Roundup: Some carbon pricing rigour

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As the rhetoric around carbon pricing heats up, I’ve heard people complain that the federal government didn’t provide any information about the costs to households – not that I’m sure it was really their place to do so, given that what they are imposing is a floor price, and that provinces will then be forced to turn around and design the mechanisms they want to use and the kinds of rebates they will turn around and give to households, and given that each province is different, they may not want to give any hard and fast numbers. That, and doing so will immediately make opposition parties – and in particular the Conservatives – turn around and go “Aha! It’s a tax on everything!” which isn’t the message that the government is trying to send (aside from the fact that hey, a price is a market mechanism that lets people make their own choices and drives businesses to innovate).

Into this vacuum has come the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which declared that carbon taxes will cost households an extra $2500 per year, and the Conservatives immediately grabbed onto this number and treated it like gospel, and have been wielding it like a cudgel in the days since. Enter economist Trevor Tombe, who has applied a bit more rigour to the numbers, and lo, some actual analysis and maths shows that even at the current maximum projection of $50/tonne price, that for the average household, it will be closer to $1100 per year (with $600 in direct costs and $500 in indirect costs), and from there, the provincial governments can decide how they’re going to recycle the revenues.

The moral of the story – look for a credible analysis before you light your hair on fire. And no, the CTF may not be the most credible source given that they have a particular agenda in mind and haven’t really shown you their math in the way that Tombe did. Meanwhile, here’s Colby Cosh to debunk some of the other narratives floating around. Enjoy.

Good reads:

  • That leaked draft statement about CETA was apparently designed to mollify its critics. We’ll see if that plan worked.
  • The government went ahead with a new passport processing system despite warnings that it wasn’t ready, and exposed a bunch of security risks in the process.
  • Here is the gossip on the leading Atlantic contenders for the Supreme Court of Canada vacancy.
  • Apparently Stéphane Dion had a rare pull-aside meeting with North Korea’s foreign minister in a corridor at the UN to discuss a Canadian held in prison that country.
  • The current government has spent more on Facebook ads in the last year than they have in the previous eight years combined.
  • Apparently the government accidentally forgave a bunch of doctor and nurse student loans over the past couple of years.
  • The number of requests for pardons dropped by half since the Conservatives made changes to the system that increased the costs and waiting period dramatically.
  • Navdeep Bains is saying how, not if, there will be money for Bombardier, but isn’t saying what those conditions are.
  • Andrew Saxton and Steven Blaney are throwing their hats in the ring for leadership. Because the race wasn’t crowded enough.
  • My Loonie Politics column returns to the topic of Senate modernization, and warns against the attempts to dismantle its Westminster structure.

Odds and ends:

Here’s some interesting questions now being posed about HMS Terror now that it’s been discovered, as it wasn’t supposed to be where they found it.

Kim Campbell sounded off about Donald Trump about sexual assault and delegitimizing results.