Canada

Seen in The Star:

Finance Minister Carole Taylor introduced an escalating carbon tax on most fossil fuels today, one she says is designed to ignite an environmental social movement in British Columbia and across Canada to fight climate change.[...]

The carbon tax , effective July 1, will be phased in over five years to give consumers and businesses time to adjust to the new tax and understand there is a cost associated with generating harmful greenhouse gases, she said.

The carbon tax will start at a rate based on $10 per tonne of carbon emissions and rise $5 a year to $30 per tonne by 2012, Taylor said. The tax works out to an extra 2.4 cents on a litre of gasoline, rising to 7.24 cents per litre of gasoline by 2012.

Taylor said the carbon tax on diesel and home heating oil will start at 2.7 cents per litre and increase to 8.2 cents per litre over the same five-year period.

Apparently there’s already a similar tax in place in Québec, although the B.C. tax differs from the Québec tax in that British Columbians should see a net offset in their other taxes, while Québec uses the revenue to fund technological investment by the province.

I’ve been intrigued with the concept of a carbon tax for a while now, although I stumble over practical implementation issues. If it is to be an effective incentive to reduce CO₂ emissions, I’d think it needs to be an explicit amount expressed in the cost of every product or service sold, and it needs to be factored into some form of tariff on goods imported from jurisdictions where no similar tax is available.

British Columbia’s goal of making the tax revenue-neutral is, in my opinion, a good one if adhered to. But, I think I’d prefer to see the revenue-balancing go towards helping citizens and businesses over the hurdle of making investments to shift to more sustainable technology, funding any appropriate precautions to be made as a result of climate change, and any smoothing of the local economy required to get through any market disruption arising from the imposition of the tax.

Periodically, I run into a discussion along the lines of “wouldn’t it be nice if we could have an open border with Canada”, due to our cordial relations and the hassle of border-crossing these days. Homeland Security concerns aggravated by differences on immigration policy are the reasons usually given for why Canadian border liberalization seems unlikely to occur.

For example, consider this post from ABC News’ Blotter:

According to Canadian news accounts, Justice Michael Phelan’s ruling struck down an agreement that once barred thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Canada. The judge said the United States does not protect refugees fleeing political persecution and torture, which international conventions require.

Instead, it adheres to rigid policies which may result in mistreatment, including forcing victims of abuse to return to the countries in which they were mistreated, he said.

As a result, the United States can no longer be considered a safe place for refugees, Phelan ruled. His ruling nullifies an existing U.S.-Canada agreement saying that if a refugee is turned away from one country, he or she cannot seek refuge in the other. The agreement was intended to reduce so-called “asylum shopping,” in which immigrants attempt to obtain refugee status from multiple countries.

While American border paranoia is understandable, it’s a sorry day when other countries openly note that the U.S. may no longer be a good destination for refugees looking for safety and opportunity.