=AtG=
The Alberta government has announced that its proposal to implement carbon taxes has passed in Legislature:
The Alberta government passed its contentious carbon tax bill Tuesday but opposition MLAs decried the NDP’s unwillingness to accept amendments.
It was the final bill to pass as the spring session came to an end.
Premier Rachel Notley and house leader Brian Mason will speak about the bill and the session LIVE at 1 p.m.
The tax, which comes into effect Jan. 1, 2017, will be paid by Albertans through their home heating bills and at the gas pumps. Lower-income Albertans will start receiving rebates in January.
MLAs sat until 4:37 a.m Tuesday while the bill went through the committee of the whole. Only one of 21 amendments proposed by the opposition last night were passed.
Government MLAs defeated amendments that would have disclosed the amount of the carbon tax on fuel receipts, set performance measures to test the effectiveness of the tax, and provided exemptions or rebates to charities.
I’m not sure why the amendments listed in the CBC article were shot down. What’s wrong with listing how much additional tax is levied for carbon on your gas bill? Why aren’t we assessing the effectiveness of the carbon tax? For once, these actually seem like reasoned criticisms from the Wildrose. I’m legit curious though–if anyone knows why these are bad ideas, I’m all ears, because intuitively they sound halfway intelligent to me.
The official opposition Wildrose Party opposes the tax because they believe it will place an additional burden on families struggling with the province’s economic downturn.
Wildrose Leader Brian Jean said the carbon tax will hurt vulnerable people and those who help them.
Aaaand the Wildrose is back to normal.
Most “vulnerable people” are vulnerable because they don’t have assets, like cars, to sell off. Oh, unless you mean the precious middle class, who are going to buckle under the weight of $180/year. FYI, I could fit that into my budget, and I’m below the frackin poverty line. Oh, and of course the Wildrose, like any right wing party, believes austerity is the best response during “economic downturn,” and their solution would involve putting even more people out of work and taking away even more social supports that would really hit vulnerable populations hard. Yeah, this particular criticism I’m not so fond of.
I’ll be watching the Albertan government to see what else comes of their carbon emission plan. I’m hoping for some real support for public transit. I feel like a Not Shit transit system is what gets your commuters to stop driving their personal vehicles.
-Shiv
How anyone can take the Wildrose seriously when they repeatedly connected global climate change to “unicorn farts” in the Legislature is beyond me. But I second your call for a Not Shit transit system. *shakes fist at ETS and their “schedules”*
Doing a bit of digging[1]:
The main evaluation amendment was redundant to things already contained in the bill, and the other ones seem to be trying to cram things that belong in regulations into the act itself.
The one about including it on receipts was opposed on three grounds: That similar taxes on alcohol and tobacco are not so displayed, that a general law requiring such display would result in difficulties for small businesses and that the core idea is properly implemented in regulations anyway.
[1] Note to the Alberta Legislature: Could you give us easy access to the text of proposed amendments and not make us dig through Hansard? Or at least make wherever that access is obvious.
THANK YOU! That argument has been pissing me off forever. “People are out of work and hurting! Why isn’t the government firing more people?!?” Conservatives like to talk about cutting government spending, but without mentioning that those cuts affect real people. (I’m also a fan of how PC governments since Klein have been cutting healthcare spending, then pointing at the increasingly starving body and talking about how broken it is and how we need to bring in privatization.)
It doesn’t help that people complain about pot holes and taxes in the same breath…
Gotta retain that “Albertan advantage,” yo.
@Rick Pikul
The text of any amendments that are actually introduced can be found on the same page as the original Bill here:
http://www.assembly.ab.ca/net/index.aspx?p=bills_status&selectbill=020&legl=29&session=2
Unfortunately it doesn’t get incorporated into the text of the Bill until it is adopted and passed, and then Queen’s Printer gets their hands on it and it moves to an entirely different page.
@sandykat
The only amendment I can see on that page is A5, the single one that passed. The others are only to be found in the relevant parts of Hansard, (which are linked, but you still have to dig through them). Perhaps they were there earlier, but they were certainly gone by the time I looked.
@Rick Pikul
Dagnabbit, you’re right. They USED to post all the amendments that were actually voted on. I need to go bug someone at the Parliamentary Counsel office to go back to the old way.