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.”
Read The Full Story Here
HT/Marcus
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Legislate to purpose, and people, and be consistent, not what is politically congruent.
A recent poll of Canadians found that more people voted for TrueDope because of his hair than his climate policies.
Or for his fake eyebrows. I’ve never heard of a man with that need before.
Global news is part of the MSM that keeps pumping out the false rhetoric of “climate change” and support of Trudeau. Trudeau and his liberal government are going to pump out 500 million to the so called struggling fake news MSM media and since there will be an election in less than a year kinda makes one just a tad suspicious.
Making a poll:
Question 1: Do you want to save the environment?
Question 2: Would you like to pay for carbon trade to the bankers and carbon taxes to the global government?
Most people answer yes to virtue signalling questions. Question 2 following it is typically more covert than above.
What people actually do is the third question.
It’s starting to look like that Dem from New England was right in asking “Why isn’t Trump building a wall on the Northern Border? “….(to keep out all those pesky climate refugees.) I’ve seen Canadian registered pickup trucks in the local UP gas station come in and fill up a bed full of jerry cans of gas and then go back across the bridge to Ontario. At some point all those Canadian snowbirds will make the trip one-way in the fall. The next Canadian election is going to be interesting.
Why does the political class, largely liberal or progressive in the west (except perhaps for Trump) think that the way to limit consumption of gasoline or diesel fuel is to impose a tax on its purchase? That way, everybody pays the same tax for a gallon of fuel but the poor, as a portion of their total income, pay much much more than the well to do. In fact, the well to do seem not to give a whit whether gas is $3, $4, or $5 a gallon for their SUV’s.
This thrust for fuel taxation seems the utter opposite of all other “progressive” tax schemes to make the well to do pay more.
Very perplexing. If one wants to limit consumption of gasoline and diesel, ration it as it was in WWII. This is a war after all, or so I am told.
Could be that it is a war not on using fossil fuels by the elites per se, but a war on the classes of peoples who would potentially benefit and improve their standards of living long term from using said fossil fuels.
Don’t most Canadians live within their Southern border? Must be a reason for that. 😊
Without the people allowing the government the “power” to tax, this could not be an issue at all.
Why do we allow ourselves to be robbed and ruined at the command of “our” governments? Whatever happened to making our own decisions about our own lives?
Why don’t we have a strict “hands off!” policy prohibiting government from touching our time, labor, property, and earnings? What do THEY do to earn it from us?
I wonder how much colder Boy Blunder and his trusty sidekick,Climate Barbie, want Canada to be?
Would the re-establishment of the Laurentian Ice Sheet satisfy them?
If Canadians go along with this naked theft, the taxing of air, we will not be a confederation in 4 years time.
Rupertsland looms over the effeet elites we call politicians.
Roll on secession, I say. I can’t see any reason for the West to remain part of Canada, and the East will be much happier without us (at least until the fuel and taxes stop coming).
Nobody is stupid enough to ask what people really think.
Q Do you find Climate Change to be an important issue?
-What moron says no to this question.
Q What % of your income are you willing to pay to solve climate change?
– That is the real question. I would be shocked if more than 20% would provide an answer > 5%.
Nobody wants to ask the truly critical questions because they know the answer. Knowing he answer would kill the movement, so they keep nibbling at the edges hoping people don’t get too pissed.
I have read many posts here at WUWT by Canadians and their PM. So I looked up on Youtube some videos of his performance and he really does appear to me to be brain dead. He just shrugs off any questions and passes it off to his right-hand man (Woman) who by-passes the question with a flippant “do nothing” answer.
I thought Australian politicians where bad but seems Canadian politicians are just as bad.
Trudeau was elected by two main groups: women who voted for him because they think he’s ‘hot’ (God knows why, maybe they think he’d be fun to go clothes shopping with) and hippies who wanted legal pot. You can’t expect those groups to elect a serious politician who understands the issues and wants to do the best for his country.
Trudeau’s step-father did everything he could to destroy Canada. Trudeau is going to finish the job, if he gets re-elected.
Here in the UK we are already paying the equivalent of 2.10 Canadian dollars per litre, and that has not deterred people from buying large cars. In fact large SUVs have become much more popular in the last few years than they used to be. We have grown out of the Minis and Ford Fiestas which used to be our favourite. However most of those SUVs are diesel, and things may change now that anti diesel laws seem to be on the cards.
