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And 55 per cent of Canadians don’t think Canada should move forward with its carbon-pricing plan if it could impact Canadian competitiveness.

Canadians are realizing the policies are neither efficient nor economically benign

Canadians are right to be skeptical. As the Fraser Institute showed in a recent study, provinces are implementing carbon pricing in ways that fundamentally violate the three key principles of efficient and economically benign carbon pricing, which are: 1) the tax must displace existing regulations, not be atop them; 2) The tax must be fully rebated to the public as reductions in other distortionary taxes such as income and corporate taxes; and 3) the tax revenues must not be used to distort energy systems by supporting one form of production over another. No province in Canada (including British Columbia) meets all three of these principles. Most don’t meet any.

Consider Ontario’s cap-and-trade system instituted by Premier Kathleen Wynne, which her government estimated would bring in $2 billion in revenue per year. According to the Ontario auditor general, out of the $8 billion to be collected in four years, $1.32 billion is earmarked to help with residential and business electricity bills. The rest will be spent on the usual governmental preferences: transit, subsidies to renewable energy and dubious efficiency programs.

Alberta’s new carbon tax of $30 per tonne is expected to generate almost $5.4 billion from 2017 to 2020. Part of that (28 per cent) will be given to low- and middle-income Albertans, ostensibly to ease the pain of higher power bills, and the indirect impact of driving up costs of other goods and services in Alberta. The rest will be spent on government pet projects.