[Section 15] Harper's transit tax rebate inefficient

After cancelling all kinds of carbon-reduction programs, one of the replacement programs harper introduced was the transit tax rebate, which granted some tax deduction for purchasing transit passes.

Although the idea isn't a bad one (greens have pushed for it), the plan was viewed not as beneficial as other potential endeavours. Many pointed out that public transit needs improving and expansion, so why not use that money (estimated at $200 million) on transit funding... or a thousand other worthy projects? And why cut great programs like Energuide (since somewhat restored) when there's this much money around?

It wasn't lost on some of us that this rebate would be made known over and over again to each and every Canadian by the government, transit systems and even your accountant/tax filer. To me, that seemed to be the real clincher: Though argued to be inefficient and not that effective, its ubiquitous result would portray Harper as both a tax fighter and a green politician.

Well, the naysayers have been verified. The rebate program is woefully inadequate and is very expensive for what carbon reductionss we get out of it?:

...figures in the new plan estimate that it will be six times weaker, in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, than what the government had estimated in its last review from August 2007.

Matthew Bramley, the director of climate change policy at the Pembina Institute, calculated that the new estimates for the public transit incentive program translate into a cost of $7,419 per tonne of reduced emissions or about $35,700 for each car that is taken off the road. The average Canadian produces about 23 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year, according to Statistics Canada.

This always was more about Harper greenwashing himself than anything else.

The article also exposes other failures of Harper's 'green' policies:

The new plan also estimates that regulations requiring more biofuels content in gasoline and diesel will result in a reduction of about 1.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2010, even though the government had estimated last year that the regulations would be three times more effective.

The phase out of incandescent light bulbs is estimated to result in an emissions reduction of four million tonnes, according to the new plan, which is 50 per cent less than the reduction estimated in 2007.

Sadly, I'm not surprised.

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Posted By Mark Francis to Section 15 at 6/06/2008 02:38:00 PM