619 B.C. residents died from heat

DEAR EDITOR:

Was it the full moon? Several of our Conservative correspondents were featured in the March 7 opinion pages.

Dan Albas returned to a familiar topic, carbon pricing. Several of his points bear challenges. He gave an example of a resident’s home heating bill, claiming $473 of his annualized bill went to carbon tax, and furthermore, they did not qualify for the Low Income Tax Credit. I hope not.

Albas’ resident uses over 12gJ of natural gas, each and every month of the year. To use that amount of natural gas suggests a very large home, perhaps heating a swimming pool as well. In comparison, my bill showed usage of 8.8gJ for each of the two coldest months.

While Albas’ friend did not receive the Low Income Tax Credit to alleviate his costs, he would have been eligible for a credit on a heat pump installation. In addition, like all British Columbians, they already benefit from the Personal Income Tax cut, Electricity sales tax cut, and the elimination of the Healthcare premiums.

Albas also states that the Bank of Canada confirmed that carbon pricing increases the inflation rate. But he doesn’t want to say how much. Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada wrote to the Parliamentary Finance Committee a year ago, and indicted that the inflation impact was 0.4%. How does that compared to record oil and gas charges, or jumps in food costs supply managed areas like poultry or dairy?

Kaleden’s John Thompson once again states there is nothing to see here about climate change, because July temperatures have only risen .3C in 80 years.

He neglects the other 11 months, and the rest of Canada. The average annual temperature increase in Canada since 1948 has been 1.9C. Northern Canada temperatures have risen three times faster than the global warming rate.

Thompson claims stress will kill us faster than climate change ever will. Tell that to the survivors of the 619 British Columbians who died from extreme heat among our 1,000 daily temperature records of 2021.