By Rahul Kalvapalle
National Online Journalist Global News
Ipsos poll says Canadians want climate change action, but not at any cost.
Most Canadians agree that more needs to be done to fight climate change, but it’s going to take a whole lot more than the federal government’s carbon tax to get them to ditch gas-guzzling vehicles.
That’s one of the key findings of an Ipsos poll of 2,001 Canadians, conducted between Dec. 7 and Dec. 12, that suggested a disconnect between Canadians’ acceptance of climate change as a problem and their willingness to potentially incur financial loss to help the government tackle it.
READ MORE: Canadian Chamber of Commerce says carbon tax is the smartest way to target rising emissions
Fewer than one in five Canadians said gas prices between $1.00 and $1.25 a litre would prompt them to switch to a more fuel-efficient car or find alternate modes of transportation, found the poll, which was conducted exclusively for Global News.
That range represents where gas prices would be likely to hover if the federal government’s suggested 2019 carbon tax of 4.42 cents per liter were applied to today’s gas prices.
The average gas prices in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta — the provinces with the most motor vehicle registrations — stood at 98.1 cents, $1.08 and 92.2 cents per liter respectively as of Thursday, Dec. 27, according to the Canadian Automobile Authority. If the 4.42 cents/litre carbon tax was to be added today, it would only push gas prices high enough for 18 per cent of respondents to switch to more fuel-efficient cars or alternate modes of transportation.
The gas price range that most Canadians said would cause them to rethink their vehicular choices was $2.00 to $2.25 cents per litre, but that would require a near-doubling of today’s prices in addition to the carbon tax add-on.
“Given where the price of gas per litre is today, we’ve got an awful long way to go before people actually reach that price point that requires them to seriously consider another option,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Global Affairs.
“The truth is they’re not even close to considering it right now.”
READ MORE: France cut its carbon tax after deadly riots. Here’s how it compares to Canada’s
Bricker added that electric car sales in Canada are also an instructive barometer for this, observing that sales have gone up “but not anywhere near the level they would have to be at in order to adjust anything in terms of Canada’s carbon footprint.”
The dilemma facing the Trudeau government is that gas prices in that $2.00 to $2.25 cents per litre range wouldn’t merely convince 30 per cent of Canadians to switch to fuel-efficient transportation, they might also convince many Canadians to vote the Liberals out.
“The penalty that someone would face, particularly in the situation of a government increasing [the carbon tax] to a level that it would have to get to in order for people to consider another option, is probably something that would imperil them politically,” Bricker said.
“That’s one of the persistent issues that the federal government faces on this. The level of priority that they seem to place on [climate change] is higher than the priority that Canadians are placing on it.”
Indeed, only 19 per cent of respondents chose climate change among the three issues that they said are most likely to influence their voting decisions in next year’s federal election. Health care (32 per cent) was top of mind followed by taxes (30 per cent) and the economy (27 per cent).
That’s not because Canadians don’t see climate change as an important issue, however.
Seventy-five per cent of respondents said Canada needs to do more to address climate change, while the same proportion also said Canada has an obligation to be a leader in the global fight against climate change.
However, 61 per cent expressed concern that climate change solutions will cause economic hardship.
“Canadians are very conflicted, particularly when we get into the situation of ‘What’s it going to cost me personally?’” said Bricker. “When this becomes a table-top issue — when it becomes something that concerns my bank account and my cost of living — that’s all of a sudden where you see people starting to put the brakes on.”
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Are those per litre gas prices correct?
In BC we’re currently paying CAD$ 1.32 per litre at the pump.
That’s because you’re already paying a carbon tax to the provincial government
Thanks Kevin.
I’m a new arrival here in BC.
But you’ve just made my day.
I now feel so – VIRTUOUS!
Come to the UK and you can feel really VIRTUOUS!! 🙂 (Approx $2 a litre)
Well Harry I can understand that you Brits have to pay $2 a litre, because you have so many dependant wind farms to support. It’s so very very virtuous of you all, and an example for the rest of us (an example of what, I’m not sure of).
But here in BC, it’s 90% hydro, so “carbon” (sic) must be like a rare element that needs preserving?
And the BC government told citizens that the tax would be revenue neutral, and they believed it!!
Bwaaa Ha! Ha! Ha!
A couple of days ago, I paid ~CAD$ 0.54 per liter for regular in Colorado, if I did the conversions correctly ($1.51 US/gal). That was with grocery discount. I’ve noticed more stations with regular around $1.90/gal, some lower without discounting.
