Cyr takes on Carbon Taxes

Scott Cyr’s Messsage: October 11th, 2016

Scott Cyr’s Message is written & provided by Scott Cyr. It has not been altered from the author’s original content. 

Today’s article is about Carbon Taxes.  Around our riding I have had lots of concerned constituents wanting to know about it.  They know they don’t like it but are unsure why, they are in good company though.

A recent Angus Reid Forum found 63% disapprove of the Carbon Tax.  What was surprising was that there were 47% strongly disapproving and 12% strongly approving.  This means for every one person who strongly approves, there are four people who strongly disapprove.  In other words 4 out of 5 people who have strong opinions in Alberta are against the carbon tax.

This is truly shocking!

The Alberta NDP has done such a poor job selling their new tax that of course you have questions on what will be phased in starting January 1, 2017.  The questions that I have encountered are good questions and they should be answered.  They need to be answered.

What is the carbon tax?  That is a good question.

How will it affect me as an Albertan?  Another really good question.

What is the NDP government trying to accomplish by adding another tax on Albertan?  This question deserves a clear answer.

Well let’s start with what the carbon tax is and how it will affect you.  The carbon tax will be included in the price of all fuels that emit greenhouse gases when combusted. These include transportation and heating fuels such as diesel, gasoline, natural gas and propane.

Type of Fuel	January 1, 2017	January 1, 2018
Marked fuels for agricultural purposes	Exempt	Exempt
Diesel	5.35 ¢/L	2.68 ¢/L
Gasoline	4.49 ¢/L	2.24 ¢/L
Natural Gas	1.011 $/GJ	0.506 $/GJ
Propane	3.08 ¢/L	1.54 ¢/L

Source: Alberta Climate Change Office

Let’s look at the fact that the tax on gasoline was increased from 9 ¢/L to 13 ¢/L by the Alberta government.  In 2017 and finally 2018 we will be seeing another 6.73 ¢/L this means that in less than 3 years we will see Alberta’s gasoline tax go from 9 ¢/L to 19.73 ¢/L and if you add the GST on top of this regressive tax we will be paying 23 ¢/L in taxes.  So for every litre of gasoline we are paying a stunning amount of taxes.

But as you can see it doesn’t just end there, the NDP are also adding taxes to natural gas.  When you look at 1.00 $/GJ in 2017 and another 50 ¢/GJ in 2018 it doesn’t sound like that much, but I pulled my gas bill this month and I was paying on average around three dollars per GJ in energy charges.  This is a 50% increase in energy charges on natural gas once the carbon tax is fully enacted.

Despite our repeated requests, this carbon tax has no exemptions and therefore our local hospitals, schools, municipalities and seniors homes will feel the impact and will either need to reduce services or pass on the costs to those who can least afford it.  The NDP are trying to guilt Albertans into paying for a necessity of life.  They have instituted a “sin” tax on all Albertans who the NDP feel should be paying just “a little bit more” for energy.  They campaigned on others needing to pay just a little bit more.  Well guess what, it isn’t others who are paying a little bit more it’s you and your family.

The NDP’s plan is to return a portion of the carbon taxes back to those with low incomes.  How does that make sense?  All that creates is bigger government with less money in our pockets.  This will lead to a dependency on government handouts to meet our everyday needs, and is the definition of socialism in its truest form.  As Winston Churchill stated “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

To answer the third question, what is the NDP going to do with the windfall that is at our expense?  The NDP call it an “investment”.  How is government spending our hard earned tax dollars on their pet projects anything but waste?  They refuse to do economic impact studies and they have created a huge “green energy” slush fund that has no apparent spending restrictions other than the minister deems it a green project.  I understand that the NDP are sprinting in this direction, but if their goal is to reduce GHGs how will this spending accomplish that?  We asked the question and we got silence in return from the government.

The Alberta NDP did such a good job of proving that the Carbon Tax was in Alberta’s best interest that our Liberal Prime Minister now wants to pile on and add a federal carbon tax.  How can Premier Notley be angry at the federal government when it is looking for its pound of flesh out of Alberta?  The Prime Minister is simply taking a page out of the NDP LEAP playbook.  Is the premier the pot or the kettle?  It is simply preposterous.

The premier will find fighting the federal Liberals ideology as difficult as it has been for the Wildrose trying to reason with the Alberta NDP ideology.  The NDP closed the hangman’s noose around our necks and are angry the federal Liberals will be pulling the lever to the trap door on Alberta’s economy.

The premier wasn’t listening.  The NDP caucus weren’t listening.  The federal Liberals won’t be listening either.

*The proceeding article was a paid message from Scott Cyr. Views and opinions in the article are not those of Lakeland Connect Media Inc or its affiliates.