Carbon trust helps polluters at our expense
Re ‘Carbon trust’ replaces cap and trade, Nov. 30
Let me get this straight: Cap and trade taxes polluters and uses the funds to promote energy efficiency and green technology. A carbon tax taxes consumers, but returns the funds to them so they have the incentive to reduce consumption and use that money for something else.
Premier Doug Ford’s plan won’t charge large polluters, but every citizen of Ontario will subsidize them through their taxes if they voluntarily reduce emissions.
There will be no incentive for anyone to reduce fossil fuel consumption because it will still be cheap, and we will have to pay that $400 million anyway, either through higher taxes or reduced budgets for health, education, public transit, etc.
How will this help little guy, Mr. Ford? G.W. Byron, Toronto Thank goodness for people like Sue Braiden, whose letter to the editor this week called out the Conservative government for a lack of action on climate change.
This government insists it takes the impending climate catastrophe seriously, but keeps repealing effective initiatives such as cap-and-trade and the environment commissioner watchdog.
I wrote to my Conservative MPP Stephen Crawford about my concerns. I was told capand-trade was forcing people in the province to “choose between heating their homes and buying more food for their family.”
If this was a concern, they wouldn’t have slashed initiatives such as the basic income project, and the carbon trust fund would punish big businesses that are primarily responsible for mass carbon emissions instead of taxpayers.
Our MPPs seem more interested in appeasing their party than their constituents. Taylor Craig, Oakville I thought Doug Ford and the Conservatives were going to take the government’s hand out of my pocket, but now they are going to fund a $400 million slush fund for big business with my money. On top of that, he is spending another $30 million to fight the federal government and is giving up billions that the cap-and-trade would have brought into government coffers.
From what I can see, Ford has taken the government’s hand out of the pockets of businesses and has jammed them firmly into the pockets of the poor and middle class. Stephen Woof, Haliburton, Ont.