The Liberal, NDP and Bloc parties voted together to triple the carbon tax in a vote 206-116 on Wednesday.
As reported by the National Post, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s opposition motion to scrap the tax hike in response to increased cost of living was met with opposition from all other parties.
“Costly coalition of Trudeau-Singh voted to triple the carbon tax on gas, heat and groceries.” wrote Poilievre on Twitter, criticizing the results.
Currently at $50 a tonne, the carbon tax was already set to rise $15 every year reaching $170 by 2030.
An analysis by the Canadian Press says the carbon tax is expected to increase gas prices by 13 cents per liter by 2030. Rising costs in fuel also leads to already-soaring grocery prices.
Conservative MP Randy Hoback criticized the timing of the increase after Hurricane Fiona ravaged through the Atlantic provinces last weekend.
“It’s not a climate debate,” Hoback told reporters Wednesday. “It’s a debate on affordability.” “There are natural disasters happening all the time,” he added. “Those are important too, and climate change is important. But if you can’t feed your kids, what are you looking at?”
Nova Scotia Conservative MP Rick Perkins said that “the last thing” his constituents need in a time of crisis are more taxes as they recover from the storm.
“It’s actually the worst time to try and impose a tax,” he added.
Liberal MP Chris Bittle rejected those claims.
“We are clearly in an era of more severe weather, we’re clearly at a time where we’re facing the effects of the climate crisis and the first act of the Conservative Party is to limit our response to pollution and make it free to pollute,” said Bittle Wednesday before heading into caucus.
Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson insisted that extreme weather events are on the rise in Canada and said that “if we do not deal with the costs associated with mitigating climate change now, the costs in the future will be astronomical.”
Despite claims from the government that the carbon tax combats climate change, various reports have indicated that the tax does nothing to lower carbon emissions.
A report from the Fraser Institute suggests that carbon taxes around the world fail to benefit the environment or taxpayers.
According to the report Carbon Pricing in High-Income Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Countries, the biggest reason why carbon taxes are not efficient globally is because many countries simply use carbon taxes to raise revenue.
“On average, 74% of carbon tax revenues in high-income OECD countries go directly into general revenues for governments with no specific use, 12% are earmarked for environmental spending and only 14% are returned to taxpayers,” the report states.
In addition, in British Columbia, a 2020 report by the Department of Environment revealed that the province’s carbon tax did not succeed in cutting emissions within the province.
The National Inventory Report which was submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change revealed that greenhouse gas emissions in BC increased by 10% or 65.6 million tonnes from 2015 to 2018.
According to a new report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), 25 different countries cut taxes on gas, 18 axed consumption taxes, 15 have lowered energy taxes, 11 cut business taxes and eight nations have cut income taxes to provide relief.
Canada is the only one out of 51 nations to increase taxes despite rising inflation and costs of living.
