Carbon tax went up, but so did our emissions

While the goal of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's climate change plan is to lower industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, the latest federal government projection says they went up for the second year in a row.

The government reports emissions two years after the fact and its latest estimate is that Canada's emissions increased to 684 million tonnes in 2022, up by 14 million tonnes, or 2.1 per cent, from 670 million tonnes in 2021.

Canada's 2021 emissions were 11 million tonnes, or

1.7 per cent higher, than the 659 million tonnes emitted in 2020.

The government's 2022 estimate is almost identical to one put out by the federally funded Canadian Climate Institute last fall.

At that time, the environmental think-tank estimated

Canada's emissions in 2022 were 685 million tonnes.

If these estimates are accurate, it means Canada's emissions have been increasing since 2020, when the global recession caused our emissions to drop dramatically to 659 million tonnes, from 724 million tonnes in 2019.

It also means Canada remains far behind the government's target of reducing Canada's emissions to at least 40 per cent below the 2005 level of 732 million tonnes — meaning 439 million tonnes — by 2030.

At an estimated 684 million tonnes in 2022, Canada's emissions were 6.6 per cent below 2005 levels.

Despite this, the Trudeau government predicts 2022 was the last year of rising emissions in Canada and that emissions in 2023 — which won't be reported until 2025 — were significantly below 2022 levels and now will decrease every year up to 2030.

Because of this, the government says, it will come close to achieving its 2030 target, assuming all federal and provincial efforts to reduce emissions occur on schedule, along with non-industrial emission cuts resulting from nature-based solutions and improved agricultural methods.

If everything proceeds as planned, the Trudeau government projects, Canada's emissions in 2030 will be

467 million tonnes, just 28 million tonnes short of its 439 million target, compared to 245 million tonnes short in 2022.

Thus far, however, the Trudeau government's predictions about emission cuts haven't been borne out by reality, though it argues Canada's emissions would be far higher today if the federal Conservatives had been in power since 2015, instead of the Liberals.

In April 2021, then federal environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Canada would see “year-onyear reductions — absolute reductions — starting in 2020, through to 2030,”

But if the Trudeau government's figures are accurate, emissions actually rose in 2021 and again in 2022, compared to 2020.

The political controversy over Trudeau's climate change plan has centred on the primed minister's carbon tax and the federal fuel charge, which currently increases the cost of gasoline by 17.61 cents a litre, on its way to 37.43 cents litre in 2030.

But in reality, the fuel charge, which Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he will scrap if he wins next year's election, is only one component of the federal climate plan.

It also includes the large emitter trading system, clean energy and clean electricity regulations, electric vehicle mandates and massive taxpayer subsidies to attract green energy technology industries to Canada, such as EV battery manufacturing plants.

Normally, Ottawa reports Canada's annual emission levels in April, two years after the fact, but this year the deadline has been extended to Dec. 31, 2024, because of new reporting requirements established by the United Nations.

A spokesperson for the federal Environment Department says Canada will report its official 2022 emission figures within the next few weeks, well before the UN deadline.