R Shearer: @ur momisugly $1.51/gal you paid about $0.40(US)/ liter.
Yes, $0.40 US = ~$0.54 CAD.
88¢ per litre here on Maui
$.30 per liter here in Tulsa 🙂
Cheapest gas in Waterloo yesterday (according to Google) was CDN$0.98 per litre at the Esso station at the south edge of town.
Up here in Prince George the gas is 102.9. Prince George is also part of BC.
Operating a battery-powered EV in Canada’s cold climate is about as stupid as Canada putting up solar PV panels. The coastal elevations of Vancouver, BC where temperature lows remain moderate do EVs make sense. But stay away from higher elevation cold areas (ski resorts) with an EV unless you want to find yourself stranded, waiting for the tow truck.
The dilemma facing the Trudeau government is that gas prices in that $2.00 to $2.25 cents per litre range wouldn’t merely convince 30 per cent of Canadians to switch to fuel-efficient transportation, they might also convince many Canadians to vote the Liberals out.
ROFLMAO!!!!
What sensible realistic person put THAT on the survey??!!!! They need a medal.
Which tells us that even they (politicians) don’t consider their climate change drum-beating as being anything near the emergency they tell us it is.
Trudeau doesn’t care whether the tax reduces usage or not, he cares about more tax money for favourite projects and virtue signalling. People are becoming clued into the vacuum that is the brain of our Prime Minister ( and it’s not the sort of vacuum that sucks in knowledge or is useful in cleaning your carpet)
He got the brain of his mother (who is a dimwit) and not the brain of his father.
…Castro ?
I hate it when my milk comes out of my nose.
If you want a barometer of our Prime Minister’s IQ, just google up his stupid appearance with his wife and kids during their visit to India. There they are, all dolled up in the traditional Indian garb making like they have a clue about that culture. Pathetic! What an embarrassment. Virtue signaling, or for that matter, any signalling other than getting down to the tough business of governing is beyond his capabilities. We had a real prime minister. His name was Harper. He was a trained economist who balanced the budget, but we can’t stand success up here, so we voted him out in favour of Junior.
There are so many examples of this imbecile’s stupidity that it is hard to know where to begin. I am hoping that other countries and leaders, and people throughout the world in general, have caught on to this idiot and treat him as such. I suspect Trump cannot stomach him.
Someone put is best; in the US they have a POTUS, in Canada we just have a POS.
I’ll trade you your Trudeau for our Turnbull. So stupid, he hasn’t even worked out he isn’t prime minister anymore.
how right you are
“Everybody talks about the weather, but…..” Old adages never die, but often erupt their weathered head.
Pay me money and I will pretend to control it.
In Canada ,PM Trudeau attempted a very expensive carbon tax somewhat like Macron’s; until the top manufacturing emitters forced a meeting with him and threatened to leave the country unless he watered down the Carbon tax rules. He did so. They will apply in 3 days. At the end of 4 years the CO2 taxes will be about 5 billion and the special extra fuel taxes(no tax on diesel however) will be another 9 billion for a total of $ 14 billion. If the CO2 taxes dont get paid because the top 620 emitters change to a non CO2 fuel, the temperature will go down 1/1000 C by the end of the century. Inflation will go up because the fuel that they wsitch to will be more expensive. The people of Canada will only get the extra fuel surcharge money back. However both the switch and the fuel surcharges cause their own separate inflations. Therefore even though we get all the fuel surcharge back, the total of the 2 separate inflations will be more than the government rebate, so the people lose. If the 620 emitters pay the $5 billion CO2 tax and don’t switch ,there are still 2 separate inflation causes( the tax on the CO2 and the tax on the fuel surcharge. In this case the people will come out even if the rebates are from both the CO2 tax and the fuel rebate tax. However the same amount of CO2 will still be put into the air. We wont stop driving our cars because of an extra 11.5 cents per litre on gsoline tax. Therefore, what good did either of the 2 taxes do?
This is absolute madness
The carbon taxes may not change Canadian driving behavior.
My sincere hope is it changes Canadian voting behavior and kicks this flaccid excuse of a simpering frat boy to the curb!
Alan
You asked “…Therefore, what good did either of the 2 taxes do?”
Apparently it will successfully suck an additional $14B out of your wallet to go to your friggin politicians re-election efforts.
Politicians never really care if the money does anything other than get them re-elected.
But you already knew this.
