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Climate change is real. That’s why we’re making big polluters pay, and giving the money right back to Canadians. Claim your Climate Action Incentive when you file your taxes this year. Learn more: https://t.co/bOc19k4qbB pic.twitter.com/OljkNWRAQ6 — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) March 13, 2019

The idea is that the carbon tax is a sort of punishment for all the big, bad corporations out there that are thoughtlessly polluting our environment with their nasty emissions. The tax is then taken from those meanies and given to you, the little guy.

It’s like a Robin Hood tax, except there’s an added bonus – it magically cleans the environment at the same time. Who can dispute that?

There’s a bit of a problem though. It’s not entirely accurate.

For starters, there is no way to confirm that the money a Canadian household has actually shelled out is equivalent to the amount they’ll get back by claiming the rebate on their taxes.

“There is absolutely zero accounting done to determine how much we’ve actually paid in carbon pricing,” Anthony Furey explained in a recent column.

The plot now thickens though thanks to a recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer on the costs and returns of the carbon tax.

Now, the PBO does endorse Trudeau’s broad claim that the tax will leave some people better off. “The net benefits are broadly by income group,” the report notes. “That is, lower income households will receive larger net transfers than high income households.”

Although they do not address the issue of how this can be proven on a specific, individual level – because it can’t.

More to the point though, they reveal it’s not the case that the burden will be shouldered by “making big polluters pay”.

They look at all the cash the carbon tax will rake in to federal coffers and calculate that “household consumption of energy and non-energy products will generate three-quarters of carbon pricing revenue.”

Where’s the money coming from? It’s coming from you.