The simpletons at Ontario Proud claim that the government's talking points are debunked based on a Global News article.
Maybe they weren't reading the same article, but they are absolutely wrong. The data proves that a carbon tax will be effective in reducing CO2 emissions starting in the first year.
We're going to use the data they shared to prove it.
The title states:
"Trudeau’s carbon tax on gas won’t motivate Canadians to switch to fuel-efficient transportation: Ipsos poll" (1)
For those of you who read the article on Medium.com, you will know how misleading headlines can be. In fact, because of this, I don't think Ontario Proud even bothered to read the article and they are counting on their supporters to skip it also.
The poll found that nearly 1 in 5 Canadians (18%) would be motivated in the first year to switch to a more fuel-efficient car of find alternative transporation.
That is a significant number. It's difficult to motivate Canadians to do anything so getting 1 in 5 Canadians to change their transportation based on a 4.42 cent/litre price on gas is huge.
The average Canadian produces nearly 3 times the average CO2 emissions of a G20 member at 22 tonnes per year vs the 8 tonne average. (2)
We know that the transportation sector in Canada is responsible for about 27% of total GHG emissions. (3)
So here is the basic math. 27% x 18%= 4.86%
In year 1, just based on the average Canadian household's transportation, we have 5% of Canadian carbon output in play.
Lets say about half of those people start car pooling, biking, walking or taking public transportation and about half switch to electric, hybrid or other fuel efficient vehicles. This is speculative and we will try to obtain more hard data if it exists but we could possibly expect a 3% drop in CO2 emissions in year 1 just based on a gas price increase of 4.42 cents/Litre.
Factor in the other 73% of GHG emissions, industry and business initiatives, government programs using the 10% of the rebate held for green programs and it is not a stretch to believe we could achieve a 5% reduction in CO2 emissions in the first year of a carbon tax.
That would reduce our GHG emissions to approximately 1995 levels in 1 year. (4) That sounds like a great start to meeting our Paris targets. Certainly better than the Pay and Pray strategy of Doug Ford and the Conservatives.
Ontario Proud should read more than the headlines before making claims. Otherwise we will continue to embarass them. Jeff Ballingall might need to go back to school for some remedial math.
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