With the transition to EVs gathering momentum, as prices drop, why are these morons even bothering to muck up the works? Just shut up and sit down.
“With the transition to EVs gathering momentum, as prices drop,”
Really? Where?
Kent:
Please review my response to your comment on 12-28-2018 and 9:59 AM in the linked post below. It still applies (as does the one immediately below mine in the linked post). Just because the automakers are making a degree of commitment to EVs, it does not mean they will be successful.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/28/eu-faces-time-crunch-to-agree-new-co2-limits-for-cars-and-trucks/
I love my new Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk with the 5.7 Hemi. Just filled up at Costco for CAD 85.4 cents per liter.
“or alternate modes of transportation.”
I guess Trudeau wants us to walk. We will walk all right. In our yellow vests.
Yes, the moral high ground can be captured using other people’s money. What’s not to like? And if the plebs cut up rough about it then “denier” or “racist” or other epithets are available to keep them in their place.
Or Jew. It’s what the Nazis used. That is who the eco-avengers have modeled their works after, after all.
switch….what a nice little innocuous word
that really means….buy a new car
In a lot of Canadian cities and towns, that is the only choice available. BUT, maybe we can save the Oshawa GM plant if we all buy a new pickup truck………..
I’d rather fight than switch.
TDS on steroids ?
“MAN FIRED AFTER FREAKING OUT OVER CUSTOMER’S TRUMP SHIRT”
“After the video went viral and several Patriots complained about the clerks behavior, he was fired.”
It would be extremely difficult to swallow a legitimate and needed tax, given the Liberal’s record of waste and inefficiency. How much more, when the aim is so misguided, and the results destructive.
Bob and Doug, the McKenzie brothers, the only real Canadians as far as I can tell, would have a field day with this idea, trying to keep the Great White North from warming up a little. Not that a carbon tax produces any actual climate change, just that the idea is a moronic non-starter. Got the back-bacon on the Coleman, take off, hoser, it’s a beauty way to go. Real Canadians.
I hope you are putting “Real Canadian Maple Syrup” on that there back-bacon..straight from the tree ! Mmmmmmm…Now that is “Free Energy”, great when Cross Country Skiing !
https://www.facebook.com/Ian.Furgeson/videos/2049652465091823/
Sorry, but your link doesn’t work for me. Maybe you’re being shadow-banned.
Polls on matters such as this are not a gauge of what people really want to see being done, but rather they are a gauge of how deeply the propaganda on “climate change” which has been pumped out day and night for years and shoved into the heads of kids in school of the matter has been absorbed by the citizens. Nothing more.
Polls are garbage. They contacted 2000 Canadians. How many phone calls did it take to find 2000 who would talk to them?
You are correct D. Anderson – busy people with real jobs and real families have no time for polls.
They poll the imbeciles who are flattered that anyone will actually talk with them, and they get the expected results when they interview imbeciles.
The pollsters also ask leading questions like “Should Canadians do more to fight climate change?” The term “climate change “is so undefined that it means different things to different people, and nobody really knows what it means because it is an unscientific term – a non-falsifiable hypothesis – essentially nonsense.
All such polls are worthless nonsense.
In a (somewhat) related story, NONE of the Climate Change elites will give up their private jets and flights. The cost of jet fuel could reach $50.00/gal. and they would still refuse to fly with the hoi polloi
“Saving the planet” … one unnecessary luxury flight after another.
As a Canadian, but this goes for everyone everywhere, I have so much money per month after taxes. I also have certain bills that have to be paid. There are also items that I have no choice but to buy like food and clothing. What is left goes to luxuries like eating out and buying things that I don’t need. When taxes go up, and they always do, the purveyors of luxury will be the ones to lose. And by luxury items, I mean picking up coffee at the coffee shop instead of making it at home, or buying that shiny glass trinket dust collector. But JT being a Liberal, he will just raise taxes again to bail out the now failing purveyors of luxury. That apparently, is the Canadian way.
“Most Canadians agree that more needs to be done to fight climate change”
How could any Canadian not want a warmer climate?
I’ll take some, it was -37c here this morning.
That Ipsos poll was commissioned by Global News. The Global News links in the article only show the dumbed-down report. Here are some links to the poll results from Ipsos itself.
The head link:
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/three-quarters-75-percent-say-canada-needs-to-do-more-to-address-climate-change
Most Canadians agree in principle
but they won’t buy in if it costs money
and
and
and
58% — “no matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to significantly reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.”
