The Trudeau Liberals insist carbon pricing is reducing Canada’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
There are two problems with this argument.
First, the government doesn’t keep track of the impact of carbon pricing on emissions.
It estimates that the two components of carbon pricing — the federal fuel charge and the output-based pricing system for large emitters — will account for up to one-third of Canada’s emission reductions in 2030.
That means at least two-thirds has to come from more than 100 other government programs to reduce emissions at a price tag, according to the federal government, of more than $200 billion.
The second problem is that the federal government’s own historical data on emissions going back to 1990 indicates there have been only two dramatic drops in emissions in the modern era.
The first occurred during the global recession of 2008-09 set off by the subprime mortgage derivative scandal in the U.S. that led to a global credit freeze.
The second occurred in 2020 because of the global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2007, the year before the global recession of 2008-09 Canada emitted 777 million tonnes of industrial greenhouse gases.
In 2008, emissions fell to 760 million tonnes and in 2009 to 716 million tonnes, before starting to rise again as the global economy began to recover.
All of this happened before carbon pricing.
In 2019, the year before the COVID-19 recession, Canada emitted 752 million tonnes of greenhouse gases.
In 2020, the year of the COVID recession, emissions fell to 686 million tonnes, before starting to rise again in 2021 and again in 2022, which is the last year of available federal data.
This means the 2008-09 recession caused a drop of 61 million tonnes of emissions over two years before they started rising again, while the 2020 COVID-19 recession caused a drop of 66 million tonnes in one year before emissions started rising again.
There has never been a similar drop in Canada’s emissions in the modern era.
The significant drop in emissions in 2008-09 and 2020 occurred not because of the Trudeau government’s introduction of carbon pricing in 2019, but because in recessions, people have less money to buy goods and services created through the use of fossil fuel energy.