The Liberals manipulate a climate report to justify handouts to Loblaws

�Tonight a dire warning for Canada�s climate. The country is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. According to virtually every climate scientist, climate change is already here. Temperatures have risen and are expected to keep rising with dramatic and increasingly disastrous impacts. And today we are learning that in Canada, that goes double. A government report from Environment and Climate Change Canada, years in the making, confirms that Canada is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Far from being a safe haven, Canada has been directly in the climate crosshairs. And barring drastic global action, more is coming.�

Along with CTV News and other media, the CBC fell for the media manipulation trick. They gobbled down Environment Canada�s easy-to-digest �Headline Statements� which on quick reading gave the impression that Canada had become something of a global inferno. Warming in Canada is double global levels driven by human influence leading to thinning glaciers, storm surges, sea-level rising, more chance of devastating flooding.

The CBC then moved on to the official Liberal message: Bring on the desperately needed carbon tax! And � as we learned this week � bring on what promises to be a steady blizzard of climate announcements, like Monday�s news that the Loblaw grocery giant will receive a $12-million subsidy to retrofit its refrigeration systems and make them greener. As one wise-guy noted on Twitter, the Liberals will be giving a measly average $307 carbon-tax rebate to Canadian families but handing $12-million to Loblaw, which earns billions in revenue but has a history of pandering to green populism. Apparently the supermarket chain�s already-subsidized solar panels aren�t doing enough to make the store fridges sufficiently green.

Along with CTV News and other media, the CBC fell for the media manipulation trick. They gobbled down Environment Canada�s easy-to-digest �Headline Statements� which on quick reading gave the impression that Canada had become something of a global inferno. Warming in Canada is double global levels driven by human influence leading to thinning glaciers, storm surges, sea-level rising, more chance of devastating flooding.

The CBC then moved on to the official Liberal message: Bring on the desperately needed carbon tax! And � as we learned this week � bring on what promises to be a steady blizzard of climate announcements, like Monday�s news that the Loblaw grocery giant will receive a $12-million subsidy to retrofit its refrigeration systems and make them greener. As one wise-guy noted on Twitter, the Liberals will be giving a measly average $307 carbon-tax rebate to Canadian families but handing $12-million to Loblaw, which earns billions in revenue but has a history of pandering to green populism. Apparently the supermarket chain�s already-subsidized solar panels aren�t doing enough to make the store fridges sufficiently green.

Ignore that fact that many essential goods � and especially the use of energy sources such as gasoline � are known as inelastic goods because demand remains relatively constant despite price changes. In other words, Canadians still need to drive to work and drop their kids off at school even if Ottawa pushes up the price at the pump. British Columbia has proven this point as its emissions are still rising, despite its carbon tax.

And never mind that the Trudeau carbon tax is set at a level far too low to get Canada anywhere near its own emissions targets, defeating the entire purpose of the tax.

A better question, highlighted by an announcement made by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, is why the government�s ingenious plan to tax Canadians into prosperity doesn�t also apply to Canada�s wealthiest corporations?

McKenna�s big reveal was that her government is giving a $12 million taxpayer handout to Loblaw so that the company could upgrade the refrigerators in its stores, all in the name of helping fight climate change.

It would have been hard for McKenna to pick a less sympathetic recipient. Owned by one of Canada�s richest families, and recently embroiled in controversies over tax evasion and a bread price-fixing scheme, Loblaw turned a tidy profit of more than $800 million last year. If anyone �needed� a free $12 million handout, it surely wasn�t Loblaw.

Which brings us to an obvious question: if a new carbon tax is the best way to get Canadians to cut their carbon emissions, why does Loblaw get a subsidy instead? While grocery stores will pass on their carbon tax costs to consumers, they�re now cashing corporate welfare cheques from Ottawa. Shouldn�t the Trudeau government be hitting Loblaw � and every business � with a new tax, the better to �incentivize behavioural change?�

It�s almost as if the government is admitting that when it comes to businesses, piling on new costs is harmful. And yet it expects us to believe the opposite when it comes to Canadians trying to stretch their family budgets.

For a government that says it�s focused on the middle class, it has been unbelievably generous with large, mostly profitable corporations, with handouts to Bombardier and Toyota, not to mention its seedy subservience to the now-infamous SNC-Lavalin that sparked an unending scandal.

The Trudeau government was already having a tough time convincing skeptical Canadians the carbon tax would actually make them better off, rather than costing them money, while doing nothing to help the environment.

Now the government has piled on an additional contradiction.

Ottawa is using the carbon tax to pressure middle-class families into buying new fridges, but, if it�s one of Canada�s wealthiest families, Ottawa is all to happy chip in millions from taxpayers for new coolers.

"N_Fiddledog" said
The Toronto Sun came to some interesting conclusions as to what the Libs are up to here too.

"BeaverFever" said
The article is wrong. Emissions have declined in BC

In 2008, the province implemented North America�s first broad-based carbon tax, proving that it is possible to reduce emissions while growing the economy. Between 2007 and 2015, provincial real GDP grew more than 17%, while net emissions declined by 4.7%

The latest figures, for the year 2015, estimate B.C.�s carbon emissions at 63.3 million tonnes of carbon equivalent, an increase of 1.6 per cent over the previous year.

More critically, the emission level is only two per cent less than in 2007, putting the province a long way from its original legislated target of reducing emissions 33 per cent by 2020 over 2007.

Carbon taxes also don�t work as promised. North America�s first such tax, in neighboring British Columbia, is failing to reduce emissions.

Emissions from driving are rising faster than population growth in B.C., despite a carbon tax higher than Inslee�s proposal.

Recent data says emissions increased 2.3 percent from 2013 to 2015. That includes a 7.2 percent increase in transportation emissions, the main focus of the B.C. and Washington plans.

B.C. won�t meet its 2020 carbon-reduction goals. Tax advocates there insist it works, but they�re seeking an overhaul and rate increase in hopes of meeting future climate goals.

Environmental group Food and Water Watch examined effects on the 70 percent of fuels subject to the tax. It concluded B.C.�s tax is a �failed experiment� and proponents �have significantly overstated the purported beneficial effects.�

�Greenhouse gas emissions have been rising rapidly in recent years even as the tax rate and total tax revenues have increased,� it said. �Moreover, the short-term declines in taxed greenhouse gas emissions were more modest and were reversed more quickly than the changes to the untaxed greenhouse gas emissions � exactly the opposite of what would happen if carbon taxes had a causal impact on changing emissions.�

In documents posted on the NDP-Green government�s website, data shows that for the second year in a row, CO2 emissions have gone up. CO2 emissions went up from 61.3 million tonnes in 2015 to 62.3 million tonnes in 2016 (the most recent year available). That�s an increase of 1.5 per cent and levels have increased in five of the last six years.

Last year, the Sierra Club pointed out that CO2 emissions are increasing and called B.C.�s highest carbon tax in Canada a �token effort.�

Interestingly, BC�s per capita emissions were on a steady downward trajectory well before any real action on climate change.