Ontarians deserve carbon tax disclosure

An opposition bill in Ontario is serving as a great symbol of the need to be up front about the costs of carbon taxes on everyday families.

In January, the governing provincial Liberals rolled out their cap-and-trade carbon pricing scheme. Prices at the gas pumps jumped up immediately by several cents.

Likewise, cap-and-trade increased the costs to natural gas home heating bills. But ratepayers still don’t know by how much. They may see their bills go up, but the cap-and-trade component is jumbled in among other fees.

It’s not a distinct line item. Enter Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton, who introduced a bill that would instruct natural gas companies to put the cap-and-trade costs on a separate line item.

It’s an excellent idea. When we go shopping, sales taxes appear as separate items. It’s the same on utilities bills. And cap-andtrade is a tax by another name. So show it.

McNaughton’s bill has just passed second reading and is now heading to a committee where the nuts and bolts will be figured out and, hopefully, it will become law soon after.

The Ontario NDP joined up with the PC party to vote in support of this. This crosspartisan spirit makes sense. Regular folks have a right to know how much they’re paying into this scheme.

British Columbia and Quebec already have this in place. As other provinces figure out how to deal with the federal government’s top-down edict on national carbon pricing, they will be faced with this issue as well. They’d be wise to proactively err on the side of disclosure.

Earlier this year we learned that the federal finance department had calculated estimates of how much its national plan would, on average, hit the wallets of Canadians.

The Liberals refused to release the calculations, despite being pressed by the opposition. So much for evidence-based policy making.

Canadians are critical of the various carbon taxes either in effect or under discussion throughout the country enough as it is.

If politicians seek to hide or obscure the costs of this green agenda from the public, there will be further outrage and an added wish to peel back the curtain. All carbon taxes need to be put up front for all to see. — Postmedia News