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All economic pain for no environmental gain.

You may remember that catchy little phrase the UCP put on heavy rotation for months to attack the NDP’s consumer carbon tax.

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It turned out to be a popular hit on Albertans’ playlist as well, as the UCP won a big mandate based in large part on the promise to axe the tax that was supposedly an unreasonable burden to people needing to “heat their homes and drive to work.”

The thing is, evidence indicates the much-maligned levy was hardly the economic liability claimed by the UCP, and you don’t have to take it from the economists and other experts who have long been making that point.

Instead you can take it from the UCP government’s own modelling, which was included in the province’s legal challenge to the federal carbon tax that’s set to be imposed on Alberta in a little under two weeks.

Reporting from CBC News this week illuminated the existence of the court documents, which suggest the NDP’s $30-per-tonne consumer carbon tax reduced the annual growth of Alberta’s GDP by an average of just 0.05 per cent.