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With ‘Piecemeal’ Budget, BC Is Headed Towards Climate Failure, Critics Say

April 25, 2021

With ‘Piecemeal’ Budget, BC Is Headed Towards Climate Failure, Critics Say

Province’s investments are ‘very, very small compared to the challenges.’

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BC’s budget is a ‘missed opportunity to invest in things like a worker transition, electrifying the transportation sector and protecting our strongest environmental assets like old growth forests,’ says Green Leader Sonia Furstenau.

This week’s B.C. budget has set the province up to miss its climate goals, according to critics.

The province has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 16 per cent below 2007 levels by 2025 and 40 per cent below by 2030. But Tuesday’s budget doesn’t create a clear path to hit that goal, advocates say.

The most recent data on B.C.’s total emissions is from 2018, when B.C. emitted a net 66.9 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses, 6.2 per cent above 2007 levels.

The climate plan calls on the province to cut that to 53.3 million tonnes by 2025.

But emissions seem to be going up, not down, says Andrew Gage, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.

Over the next few years, the budget predicts that carbon tax revenue will increase. Dividing that revenue by the carbon tax rate shows the province expects increasing emissions for the next two years.

In 2020/21, greenhouse gas emissions covered by the tax totalled 41 million tonnes. That’s projected to increase to 44.1 million tonnes this year and 44.4 million tonnes in the next year, before declining to 42.3 million tonnes in 2023/24.

Those numbers don’t tell the whole picture, cautions Gage, because only 70 per cent of emissions are covered by the carbon tax. But planning on increasing emissions until 2023/24 gives the province very little time to course correct and slash emissions to hit its 2025 goal, he said.

“The fact that carbon-taxed emissions continue to rise until two to three years before 2025 raises questions about how we will meet that target. Particularly with LNG Canada coming online in 2025,” Gage said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Debt, Deficits and the Cost of Free Lunches

June 27, 2019

DEBT, DEFICITS AND THE COST OF FREE LUNCHES

It seems that every generation or two, fundamental economic ideas are questioned and challenged. The reasonable and important idea that governments should balance their budgets on an annual basis was challenged in the 1930s by the rise of Keynesian Economics and the counter-argument that deficit spending was desirable, if it was used to maintain full employment. Now it seems that any defense or desire for fiscal restraint and less government spending and borrowing are entirely out the window. Fiscal folly is the watchword of the day.

It is not surprising that politicians care little about annual budget deficits and growing debt, since spending money is their way of buying votes from interest groups wanting to eat at the government trough. In America today, it is all a political game by which Democrats and Republicans pander to their respective voting blocs, especially in an upcoming presidential and congressional election year like 2020.

On the one hand, the danger of a looming political crisis is warned about in the media when they point to the coming budgetary circus that will most likely start playing out toward the end of the summer of 2019, when Congress comes back into full session and the new federal budget year that begins on October 1, 2019, will have to be handled in some way.

Budgetary Brinkmanship and Political Plunder

Will the country be facing another federal government shutdown threat like the one in late 2018 and early 2019? Will the national debt limit be raised to permit the spending of the huge sums of money needed to fulfill all the demands for other people’s money above actual taxes collected through the syphoning off of private sector resources by continued government borrowing in the financial markets?

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jobless Folks, Working Moms, and More Left Out of Canada’s Budget

April 27, 2015

Jobless Folks, Working Moms, and More Left Out of Canada’s Budget

Facing economic trouble ahead, Conservatives offer bouquet of tax breaks for the wealthy

Wasn’t it always the student who kept asking for extensions on homework who always wound up turning in the poorest quality work? Finance Minister Joe Oliver tabled the 2015 federal budget on Tuesday, using some “creative” accounting to scratch out a small surplus. But despite taking a two-month extension, everyone from mainstream economists to First Nations to the YWCA to unions and ordinary Canadians are giving Mr. Oliver a failing grade on his first federal budget.

Packed with tax breaks for wealthy Canadians, and back-loaded with promises that won’t pay out until four or five years from now, Tuesday’s budget is entirely an election document and little more. Nothing new or unexpected, and perhaps this is why Mr. Oliver’s first budget, in returning to balance, is so disappointing.

It’s a missed opportunity.

Mr. Oliver’s balance comes after six consecutive slash-and-burn deficit budgets, $14 billion every year in cuts from the services Canadians rely on from their government. These are cuts to the CBC, to policing, to veterans, to oil spill response, to healthcare, to food and rail safety, and the list goes on.

Meanwhile, Canada’s economic outlook is anything but rosy. The price of oil is forecast to remain low, while the Conservatives continue to bet the farm on raw oil exports. Unemployment is on the rise, job quality is the lowest in a generation, and pay inequality is increasing. The governor of the Bank of Canada recently referred to the effect of the oil price slump on our economy as “atrocious.” Almost three-quarters of children under five have no access to affordable, quality childcare. Eleven million Canadian workers have no access to a workplace pension, and we’ve lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs since Mr. Harper was elected.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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