication from the Pembina Institute (the
organization that Mathew Bramley represents):
"Canada is falling behind other countries in putting policies in place
to meet the Kyoto targets. In January 2000, the French government
adopted a national strategy describing the measures it will take to
meet it's Kyoto commitment, and announced that a bill to ratify the
Kyoto Protocol will be tabled in parliament before the end of its
current session. The French national strategy, like those in Norway,
Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, includes a gradually increasing
carbon tax balanced by reductions in other taxes. Other countries like
Denmark and the UK are planning, or have already put in place,
domestic greenhouse gas emissions trading systems."
From a PDF document called "Five Years of Failure on Climate Change"
And another document on the same web site lists this for the CO2 tax
in Norway:
"A carbon dioxide tax is levied at a rate per standard cubic metre
(scm) of gas burned. The rate for 2003 is NOK 0.75 per litre of
oil/scm of gas."
BTW, Ignatieff did not make any specific proposals - just mentioned the idea. Another G&M article on Quebec says:
"The Quebec Energy Board has been asked to work out tax rates and other details, such as a sliding scale in which heavy oil used to heat homes might be taxed at a higher rate than less polluting natural gas."
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