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News Roundup for May 13, 2024
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PM Justin Trudeau's Canada

Steven Guilbeault, who threatened to quit if the Liberals waffled on the carbon tax. Is this True? Then he has to be the one selling it.
 
Brands said:
Steven Guilbeault, who threatened to quit if the Liberals waffled on the carbon tax. Is this True? Then he has to be the one selling it.
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He is popular in Quebec but increasingly unpopular in English Canada.
 
The answer is not giving people 83 dollar monthly rebates vs 250 dollar quarterly rebates.

The issue is you have to make electric vehicles cheaper for the public, and build out the charging infrastructure.
 
Brands said:
Doug Ford is the reason Ontario has a carbon tax in the first place.
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Didn't we have cap-and-trade under the Liberals? I get that it is not a direct line-item with the consumer but it still put a price on carbon.

Coolibop said:
As you point out, most (~80 percent?) residents see money back or break even.
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Has anyone here actually done the math, or know somebody who has? I'm reading on another forum that a few folks have done their personal math and, for them, it isn't even close to being revenue-neutral, let alone putting money back in our pockets.
 
You do get back more money because the carbon tax also applies to heavy emitters. If I were the Liberals, I would slow down the increases over the years or even pause them. Even with the rebates it's not helping them.
 
lenaitch said:
Has anyone here actually done the math, or know somebody who has?
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I have. One car (a hybrid) family of three who live in a 1000 sqft condo, near transit. We make out quite well. We drive about 15 000 km a year. And I work from home two days a week. If l look at carbon taxes paid on home heating and on the gas for our car, that works out to under $300 for the year. I am going to guess the added carbon tax on all our other consumption probably isn't more than $100/yr. We got $213.5 every quarter last year. So probably about 50% profit for us. Of course, most people just look at the total increase in fuel prices and not the carbon tax, so they don't feel they are netting out much.
 
Brands said:
The answer is not giving people 83 dollar monthly rebates vs 250 dollar quarterly rebates.
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What are you more likely to notice and remember from your bank statement, a monthly deposit or a quarterly deposit? My family got $213.5 every quarter last year. I'd rather they take $3 for transaction fees and paid us $52.63 per month.

Brands said:
The issue is you have to make electric vehicles cheaper for the public, and build out the charging infrastructure.
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EV development is entirely up to industry. The Liberals should have come out of the gate early with mandates, to force supply, and should have had larger rebates with drawdown dates. $5k was just too little when new EVs were averaging $70k and had a year long wait. They also did almost nothing on the infrastructure.

What they should have done:
-GST/HST holiday till 2035 on all electrified transport, from E-bikes to EVs to hybrids.
-$8k rebate in 2022 that goes down by $1k per year to $0 in 2030.
-Partnership with large grocery chains forv lots of fast chargers at grocery stores and malls. Everybody uses grocery stores and building chargers at 3000 stores is easier than trying to connect 30 000 apartment and condo buildings.

They got going on bus electrification. But I wish they had been way more aggressive on this. It's something that a lot of smaller cities and suburbs can really benefit from. They should have been way more aggressive on funding bus electrification infrastructure and more generous on BEB grants. Instead, they tried to run these complex financing schemes through the infrastructure bank. Those make sense financially. But are way too slow politically.

Finally, not using climate as an excuse to get shovels in the ground on HSR was a major mistake. In every country, they always complain about the cost of HSR. But once built, it becomes a major symbol of progress and a source of pride. Instead they had the same waffling on it as the Wynne Liberals on GO RER.

In the end, their over reliance on the carbon tax and their inability to pursue more visible and tangible climate policy will have contributed to their defeat.
 
lenaitch said:
Has anyone here actually done the math, or know somebody who has? I'm reading on another forum that a few folks have done their personal math and, for them, it isn't even close to being revenue-neutral, let alone putting money back in our pockets.
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There are several journalistic sources that you can search...but I put a question mark because I was unable to validate.

I believe the original report that cites the 80 percent portion is the Fiscal and Distributional Analysis of the Federal Carbon Pricing System (Parliamentary Budget Office, 2019) that is a source here as linked by the weather network article here.
 
kEiThZ said:
What are you more likely to notice and remember from your bank statement, a monthly deposit or a quarterly deposit? My family got $213.5 every quarter last year. I'd rather they take $3 for transaction fees and paid us $52.63 per month.
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I'd notice a $200 deposit 4 times a year more than I would a $50 every month.
 
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Ottawa says it doesn't screen out China-affiliated researchers in federal grants​

Membership in China's Thousand Talents Program, which is deemed an espionage risk, would not prevent researchers from receiving federal funds
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OTTAWA — Applicants for Canada’s federal research grants aren’t screened for affiliation with China’s Thousand Talents Program, an initiative implicated in leaks to China from Canada’s infectious disease lab and which CSIS has warned poses a threat of economic espionage to research institutions.

The Thousand Talents Program is one of several programs Beijing uses to recruit well-placed people from Chinese expatriate communities working in science and technology fields in other countries, in a bid to increase Chinese research and development.
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The National Post asked the Canada Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council about their policies and received an identical statement from all three agencies.

“Canada’s research ecosystem must be as open as possible and as secure as necessary as researchers need to collaborate with reliable and trusted partners to drive innovation,” reads the statement from David Coulombe with CIHR. “While the federal granting agencies do not collect data regarding participation in foreign talent and recruitment programs, such as China’s Thousand Talents program, they do provide advice and guidance on how researchers can mitigate their research security risks.”
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Qiu was a celebrated researcher at the National Microbiology Lab, which studies the world’s most dangerous pathogens, before being abruptly suspended in 2019 and then fired in 2021 for concealing unauthorized work with Chinese institutions and leaking scientific secrets to China.

After resisting multiple attempts from parliamentary committees to release information about the security breach, the Liberal government finally released documents last month that detailed the decision to fire Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng. He was also a researcher at the lab and was found to have breached security protocols at the lab and to have collaborated with his wife’s deceptions.
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CSIS had also previously prepared briefing materials in 2020 for the minister of public safety that stressed the dangers posed by foreign academic recruitment programs.

“CSIS is aware that foreign talent recruitment programs are used to advance the economic and strategic objectives of hostile states at the expense of Canada’s national interests, which may result in lost jobs and expertise, a loss in Canadian government-funded research, and a diminished competitive global advantage,” the briefing note said.

The Thousand Talents Program rewards participants with multiple incentives, including access to Chinese university laboratories, preferential housing, travel and medical care in China, and an additional funding that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a 2016 report from the Conference Board of Canada.
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nationalpost.com

Ottawa says it doesn't screen out China-affiliated researchers in federal grants

Membership in China's Thousand Talents Program would not prevent researchers from receiving federal funds
nationalpost.com nationalpost.com
 
picard102 said:
I'd notice a $200 deposit 4 times a year more than I would a $50 every month.
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Quarterly payments make you feel like you got a gift, an unexpected windfall. Fixed monthly amounts feel like income support that you can rely on. There's a reason CCB is monthly. If you want people to feel like they are being supported while charging them a carbon tax, you need to give them a monthly payment. Otherwise, they pay that tax every time they fill up, but they only see a cheque four times per year.
 
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