Dear Editor,
Long story short: You don’t know what you don’t measure. Know because you checked.
Short story long: Back in March of this year I was curious to know what the effect of the proposed Carbon Tax would be to our household. Because I had the data to make a calculation, I created a spreadsheet to find out how the Carbon Tax was going to affect us. Would I be out-of-pocket if the Fuel Charge portion of the Carbon Tax strategy exceeded the Climate Action Incentive or vice versa?
Having a record of the vehicle fuel that was consumed throughout 2018, and with the benefit of the information that our natural gas provider has on their website, I had enough data to start the calculation for a test case. Our fuel consumption, along with the annual Fuel Charge rates (https://www.fin.gc.ca/n18/data/18-097_1-eng.asp), would give me a head start on anticipating the direct Fuel Charge that I would see in the spring of 2020 when the first full year of Carbon Taxation was complete. There is also the indirect Fuel Charge (the Fuel Charges incurred by manufacturers and transporters that are passed on to us, the end consumers) which must be included in the tally to provide a more accurate picture of the effect of Carbon Tax, but more on that further on.
The Fuel Charge that would have been attributable directly to the two commodities in our 2018 test case calculation (gasoline and natural gas) amounted to $243.48. That amount eerily compares to the $244 that the Federal government cited for direct and indirect Fuel Charges for the average Ontario household (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadas-carbon-tax-a-guide/). I was quite satisfied with our initial numbers and that comparison! The 2018 test case calculation showed that we would have been out-of-pocket $12.48, direct Fuel Charge versus Incentive. I felt comfortable that we could narrow the gap between the sum of the Fuel Charges and the Incentive for the first full year of Carbon Taxation.
There was still that difficult-to-calculate indirect Fuel Charge attributable to getting groceries and all of the other stuff to our local shops and stores and is then passed on to the end-consumer to determine. I wanted to apply some rationale that we would be comfortable with and which would be reasonably defensible. The premise that I finally decided on was… Vancouver. What if all of the groceries and stuff that came into our house throughout the year was loaded into a transport trailer and trucked to Owen Sound from Vancouver, via Toronto? This would result in a generously punitive calculation since much of our groceries are grown/raised/fished right here in Southern Ontario and transported from source to distributor and then on to Owen Sound. Yes, there is wheat made to flour that comes from the Canadian Prairies, and dish detergent from who knows where, and besides, our stuff would only be a fraction of the capacity of a transport trailer. And the Fuel Charge attributable to a full transport trailer trucked from Vancouver to Owen Sound? It’s $100.96 using the Fuel Charge for diesel fuel at 40 litres/100km for the 4700km trip. For a full trailer, that is, where at generous guess and worst case we would use one-eighth of the capacity of a transport trailer spread throughout the year, so an annual indirect Fuel Charge of $13.11!
The final result of my calculation is this; our household Climate Action Incentive for two adults amounts to $231.00 and our direct Fuel Charge is $243.48 with an additional indirect Fuel Charge generously estimated at $13.11, amounting to $256.59. We were out-of-pocket $25.59 for our 2018 test case. Out-of-pocket $25.59, that is, without trying. Now, we’re trying to narrow the gap with the ultimate goal of having our Climate Action Incentive exceed our Fuel Charges as a demonstrable win against Climate Change.
Putting a price on carbon emissions will mitigate Climate Change. There’s been a Nobel Prize awarded that says that statement is true (https://www.iisd.org/library/nordhaus-nobel). I’m grateful we have adopted the Carbon Tax strategy here in Canada and in lieu of the ‘cap and trade’ plan that was abolished by Ontario’s environmentally reckless Progressive Conservative government. Alternatively, no prize of any sort has been awarded for proposing a strategy wherein a few unspecified major emitters who fail to meet new and as yet undefined emissions limits self-invest in green technology research and development (the costs of which will likewise be passed on to end-consumers, just like the indirect Fuel Charge is passed on), as the Conservative Party of Canada would have us do.
Mac Robinson
Owen Sound
