Wait, what? I have a hard time understanding this. How do pay more than seven times per year than I do for a four-member family in a detached house? If it’s hydro, how do you expect a carbon tax to impact you?
I moved to Alberta just in time to help elect an NDP government, so I am used to hearing a lot of irrational things about the concept of a carbon tax, but hell our household costs are less than a hundred bucks a year more and we qualify for a 100% rebate on that. Yet my Facebook feed is full of people furious with the tax - it’s perplexing.
Wow, you’ve had less than 30 days total vacation over a 5-year period? :eek: That sounds pretty brutal for you, but it doesn’t suggest to me that the Canadian PM is slacking off.
I see from CarnalK’s “Trudeaumeter” link that his objectives include increasing access to parental leaves and flexible working schedules. I hope some combination of that will succeed in helping you regain a healthier work/life balance!
Okay, but when asked by you opposed a carbon tax, you cited your electricity bill. They’re different issues. The impact of a carbon tax on your electricity bill would be very small.
I hate to point this out but a carbon tax makes sense, and what made even more sense was Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” - a full scale movement of taxation away from things like income tax and sales tax and towards carbon tax. The use of fossil fuel is a market failure because of the externality of pollution. Fossil fuel use is quite literally the most logical thing the government COULD tax. Taxing people for the costs they actually create for society is one of the most economically logical things a person can do.
In fact, this is precisely the opposite of your electricity bill problem. One of the problems with the power bills Ontarians are paying is that the connection between how much electricity you use and how much you pay is, shall we say, sketchy. I am sure you’ve read the news stories of people getting hefty bills when they had no electricity at all, while people who use electricity in other places get lower bills. Charging people an amount that is not immediately and logically connected to their usage of the system, and indirectly charging people for other people’s electricity use, as in fact happens in Ontario, is an outstanding way to waste billions of dollars in money, incentivize waste, and fail to incentivize conservation.
Fossil fuel tax may make sense if you live in an area with decent public transportation. My house is in an area with no public transportation. I work in an area with no public transportation. I have no options. Anyway, it’s all just nickel and diming me to death, and I’m bitter for other reasons at this point in life.
(And it has nothing to do with the hockey game last night.)
A fossil fuel tax makes sense, full stop. IMHO, it should be generally offset by tax breaks elsewhere.
Do you use more fossil fuel than someone in a big city? Yes, and you should pay for it. A central tenet of good economic policy is that one should pay for what one uses, and that a situation where other people pay for what you use - an externality - is inefficient. (Conversely, you would ideally also be paid, or subsidized, for creating a positive externality - an example being lower WSIB rates for companies with good safety records and programs.)
If you live in the sticks and have to drive more, you should pay for the extra fuel you use, just as a person in the city has to pay more for the land they live on.
For what its worth, I expect that the carbon tax is one of the things that’s going to disappear, when the Trump administration comes into power. While there is no reason that they cant push it on their own iniative, I expect that its going to be pushed back until it falls off the radar.
I am not outraged. In fact, to date none of Trudeau’s scandals have caused more than a raised eyebrow here. Of course he said nice things about Castro. That is what people do when discussing the recently deceased even if it is widely acknowledged that said deceased really was an asshole.
I find it hypocritical of the US to be saying “I’m glad he’s dead, those human rights down there are horrible!” while simultaneously using water cannons and rubber bullets on peaceful protesters. “Let those people out of jail” screams the nation with the highest per-capita prison population of anywhere. It’s worthless for the US to bemoan the fate of political prisoners in Cuba while keeping political prisoners in Cuba! Confucius say “man who live in glass house… should change in basement.”
There are nice things to say about someone and actively praising their record, which is what Trudeau did. Obama’s statement was more typical of good diplomacy. Trudeau’s was borderline fellating a dead body.
Most people I know don’t care about his remarks. It’s just the conservatives trying to manifest scandals. It didn’t work with his hair, his name, his youth, or any other of his missteps. And it’s not working with this either.
Remaarkably transparent manufactured tempest in a teapot, is how most of my friends view the whole affair. Meh.
Canadians don’t care mostly, not just the liberal ones. As that CNN article notes Canadians make up the majority of Cubas tourists and we’ve had unbbroken diplomatic relations since 1945. And Canadians probably universally don’t give a crap about Rubio and Cruz’s reaction. Just like they will promptly forget Trudeau’s name a week from now.
I read Trudeau’s statement as a fluff piece. Not a great piece of writing, just “think of something nice to say about the dead guy” made as an off-hand gesture in the middle of the OIF conference.
Obama’s was much better, but it was an actual prepared statement.
You live in an area too remote or too small for public services, and you’re complaining that things are unavailable or expensive. I guess Hydro One put a gun to your head and made you live in the sticks. Either that, or you believe that I should be subsidizing your electricity delivery charges even though I chose to not live on Mars.
