Editor:
It is with great concern that I read the Dec. 8 and Dec. 23 articles by Carson Binda of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (B.C.’s new government has a golden opportunity to improve the cost of living and Re: Life in Canada, B.C. will get more expensive in 2023 thanks to tax hikes).
Mr. Binda draws a frightening picture of the impacts of the carbon tax here in British Columbia, so terrifying that I had to crunch the numbers to see how worrisome the impacts of the suggested taxes would be.
According to the Dec. 8 article, British Columbia has two separate carbon taxes. The first tax, according to Mr. Binda, addas 11 cents per litre to the cost of gasoline in our province. The second tax, in the form of a regulation on gasoline, adds 17 cents. Or as is stated in the article, ‘axing the second provincial gas tax would save drivers 17 cents a litre of gasoline’.
Now, that’s certainly a large sum, 28 cents a litre on gas hurts a lot, but it's earlier in the article that your eyes will really start to water. Earlier in that same article, the Federation claims that the average family in the Lower Mainland will pay around $10,000 in gas taxes at the pumps. Again, that’s a terrifying number and certainly upsetting to hear. Or it would be, if it were true.
To pay $10,000 solely in that 28-cent gas tax, this average family would have to purchase 35,714 litres of gasoline in a single year. If we’re feeling generous and choose to use the current price average of around $1.60 per litre that is being paid around the Metro Vancouver area, that would mean this average family would be spending $57,142 per year just in gasoline.
Now, Mr. Binda and the CTF didn’t mention what they think the average British Columbian family earns, and their website also lacks that information so I did some checking. According to Statistics Canada, in 2020 the average income for a household in British Columbia was $127,000. 2020 is the most recent year that has publicly available information, so its fair to assume average incomes have changed and hopefully have gone up since then.
I wanted to be sure, so I checked the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp.'s annual household income database, since they routinely collect this information as well. Their numbers are a bit different, but they also give data for different cities in British Columbia. The provincial average they have for 2020 is $120,300, just under $7000 less than Statistics Canada. In Abbotsford, the average household income rises to $128,400, and in Vancouver the family income rises again to $130,400 for the 2020 year. All of this is before any income or payroll taxes are deducted.
That $57,142.40 in gasoline costs would represent just under 44 per cent of that family’s entire pre-tax income, meaning it would be a higher expense than the average rent or mortgage costs for average families.
If this isn’t enough to make you wonder about the CTF and their data analysis, their Dec. 23 article will really confuse the issue. On Dec. 23, the same Carson Binda now claimed that gas taxes would increase to 78 cents per litre in April of 2023. There’s no doubt that the carbon tax will increase in April, that’s not a surprise. To claim that the carbon tax is going to nearly triple in size over the next few months is concerning. Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, yet the Canadian Taxpayers Federation doesn’t provide a single shred of evidence that the carbon tax will increase as much as they now claim.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation should show the same accountability they expect of government and explain how their math fits the changing narratives and facts they are presenting. An organization that hopes to advocate on behalf of Canadians should, at a minimum, present Canadians with the truth.
Trevor Ritchie
