This is a serious question to any liberals who might be reading. I've gone through the Green Shift Handbook and looked at the figures and I have a problem. The Carbon Tax is going to be $40 per tonne of CO2, and the Liberals say they will collect $15,342,000,000 in year 4. That would correspond therefore to emissions of 383,550,000 tonnes of CO2.
Canada's 2004 emissions were 639,403 tonnes. I couldn't readily find more recent data but Liberals like to tell us it's rising, so let's use 2004 as a conservative (no pun intended) estimate.
That would mean the Carbon Tax as planned is expected to nearly halve emissions in just four years. Given that the trend might still be upward, how realistic is that? It's far more likely that emissions will remain close to their 2004 levels for several years, until industry makes the necessary long term and structural changes to make serious reductions. So far from collecting "only" $15bn, the Liberals will almost certainly take in closer to $30bn by year 4 of this new tax.
They give $15bn back to their favorite demographic groups (can you spell L-i-b-e-r-a-l V-o-t-e-r-s?) That leaves another $15bn they'll collect, and where will that go? What will the effect be of taking that additional $15bn out of the economy?
I'd like some Liberals to have a go at this. Explain the math. Explain how the expected reduction in emissions was calculated and explain why it's not a shell game. Explain where the missing billions will go (apart from the requisite few million that will be stolen and put into Liberal party coffers).
