The Progressive Economics Forum

One of the most striking contradictions in BC’s climate action plan is the oil and gas industry. Greg Amos in The Hook, quotes our “green” premier out on the campaign trail in the northeast: “Let me tell you what’s happened in the energy industry in British Columbia in the last eight years: thirteen billion dollars [...]

With the BC election campaign now officially on, the carbon tax debate is back. Since the fall’s federal election, when the Prime Minister dropped in to beat up the carbon tax to solidify his support in BC, the carbon tax has dropped off the public radar, replaced by stories about the economic and financial crisis. [...]

A year ago, in the 2008 BC Budget, a new tax was born. There was a hush over the House as its mother, the Finance Minister, prepared for delivery. The proud papa, the Premier, stood glowingly beside the new mom Carole and her baby tax, and basked in the glow of praise from climate scientists, [...]

Ralph Nader and Toby Heaps make an excellent case for a global carbon tax. With an Obama administration there is the possibility of such a thing happening, and it would be much more sensible that a complicated cap-and-trade system that will take years to get up and running. Even if a North American cap-and-trade system [...]

This is very good news, given concerns that the economic crisis would push climate change off the table: Barack Obama and congressional leaders are preparing rapid legislation to cut US emissions that cause global warming and to kick-start a clean energy revolution. Two bills are to be introduced as soon as the President-elect takes office [...]

The CCPA released today a new study by myself and Toby Sanger on the distribution of BC’s carbon tax and recycling regime. I’ve probably leaked most of the findings in various blog posts in recent months, but the full meal deal is now available for download here. Toby and I modeled the carbon tax by [...]

More than anything else, BC’s carbon tax is the victim of bad timing. Here’s the average gas price in Vancouver over the past year, according to the BC Gas Buddy: Note that the BC Budget, which announced the carbon tax, was tabled on February 19, and the tax was implemented on July 1. In that [...]

Now that Elizabeth May is set to join in the televised election debates, her party’s platform will come under greater scrutiny. There is much to like in it – especially a major investment program in energy efficiency, alternative energy, public transit and so on. Her commitment to seriously dealing with climate change and creating a [...]

Well, the Tories are nothing if not consistent. During the NDP’s BC campaign against the carbon tax, I wondered whether they would follow the logic – if you don’t like a carbon tax then it only makes sense to call for a cut in the provincial fuel tax. Federally, the Harperites have seized the initiative [...]

The bed having been made by the NDP, the Prime Minister not only takes it but moves in and changes the locks. All summer the NDP’s axe-the-tax campaign against the BC carbon tax has played on a classic conservative anti-tax theme (to the dismay of yours truly). The BC election is not until May 2009, [...]

The politics of the carbon tax, largely a BC phenomenon until now, have gone national in the face of a likely October federal election. Just last week in BC, a poll revealed the NDP ahead of the Liberals for the first time in several years — within the margin of error, mind you, but significant [...]

Yesterday, the Premier’s hand-picked Climate Action Team released its final report to the government. As is often the case with government, the CAT consisted of a range of “stakeholders”, although with one glaring omission: no representation from labour. The CAT has been deliberating for several months on how to meet the 2020 target of a [...]

A year ago, I was firmly on the fence with regard to carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade systems. My internal conversation was around abstract, theoretical versions of what might happen, and at that point it was premature to consider how the two might play together as part of a hybrid system. Since that time, we now [...]

Rob Rainer of the National Anti-Poverty Organization has audited the federal Liberals’ Green Shift plan for anti-poverty measures and found it lacking a comprehensive approach. I’ve excerpted below the main points in his brief, which is not on the NAPO web site and should not be taken as the voice of NAPO on the matter [...]

A well-intentioned article in the Vancouver Sun seeks to explain carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. A worthy objective, but the article really aims to pigeonhole various alternatives in terms of political parties. It ends up taking a far-too-simplified view that goes something like this: The debate is being played out in British Columbia, where the [...]

I am really glad Stephane Dion supplemented his Green Shift proposal with a call for a carbon tariff.  This is utterly consistent with demands the left has been making for years, namely that the rules of globalization have to be broadened to effectively address the role of environmental, labour, and social standards in determining competitiveness [...]