42% — “since Canada is a relatively small contributor to the world’s pollution, there’s not much we can do here to make a difference.”
34% — “people who talk about climate change are overreacting.”
See also the five download links at the bottom:
graphic presentation instead of text. Note the strange distribution of results on the “cost of gas” question.
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-12/year-end-poll-environment.pdf
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-12/press-release-environment-factum.pdf
For geeks, the detailed breakdown tables of responses:
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-12/environment-tables-1.pdf
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-12/environment-tables-2.pdf
“… won’t be terribly effective at inducing many Canadians to make meaningful change”.
This begs the question; is what being induced to change to, going to make any difference?
We know it’s a trivial change with nearly no net difference. Using an oil product to move vehicles around, compared to coal fired power station supplying electricity to rare earth batteries.
All this pain and suffering to induce a change in purchases, and because electric vehicles can’t do what an ice vehicle does, a change in lifestyle and activity. To do what exactly?
Well that’s a problem: people falsely assume that climate action policies and changes in lifestyle make a difference.
Trudeau claims he will give back 90% of the carbon tax to the “taxpayers”, having learned a little from Macron on how to put icing on a cow patty and call it a Christmas pudding. What he really means is that he will redistribute it. People who drive to work and heat their homes will pay, and inner city folks who already live in high rises and ride the subway, recent immigrants, people on gov’t assistance, all a part of his voter base, will receive a cheque, kind of a buy-a-vote campaign, with an environmental feel-good aspect for the eco warriors. It will reduce global warming by zero degrees. In the province of British Columbia, where they started with a “revenue neutral” scheme offsetting sales and income tax, the next government put the tax into general revenue. Hmmmm….
I’m sure that Trudeau is including the bureaucrats and oversight costs in the 90%. Which means about 60% will actually get back to the poor as an incoming redistribution measure. Government must have ways of taking other people’s money in order to “do good”.
See the note about the Libranos below. Liberal Party of Canada has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar before.
And presumably they also think that saving Maple syrup from global warming is equally important.
But another on-line poll? Puleeze.
And then its interpretation by people in the MSM? That’s two big strikes to start with.
I’ll concede that a poll is interesting when it obviously seems to contradict the answer the people commissioning the poll wanted it to achieve. In every other case, most “polls” are about as credible as a “scientific report” authored by Greenpeace.
“The gas price range that most Canadians said would cause them to rethink their vehicular choices was $2.00 to $2.25 cents per litre”
That’s what they say today. This needs a correction for the frog-in-heated-water effect. When the price is $4 they will be saying $8. The only time price increases on gasoline matter is when they come in huge jumps. It’s the shock, not the price.
Here’s an older Ipsos poll about carbon taxes.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/Global-News-Carbon-Tax-Poll-May-14-2018
“carbon taxes are a pointless, symbolic gesture”
“they unfairly punish people who commute by car to work”
“they are simply a tax grab”
“a pointless symbolic gesture that will cost Ontarians a lot of money and do little for the world’s climate”
Another Canadian here, and schools across the country are cutting services (including bussing) because they are paying $1.5 (Calgary) to $5 million (Vancouver) in carbon taxes.
A bigger example of how the federal government are hypocritical on this matter is that monthly and annual bus passes used to be claimed as a tax deduction but cannot be anymore. With my work schedule of 9 work days every 2 weeks, a monthly pass costs more than individual tickets would, and means my commute is twice as long as if I I were to drive. The cost of two bus tickets a little under half the cost of all-day parking.
My sole incentive to ride the bus was economic, and the federal Liberals have taken that away. The government of Canada directly employs over half of the reporters in the country by running the CBC, and recently announced a $600 million top-up for print media (that will help ensure there are less contrary voices in the public square. Most people I talk with about AGW are shockingly ignorant about the normal range temperature cycles over 125,000 years, how thick the ice is “normally” on the Canadian prairies, and the exponential reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels as they were declining towards extinction level for all land based life. But I’m the ignorant one. 🙂
The Liberal Party of Canada have no interest in “saving the planet”, and they were dubbed “the Libranos” in the 90’s for their habits of using the public purse (and access to contracts) to line their own pockets. Nothing has changed except the generation of those milking the public teat.
you cannot get blood from a stone.
In Canada we have had 40+ years of efficiency mandates added to the economy. There is very little left in the economy that carbon taxes can hope to change. No matter the good intentions, the law of diminishing returns cannot be repealed.
Not true. The extra costs can push even more manufacturing business to the US instead of Canada.