How Canada’s carbon tax works in our favour

Carbon tax critics have the slogans. But where is their plan for the climate crisis? April 1

Here’s how the carbon tax worked for us in 2023. On home heating, hot water and cooking (all gas) the carbon charge was $200.45.

Fuel for our car is harder to work out because we travelled in the U.S. and Quebec. Assume our driving (11,179 km) was in Ontario and fuel bought here. Our average consumption was 5.56 litres per 100 km, so we burned 621.5 litres of diesel over the year. The 2023 carbon charge on that was $108.03. If our car had used gasoline, the carbon charge would have been less per litre ($0.143/litre instead of $0.174/litre) but a gasoline-powered vehicle would have used more fuel.

Adding the two together, we paid $308.48.

There is a carbon charge embedded in many goods representing fossil fuel used to make and transport these and the tax paid by a retailer to heat their premises. I have no way to calculate these, but this would be a much smaller number than what we paid directly.

I will suggest we paid less than $400 in carbon taxation during 2023.

During 2023, my wife and I received $688.75 in “climate action rebates.” We probably got a little more because our last payment for 2022 covered several weeks of 2023, but let’s round it up to $700.

We received about $300 more in rebates than we paid out.

I guess most families paid more carbon tax because our vehicle’s annual mileage is half of what’s typical for Canadians.

We do well on carbon taxation because we have been doing exactly what we should to reduce carbon emissions. We started more than 30 years ago — long before anybody thought about taxing carbon.

We added insulation to our house — lots of it. Our windows are triple glazed. Our furnace is 96 per cent efficient.

Acting in the best interests of our planet has long been important to us. It’s time that attitude was more widely adopted. Peter Bursztyn, Barrie