I’m recently back from a family vacation, which consisted in driving down to Northern California and back, camping along the way. Our 1992 Corolla keeps on rolling, and in my mind it is better to keep it humming and wait it out for something electric in a few years time, than to buy a new [...]

Duncan Cameron’s comment about the role of agriculture in climate change prompted me to take a closer look at greenhouse-gas emissions from sources other than burning fossil fuels. The final column of the following table is a sectoral breakdown of row 8 from yesterday’s table. All of these emissions are exempt from the Liberal Green [...]

A couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Simpson inaccurately accused the NDP of “ignoring the fact that most emissions come from individuals.” Andrew Coyne is similarly fond of suggesting that, while half of greenhouse-gas emissions are generated by large final emitters, the other half are generated by “consumers”. Both commentators have, to varying degrees, commended the Liberals for [...]

As Andrew Jackson has written recently on this blog, the New Brunswick government is proposing a set of truly dreadful tax reforms. The proposals include: a 10% flat tax for personal income, or a two-tier rate at 9% and 12% reducing the corporate income tax from 13% down to as low as 5% a carbon tax [...]

One key feature of Dion’s carbon tax proposal – among others – is that revenues are recycled back almost exclusively to households to maintain living standards, especially at the lower income end, while still preserving incentives to save on energy consumption. That’s reasonable as far as it goes. But what about the public sector and [...]

CUPE has published the June 2008 issue of the Economic Climate for Bargaining publication that I put together on a quarterly basis.  Previous issues are also available through this link at our website.   In addition to regular items on national and provincial economic forecasts and analysis of recent employment, inflation and wage developments, this latest issue includes: [...]

The Liberal Green Shift aims to bring federal taxes on all fossil fuels up to $40 per ton of carbon emissions, in line with the existing federal tax on gasoline. The Handbook provides a detailed costing of the $15.4 billion in accompanying tax cuts, tax credits and contingency funds, but no breakdown of the $15.3 billion [...]

Yesterday, the BC government released its updated Climate Action Plan. A glossy affair, it nonetheless puts text to all of the myriad actions the BC government is taking on climate. Looking at it all, it is hard to say they are just “greenwashing”, though personally I would like to see even more aggressive action now. [...]

The front page banner headline from the Vancouver Sun: B.C. prefers NDP’s Carbon tax plan: Tax industrial polluters, not consumers, 82% tell pollster It is painful to keep reading because the poll in question is based on inaccurate information about how the carbon tax actually works. Industrial polluters are subject to the tax to the [...]

The BC NDP’s environment critic, Shane Simpson, wrote me to tell me why he disagrees with the BC carbon tax. With his permission, I quote: The more I learn the more clear it becomes what a regressive and inept tax it is and why it needs to be opposed as vigorously as possible. It hurts [...]

The CCPA released today a really important contribution to our understanding of climate change and inequality. The study focuses on Bill Rees’ concept of the ecological footprint, which is not exactly the same as greenhouse gas emissions, but highly correlated. Some key findings: The richest 10% of Canadian households create an ecological footprint of 12.4 [...]

The 2008 OECD Survey of Canada incorporates a long and surprisingly critical overview of developments in the energy sector, with a major focus on the tar sands. (Chapter 4). It is, in many respects, far closer to the views of the Pembina Institute and the Parkland Institute in Alberta than to those of the Alberta [...]

There is a lot of the colour green all over Dion’s Green Shift plan.  But after reading it, the greenery appears almost as superficial as the green shift caps that Liberal MPs wore awkwardly with their business suits at the launch yesterday. Dion’s plan is really a proposal for a tax shifting budget and doesn’t [...]

After weeks of speculation, Stephane Dion has tabled the Liberals’ carbon tax plan, dubbed The Green Shift. The plan seems heavily influenced by both BC’s carbon tax and the Mintz/Olewiler plan released in April. Tax revenues, which reach $15 billion by year four, are fully recycled into PIT and CIT cuts plus some low income [...]