Come April 1, Canadians will be paying three cents more per litre of fuel due to the implementation of the carbon tax. Gas currently sits around $2 per litre, so a full tank may easily cost more than $100.
As farmers and ranchers in the BC interior have suffered from unprecedented floods and droughts in recent years, it is of course reasonable to subsidize them whenever necessary. But looking at their high energy/transportation bills, I am not sure that raising the carbon tax is the solution.
And did you know that in BC, about two-thirds of the provinces’s families rely on natural gas for home-heating, and these homes must pay extra taxes?
It is not a matter of choice for homes to be using fossil fuels rather than electricity for heating – the province’s utility company makes that decision as the energy provider.
Heating our homes is also not a matter of choice, so taxing residents extra is clearly not the answer for mitigating climate change. It is up to the government to impose necessary changes: Leaders need to take the initiative to help the province transition to cleaner and greener alternatives.
A final note of warning: I am not so sure that nuclear energy is a ‘cleaner’ alternative – it is a frustrating fact that Japan is still dumping gallons of radioaactive liquid into the ocean.
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