this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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That's fair, but not everyone CAN do that even if they want to
In case anyone is wondering
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canada-doubling-carbon-price-rebate-rural-top-up-pausing-charge-on-heating-oil-trudeau-1.6618613
While not representing a majority of Canadians, there are people living in regions that get regularly cold enough for heat pumps to be inadequate. Which means running a standard electric furnace (expensive and inefficient) during the coldest months of the year. Which... is not ideal, especially for lower-income rural persons. (IE, most people living in these regions of Canada.)
The rebate is great, but there are persons for whom it is insufficient.
Do I think that's a good reason to remove the carbon tax from heating fuels? No, not really. (Assuming I understand how the tax works, it really isn't the burden people expect it to be. (You can debate about inefficiencies, but as far as manipulating economics to incentivize transfer away from fossil fuels without harming the general public, it's reasonably sound.)) But people do have legitimate concerns that shouldn't be trivially dismissed.
Heat pumps are more popular in colder climates than they are in warmer -> Scandinavia vs Continental Europe
That is a true statistic, yes. Without a ton of relevance to the discussion at hand unfortunately. Most of Scandinavia is coastal, and while cold compared to the rest of Europe, has quite mild winters compared to the northern Canadian interior. Additionally, popular in this context is about a 50% adoption rate by household, without much information (that I can find, at least) on distrobution; I suspect most of those are in southern and costal areas, and the (less populated) northern interior primarily relies on other heating methods.
You’ll find most of Canada isn’t in the interior Northern regions. Considering heat pumps still have furnaces attached, I think it’s fine to force everyone to have them
Rural and remote residents already get a slightly larger rebate, and as a city dweller, I think their share should be higher for exactly the reason you state. Also, keep in mind that at night time, which will typically be the only time people end up using resistive heat while on a heat pump, electricity is cheaper. Ontario's ultra-low off-peak option is even more extreme. It's probably cheaper to run resistive heat at night, than running the heat pump during peak times.
Saskatchewan does not have "off-peak" electricity pricing because Saskatchewan runs our power grid on old Coal plants. So not only does it get cold enough for heat pumps to not be sufficient here (even during the day sometimes), our electricity is not a green option either. Natural gas heating makes more sense here in Saskatchewan and it pains me to say that. Until such time as we get a green grid (get rid of the coal), natural gas heating is the best option for us.
Edit to add: I will gladly continue to pay the carbon tax because of 2 things: 1. I get more back on the rebate than I spend (my provincial premier is full of it) and 2. If some of that money from the tax goes to green initiatives, then I gladly support that.
Comparing the federal energy mix for Saskatchewan in 2019, to SaskPower's claims for 2023, we're going in the right direction with respect to coal. I don't expect Moe's SaskParty to do much better than that, unfortunately. Hopefully nuclear and wind take off more, or we're more willing to import hydro from Manitoba, even at a higher cost.
Though reading that closer, SaskPower's claims for hydro include imports (it's unspecified from where, but the only place that makes sense is Manitoba), while the federal paper is only generating capacity, no imports. I wonder what the mix including imports was in 2019.
The whole principle of the rebate is that the average person within a province breaks even. So people in Saskatchewan are only competing with other Saskatchewaneans, not with Vancouverites.
And if you're polluting far more than the average person in your province, such that the rebate is grossly insufficient, even after figuring in the rural boost to the rebate?
Good.
Do better.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I think perhaps you misread what I said (or I communicated poorly). I'm speaking about the funding incentive to purchase a heat pump. The carbon tax rebates, as you say, are designed to break even by or better for the majority of the population; I've got no issues with that. I was responding to the implication that a transition to electricity was trivial because households could purchase a heat pump for little to no cost. There are households for which the energy costs of resistive heating+heat pump are likely higher than their current heating costs, making this not the case. (Unless there are further rebates I don't know about for people who have a heat pump, beyond covering initial costs?)
A majority of heating oil users are in the Atlantic provinces. Heat pumps are fine for their needs.
Even a high SEER heat pump would need a gas furnace to supplement winter heating on the prairies. They get very inefficient below about -15C. A shallow geothermal would work but most people don't have the land to do that, and they're vastly more expensive to install with several hundred feet of loop installed below the frost line.
Anyone that thinks a heat pump is an option outside of a few small areas of Canada needs to do more research.
And those who can't are also producing less carbon overall and therefore getting more back from the carbon rebate program.
The issue is those that cannot make the switch to electric also aren’t in the best spot to pay thr carbon tax. It’s a catch 22 for the poor. Ending the carbon tax for now is a good thing since those that could switched to electric and those that couldn’t won’t be punished.
Ending the carbon tax now would result in them having less money available.
That doesn't actually help them.
It's a typical conservative talking point. Take a complex system, make it sound simple, pitch a simple solution (that in reality won't fix anything and actually usually makes thing worse), people who don't understand the complex system latch onto the simple solution, then when the simple solution is implemented it doesn't fix anything but no one questions why.
We see his with conservatives time and time and time again, it's sooo frustrating. I wish the economy was as simple as they claim it is.
How would ending the carbon tax end up with then having less money. A tax directly affecting them ending would give them more money to work into their budget. This is a simple cause and effect. The only people with less money is the government, which lets be honest the carbon tax on heating homes was never a large portion of their budget.
The carbon tax isn't a traditional tax, the money collected is pooled and paid back out evenly to households.
This means as long as a household is producing less carbon than the average, they get more money back from the rebate then they paid into it.
High income people still currently produce significantly more carbon than poorer households. The last time I looked at the numbers, something like 60% of households got more money back from the program, and nearly all poorer households fall into that.
Yes there are likely outlier poorer households who also produce way more carbon, but when looking at the system overall they are the exception and could likely fix their situation by changing their behaviour.
To reiterate, this is not a tax because the income doesn't go into the governments income, reducing the income tax has no impact on government revenue. The majority of poorer households get more money back from the carbon rebate system.
At this point the gov needs to overhaul the tax code tbh.
Maybe so. But once again this isn't actually a tax. Conservatives can call it a tax, and it's clearly working to confuse people and muddy the water. But it's isn't a tax, so cleaning up the tax code is a completely different problem
I would guess it's because ending the carbon tax would end the payment people get paid from it. Majority of people profit from it.
Exactly, you can throw all the incentives you want at me and I'd be happy to switch today, but my landlords don't care because they're not the ones paying the carbon tax.
Or…you can throw all the rebates you want at it but people still have to put up the initial value