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This strikes me as a remarkable turn of events

While $102 a tonne may be twice what the Liberals had let on until now, it’s a half to a third of the $200 or $300 the Conservatives have been claiming would be necessary. It’s also likely a fraction of the cost, per tonne of emissions, of the regulatory and subsidy programs the Tories will announce next week: as every study shows, carbon pricing is by far the cheapest way to reduce emissions. And, unlike those costlier programs, the carbon tax comes with an offsetting rebate, which for most families (as the PBO has also calculated) will more than compensate them for the extra cost of the tax.

But that argument might as well be put to the Liberals. Even at $100 a tonne, the tax would only be doing a little over half the work of reducing emissions: economists reckon it would have to be at least $200 a tonne if we were relying on carbon pricing alone. The rest is accounted for by all of the other existing and planned emission-reduction programs, federal and provincial.

If instead the party plans to hold it to $50, then — assuming it still intends to hit its target — it is not even relying on carbon pricing to do half the job, but a quarter or less. So either it is backing away from the target, or it is backing away from the tax.

This is bizarre, since the PBO study finds, not only that carbon pricing is the most efficient means of reducing emissions, but that it is more efficient at higher levels than at lower. While Environment Canada had earlier calculated that the first $50 on the tax would reduce emissions by about 50 to 60 MT at a cost of roughly 0.1 per cent of GDP per year, the PBO estimates the addition of another $52 would cut emissions by a further 79 MT at a cost of less than 0.05 per cent of GDP per year.