Canada’s carbon pricing schemes are doomed to fail because their primary purpose isn’t to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but to increase government revenues and control of the economy, the Fraser Institute says in a report released Thursday.

“Carbon-pricing in Canada doesn’t work the way ivory tower economists envision, and instead has become just another tax,” said Kenneth Green, the Institute’s senior director of energy and natural resource studies, and author of Poor Implementation Undermines Carbon Tax Efficiency in Canada.

The study concludes none of the four provincial carbon pricing models introduced in Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and B.C., along with Ottawa’s national mandatory minimum carbon price which starts next year, meet the three conditions necessary to effectively reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.

First, carbon pricing must replace other forms of government regulation, not add on more regulations.

Second, the government must return all the money it raises from carbon pricing to the public in the form of reduced personal and corporate income taxes, known as revenue neutrality.

Third, governments cannot impose carbon pricing while continuing to subsidize expensive and inefficient forms of green energy, such as wind and solar power.

The Fraser Institute says no carbon pricing scheme in Canada - which will take billions of dollars out of the economy annually by increasing the taxes or prices on almost all goods and services - is revenue neutral.

Ontario, which plans to raise almost $8 billion from cap and trade over four years, is using only $1.32 billion to offset higher electricity prices, while the rest will be spent on whatever the government decides, ranging from transit, to counter-productive renewable energy subsidies, to, the Fraser report says, “dubious” efficiency programs.

Alberta’s carbon tax is expected to generate $4 billion from 2017 to 2020, but only $1.4 billion will be returned to low-income residents, the study says, while $2.6 billion will be spent on “favoured government projects.”

Quebec, which has raised $330 million from its cap and trade scheme so far and expects $3 billion in revenues by 2020, is not returning any money to the public in reduced income taxes, according to the report. Instead it is putting all of it into a government-mandated “Green Fund” for use as it sees fit.

B.C.’s carbon tax, the report says, was revenue neutral when it was introduced in 2008, “but by 2013-14 ... the government had taken to shaky bookkeeping to preserve the appearance, but not the reality, of revenue neutrality.”

The study estimates that by 2018-19, B.C.’s carbon tax will have increased cumulative taxes on B.C. residents by $865 million, or about $800 for a family of four.

The report concludes, “Canada’s experience with carbon taxes shows that governments have little interest in ideal implementation. Instead, rather than simply addressing greenhouse gas emissions efficiently, they prefer to create revenue streams for pet projects and retain the ability to transfer wealth ...

“Even as governments extoll the wisdom of revenue-neutral carbon pricing ... they are not prepared to implement or maintain such schemes. Rather ... carbon pricing has become just another mechanism to fund intrusive and inefficient government manipulation of the economy, while extracting a new revenue stream from our already highly-taxed private sector.”