OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) today slammed Prime Minister Trudeau's pledge to impose a rising national 'floor price' which could result in the average Canadian family paying $2,593 per year in new taxes by 2022.
"Prime Minister Trudeau has disingenuously implied that provinces have a 'choice' with respect to carbon pricing," said CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick. "But there is no choice at all: provinces must impose a new tax on their own people, or Ottawa will do it for them – something the Premiers of Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Yukon have explicitly opposed.”
"From taxpayers' perspective, what matters is that they are going to be paying more. To which level of government the dollars flow is irrelevant," added Wudrick. “As for revenue neutrality, Alberta’s government claimed their carbon tax was ‘revenue neutral’ simply because they were spending the proceeds on climate-related projects – while BC’s carbon tax has certainly not been neutral in terms of its impact on individual taxpayers.”
"Canadians should hang onto their wallets,” continued Wudrick. “The federal government has now committed to imposing a wide-ranging tax which will rise over time taking $38 billion out of Canadians’ pockets annually by 2022 – all in pursuit of an emissions target that, even if it is met, will have no substantive impact on global climate change."
