I, on principle, am against donating to political parties. So I decided to take some action by donating to charities (and at the same time sending an eCard to my MPP).
Hi Mr.Anand, I would like to thank Premier Ford and the Ontario PCs for bringing the carbon tax to Ontario by cancelling the Cap and Trade program in 2018. The carbon tax that was held as constitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. I am donating to Gen Squeeze (832390199RR0001) and the Greenbelt Foundation (822521878RR0001) as a result of the maligned press conference hosted by the Premier on April 2, 2024. Sincerely, *****, an active constituent from Mississauga-Malton.
the most vocal opponents of carbon pricing are not offering alternative policies to reduce emissions and meet our climate goals. And they certainly aren’t offering any alternatives that would reduce emissions at the same low cost as carbon pricing.
Carbon pricing is not intended to redistribute wealth.
Then what's the fucking point. Wealth distribution is core of all problems in society.
we also don't have evidence of this.
Wrong. You can literally do it with your own taxes. Go look up the corporate taxes for any public company (they're public so they publish those numbers), and figure out what percentage of that company's total wealth it is. Then compare that with how much tax you paid as a percentage of your total wealth.
You can even do it with billionaires because some of them, like musk, actually voluntarily share that info. Last year I paid over 20% of my total wealth in income tax alone, musk paid less 4%.
I am not denying that the upper class may pay a lesser percentage of their wealth. What I am saying is that even if it is true, this is not relevant to the discussion on carbon pricing because that is not the objective in the first place.
The point of the carbon pricing is to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.
Wealth redistribution is well deserving of its own discussion. However, on its own wouldn't be a very effective tool to address the climate crisis as it does not hit the core of the issue, which is greenhouse gas emissions.
Nobody is disputing that the wealthy consume more than the poor.
We are disputing your claim that the wealthy do not pay their fair share of greenhouse gas emissions. Please provide evidence to substantiate your claims.
Okay, so the problem is that because fossil fuels are cheap, most people don't find it very worthwhile to explore new or more efficient ways to do things. This is especially true for the wealthy, for whom gas and heating costs are basically nothing, so they will do dumb shit like heat their homes while leaving windows open, or buy larger and less efficient luxury cars.
The federal program fixes this. It adds a small cost to using fossil fuels, collects that money, and pays it back out to everyone. That means that people who use more carbon than average (which, again, is the willfully wasteful) will see a small penalty for their waste, while the people who are already trying their best to cut back will see a LARGE benefit, as they get a direct payment of cash for doing their part to conserve. If you are about average, there's very little impact on you, but you NOW have an economic inventive to try and economize.