Bill Kelly's April 6, 2023 Commentary
Abandoning the carbon tax would mean losing billions in big corporate investments.
The latest howls on social media demanding that the Federal government scrap the carbon tax is yet another example that our governments do a lousy job of explaining and selling their policies to Canadians. The government’s messaging on carbon taxing is filled with talk about greenhouse gases and carbon footprints, which frankly, most Canadians don’t really relate to.
It’s not that Canadians don’t care about environmental issues, but right now, they’re more angry that it costs more to put gas in our vehicles and I get that, but we can’t cave in to the environmental luddites who ignore the consequences of abandoning environmental economics.
What the government should be emphasizing is how the the commitment to green energy is enhancing our economic future. The world is moving to a green and environmentally sustainable future. The United States, the UK and Europe have all made substantial financial commitments to that goal and Canada has to follow suit or be left in the dust of the rapidly changing 21st Century economies.
Canada’s environmental commitments that companies like Volkswagen and GM and Ford and Chrysler and many others have invested billions of dollars in Ontario instead of the US or Europe. Those companies do their homework before they make those multi billion dollar commitments and they chose Canada. If this government, or a future government were to abandon those policies, it’s a sure bet that those billions of dollars in economic investment would be gone forever.
To state the obvious; we can’t let that happen!