Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Auditor General Michael Ferguson has complained to the Canadian Parliament that the finance ministry refused to hand over documents required for him to complete an audit of Canadian fossil fuel subsidies.
Canada blocked climate change audit: official
May 16, 2017 by Michel Comte
Canada’s auditor general blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government Tuesday for effectively blocking an audit of efforts to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies in the fight against climate change.
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But Ferguson said the finance ministry, which was tasked with identifying subsidies, refused to hand over key documents for analysis, citing cabinet confidentiality.
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“We found that Finance Canada still had not defined what an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy was, nor could the department tell us how many inefficient fossil fuel subsidies there could be,” Ferguson said in prepared remarks.
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Read more: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-canada-blocked-climate.html
Prime Minister Trudeau is big on climate rhetoric, and frequently accuses his opponents of not taking climate change seriously, but his curious climate lapses have led to formerly enthusiastic climate activists attacking his government’s policies.
Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet
Bill McKibben
Donald Trump is a creep and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite when it comes to climate change.
Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it’s hard to look away – especially now that he’s discovered bombs. But precisely because everyone’s staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don’t believe me? Look one country north, at Justin Trudeau.
Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band. And he’s mastered so beautifully the politics of inclusion: compassionate to immigrants, insistent on including women at every level of government. Give him great credit where it’s deserved: in lots of ways he’s the anti-Trump, and it’s no wonder Canadians swooned when he took over.
But when it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.
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Prime Minister Trudeau has also been criticised for his extravagant lifestyle, his personal carbon footprint.
Normally greens seem to overlook the carbon sins of their leaders, for example greens never really kicked up a fuss about Al Gore’s $30,000 / year home electricity bill.
But Prime Minister Trudeau has taken blatant environmental hypocrisy to a new level – his utter disregard for his supporter’s sensibilities has really tested the limits of green tolerance for their carbon swilling leaders.
PM’s use of jet for family vacation emitted as much CO2 as average Canadian per year
Josh Dehaas, CTVNews.ca Writer
Published Friday, January 20, 2017 5:48PM EST
The use of a military jet for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s two-week family vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island pumped about as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the average emitted per capita in Canada each year.
Trudeau’s use of the Challenger to fly his family and a nanny from Ottawa to Nassau, Bahamas over the New Year holiday and back consumed about 9,100 litres of jet fuel, according to the Department of National Defence.
Christopher Surgenor, who runs the environmental aviation website GreenAir, calculated that the trip would have therefore created about 23.3 tonnes of CO2.
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In a way all this is funny – watching Trudeau in action is like watching an out of control laboratory experiment, one of those weird chemical reactions which ends up fizzing all over the bench.
But in a broader context the rank hypocrisy displayed by politicians like Trudeau damages faith in democracy, and potentially undermines the stability of the Canadian state. I utterly disagree with many of Trudeau’s political positions, at least his stated positions, but Canadian voters should have received the government they thought they were electing. There is no point in voting, if you believe none of the politicians on offer will keep their promises.
Do they mean, a subsidy for inefficient fossil fuel; or an inefficient subsidy for fossil fuel?
He’s only doing what everyone does – best described as Jevons Paradox or in an article in the Gruaniad or the Torygraph some while ago as ‘The Rebound Effect’
It goes along the lines that, after maybe a full year of scrimping, scraping and ‘saving energy’, many folks have the technology (being forced upon us by Govm’t) to know that we have ‘saved energy’ over the last 12 months and maybe even, exactly how much.
Of course, it took work and effort so these folks (rightly) think they deserve a reward for their effort. And why not, they have been good model citizens exactly as demanded by Government.
So, after saving fuel driving carefully in a car the Gov declare is ‘economical’, they maybe drive a lot further than they might, they may even buy another car.
Or they’ll fly to Florida for annual vacation rather than the usual Benidorm or Canaries.
And why the fook not? They deserve their little extra for 2 weeks after 50 weeks of self/Government imposed deprivation.
Little knowing that their 747 burns 2 tons of Kerosene as it rolls around Heathrow, *just* getting ready for take-off on the departure leg of their trip. All their savings are defenestrated there and then.
Its not the people’s fault. It is, how can Governments be so out of touch with how real people behave?
It seems so simple to me. In each country, if you vote for ‘green policies’ you pay the extra tax involved.
Each barrel of oil +1 dollar or euro or pound
Each gallon of gas +1 dollar or euro or pound
Obviously this will reflect in higher utility costs and increased food costs .
To make it simple and efficient for green minded individuals to pay their dues, their income tax could just be increased by 50%. Job done!
So easy!
…And I thought Hillary was bad.
As I am led to believe the concept of “fossil fuel subsidies” is essentially a short list of two things.
1. The oil company can write off their costs of drilling a well in the same year it is drilled rather than having to write it off over a period of years as is common with depreciating assets. This “subsidy” promotes the drilling of more wells.
2. Critics of fossil fuels claim they are damaging the environment and that the cost of that damage is not being taken into account (as a tax on oil profits, for example). The oil companies are therefore being subsidized by not having to pay a tax to offset the damage of their product.
Yes, not paying a tax is defined as a “subsidy” by those who want to damn certain activities.
This you and I are not getting a subsidy for our work because we pay tax. But I do get a subsidy (in the UK0 on my children’s clothes and my newspaper because there’s no VAT on those.
Quite how paying a tax to the government is the same as receiving money from the government are the same is beyond me.
The first is only a subsidy in the sense that they get all their money in the first year instead of letting the government hold onto part of it for several years.
Their multi-year tax bill doesn’t change by one penny.
Blocking auditors is criminal. Impeach him.
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Well I can put him right for free. There are NO net fossil subsidies. Fossil fuels pay large amounts of taxes. Fossil fuels make the world go round. It’s not that difficult.
With a bit of work, we can achieve the same with nuclear. Nothing else comes close.
Best Just-in comment I noted this year:
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=986
What were we thinking when we voted this dude in?
The answer is obvious, the solution! How to do it.
The Canadian people do not understand the long term or the short term.
If they did, Trudeau would not be where he is..
This is the sickness of our western world that we are ” all comfortable, don’t rock the boat”!
If some clever farseeing folk can describe the dangers, perhaps we can still manage the situation.
I wish I knew how.
But he’s so pretty!
I for one am happy Trudeau is a hypocrite on this issue: less taxes… wait until Green monger Andrew Weaver becomes the kind maker in the province of British Columbia…
Let’s hope the recount and mail in ballots for a few of the ridings for last weeks election goes to the BC Liberals next week so as we don’t have a hung parliament dictated by Andrew Weaver (infamous IPCC lead author) of the Green Party. He will put BC back into the stone age. And I am not talking Mary Jane stone age…that is JT’s department.
Hypocrisy is one of the primary Greenie/Progressive character traits – absolute and without fail.
Yesterday I attended a meeting where I was again reminded that the Canadian people elected our Prime Minister because he is a man of integrity and ethics.
Canada is run by morons.
The entire scam will soon be covered up by a two mile thick ice cap for the next 100.000 years.
Great to see they have their priorities right.