Dear Editor,
With the carbon tax going up again on Apr. 1, 2024 I thought this is an opportune time for the public to get another real look at how things are going to be soon and in the future. Pretty dismal to my eyes. If you think it’s bad now, just wait and see your next bills!!!
The following is a graph of the Federal Carbon Tax coming from Stats Canada and implemented by the Liberal Government.
Now, anybody that is a taxpayer or small business owner will see at this pace, you will never afford to heat your homes, offices, small businesses or put gasoline in your vehicle as the cost will be unobtainable; 0.77 cents per gigajoule (GJ) increase in tax alone on Apr.1.
FEDERAL CARBON TAX
2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030
Natural gas (GJ): $2.10 $2.63 $3.33 $4.10 $4.99 $5.78 $6.57 $7.36 $8.15 $8.94
Gasoline (L) : 0.09 0.11 0.14 0.18 0.21 0.24 0.28 0.31 0.34 0.38
To put this in a realistic value, take your gas consumption today which most homes between a 1000 sq. ft. and 1350 sq. ft. would use an average of 20 to 30 GJ of natural gas.
Today you are using, say 25 GJ times $3.33/ GJ to make a cost of $83.25 per month on carbon tax in the colder winter months.
Now take this same 25 GJ in 2030 times $8.94/ GJ and you are paying $223.50 per month. This is without any consumption, transportation, distribution fees and GST increases, which will never happen, right!!
So that means, being conservative, your bill will be at least twice as high. Take your bill, do the calculations and see the true numbers yourself.
Now gas is going to add another .04 cents per litre, plus all the increases. What we see nowadays is every time a bird flies over we now have a fuel shortage, threats of war, turnarounds or any other excuses the oil companies use to jack up the price. Add this to your other commodities such as food, lumber, clothing, you name it and you will see people in Canada in a dire case of financial woes.
Justin Trudeau is now talking how people are struggling to make ends meet, the high costs and inflation out of control but does nothing to help; he just keeps increasing taxes and giving money away.
Who does he think he’s fooling; and who does he think caused these problems? He is the number one driver in Canada for all high costs which have been brought about by carbon tax and his dream of “Green Power.”
Yes, we have to change things, but this is not the way. Canada lives in a cold climate with long distances to travel and these things are necessities, not frills!
All governments need to get on board a program that keeps life affordable for everyone. Solar and wind power are two big pushes that have little, to no effect in the Prairies, which is way out to lunch in costs and reliability.
Look at Medicine Hat’s solar power program and see. The Mayor was all for solar power and in 2014 the City spent 12 million on a system that was mothballed in 2019.
The reason being, it was not economical to operate. They say it will need a Natural Gas price of $19 to $20 a GJ to make it feasible to run.
Price out a solar or wind power system for your own home and see the costs and reliability and you will see that in most cases that it will need grid backup and people cannot afford to install them.
During the -30 C weather in December 2022 Alberta was on a Level 2 power alert and was almost looking at 30 minutes blackouts throughout the province.
The total power of Wind power and Solar power at that time was less than two per cent, so do your homework and see this does not work! This comes from Alberta Power reports. Now I see lots of hype about heat pumps,
Geo Therm heat, have you ever talked to people that put them in. The electrical costs put your bill through the roof. Do some research before you believe all this hearsay!
Write your MLA, MP, Premier and everyone else that you can and make a difference. I do, and talk to them, all I hear is no one complaining, come on, get real, do your part and make a difference!!
Glenn Morey
Wainwright, Alta.