Everyone wants to save humanity but no one wants to pay for it just like veryone wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.
A new paper by The Tachyon Institute (TTI) claims that current global climate change hysteria was brought about by short term political machinations vs long term climate trends. TTI claims that world political systems are unable to deal with the realities of climate change and natural variation within the boundaries of the current political systems.
The paper “Basic Reasons and Causes for Climate Hysteria in the late Holocene” was published in 131829 CE. It may be accessed from any ansible in the Milky Way and at last the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Wondering where Ipso goes to ask Canadians about their climate change opinions? To the brain washed university campuses or in bars downtown Toronto where all the baureocrats and media types hang out? Ipso definitely didn’t ask anyone on a oil rig or at a pipeline pump station or a truck owner operator. With the preconceived opinions voiced by Ipsos CEO one can only think they found what they had been looking for and 2000 people become “Most Canadians agree”.
I’m surprised that Canadians would want to slow global warming if it does exist. They stand to gain big — the whole northern part of Canada, mostly uninhabited now, stands to become habitable, and a lot of it arable, too.
Maybe the Canadians will have some Yellow Vest protests also and drive little Justin into exile in his tree house?
Wow! So sorry to see that Canucks have been drinking so much Kool-Aid, if these polls are to be believed. You would think they would welcome and extra 1/2 degree up there.
I first became associated with the “global warming” meme in the late 1970s while in graduate school, while I was making an honest effort to decide if borehole temperatures could record past surface temperatures with any fidelity. From that time to the present I have found those people who become most agitated about the topic are often those least able to understand it beyond mere sloganeering. They were especially people who had avoided any rigorous science education at all, but had learned what they knew from others in the same position, or from various sources of propaganda. They all spoke about global warming in the same manner as though they had been programmed. They all seemed to switch from global warming to climate change again just as though programmed.
People have become programmed over the past 50 or 60 years to “care” about environmental problems, but they haven’t become any more capable of actually thinking about them. Thus, to ponder solutions to problems, they must fall back on their instinctive methods, which means to demand (by protest or voting) some response, which or may not solve something that may or may not represent a real problem, but always paid for by someone else.
It seems that we (Canadians and all others) are missing the most important question, namely “why do we blame “carbon” (actually CO2) for all our problems?” Who has ever shown that CO2 (or “greenhouse gases”, etc.) has the effect that are attributed to it? (Arrhenius 1905 completely rejected Arrhenius 1895.)
BC is a sh*thole since the Green/NDP took over.
No Albertan should spend a dime there.
And Trudeau will soon follow suit with Macron with his own Yellow Vests when gas prices will spike due to his own Carbon tax…
This is what India Columnist Ajit Datta has to say about PM Trudeau:
“Justin Trudeau is a mascot of everything that is wrong with the world today. From being at the forefront of encouraging every degeneracy to welcoming radicalism into his homeland, from cheap gimmicks of tokenism to attempts at creating a culture of politically correct absurdities, the stink of his leftist hypocrisy wafts far and wide. As a citizen of India, I could care a less if the elected leader of Canada seeks to drive his nation to the dumps. But where it has an adverse effect on my country is where I chose to draw the line”.
P.S. Justin Trudeau is promoting hatred in Canada…Hatred of himself! A real useless loser…never worked a real day in his life…born with a silver spoon in his mouth. At least his father had some inteligence, albeit a real bonifide Marxist leftist intellectual who worshipped the Castro’s, Red China and the Soviet Union. Justin has his mother’s good looks where he gets his nice hair from and her brains. But she ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Toss the frogs in the saucepan, then gradually turn up the heat.
Why do Canadians want action on climate change? I live in a pleasantly warm part of Australia that has cold winters – but not Canada cold. Are Canadians so indoctrinated they want even colder winters?
All high fuel prices do is help weaken an economy. Money that should be spent in the real economy helping keep businesses in business is siphoned off for governments to squander. That list keeps growing of course. Australia will probably be the first western nation to collapse its economy though, we like being first in everything.
that’s all of a sudden where you see people starting to put the brakes on mad electromobility dreams.