| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/7/2007 7:51:20 PM |
Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Energy companies will pass cost to consumers, say analysts
Last Updated: Thursday, June 7, 2007 | 9:31 AM ET
CBC News
Quebec will implement Canada's first carbon tax in October, collecting just under one cent a litre from petroleum companies in the province, which will raise about $200 million a year to pay for energy-saving initiatives such as improvements to public transit.
The tax will amount to 0.8 cents on every litre of gas sold in Quebec, and 0.9 cents on each litre of diesel fuel.
About 50 companies will be affected by the tax.
Oil companies will be hardest hit. They will pay about $69 million a year for gasoline, $36 million for diesel fuel, and $43 million for heating oil.
Natural gas distributors will pay about $39 million, while electricity distributor Hydro-Québec will pay $4.5 million for its thermal energy plant in Tracy, Que.
Natural Resources Minister Claude Béchard said Wednesday he hopes the petroleum industry will pay the tax without passing on the cost to drivers when they fill up their cars at the pump.
Continue Article
"We all have a responsibility. Every Quebecer has a responsibility. It's important for every Quebecer. So I hope that all those companies will have the same sincerity that we have, that Quebecers have," Béchard said.
But Jean-Thomas Bernard, who teaches economics at Laval University, said the fate of the carbon tax is a foregone conclusion.
"It will end up being paid by the consumer."
Bernard said there's little any government can do to control the cost of fuel without triggering a shortage or an increase in the price.
Petroleum industry spokesman Carol Montreuil said there is no guarantee companies will swallow the tax, rather than tacking it onto the price of fuel at the pump.
"Is it possible that a company out there might decide not to pass it on? I think the answer is yes, it's possible."
I think the entire tax will just be passed onto the consumer. | |
|
| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/8/2007 1:08:40 PM | Right on, good Job Quebec!!!!!!! Big surprise there, Quebec is the first to invoke a tax at generating cash to ...... to do WHAT with again?
Good to see we can initaite a tax that is supposed to help clean our air, reduce emissions etc but no-one can tell me where the money is going to go.
Big bold moves with no plan(s) seem to be the norm, if I ran my company like this me and all my employees would be walking and I guess that cuts down on the emissions. Just once I would love to see our money do something positive, it seems taxes go up but we get no more hospitals, roads, class sizes get bigger ( A number of our elementary schools here now have to resort to combining classes or taking over music rooms etc ), so for once, I pray someone has a plan, a realistic plan. | |
|
| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/8/2007 1:17:30 PM |
I think the entire tax will just be passed onto the consumer.
Yes it will... just like here in the states... when clamoring for windfall profits taxes to be levied on oil/gas companies for what is thought to be excess pricing.
These types of levies do nothing to lower the price point... just provide more revenue that gets wasted somewhere. The consumer always loses in these situations. | |
|
| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/8/2007 1:35:42 PM | WHAT A LOT OF RUBBISH. CO 2 JUST ANOTHER WAY TO TAX THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ALL OF US.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaruherald/4064691a6571.html
/
Wow that's some serious science you linked there!
On BBC a few weeks ago they show a documentary on this. After taking Ice Samples from the North Pole dating back to The Medieval period. Warming kicked in about 950, followed by the Little Ice Age beginning about 1300. The Little Ice Age ended in about 1860. period, it showed that CO 2 emissions to be measured at three times the present values they are today. All due to the earth's natural heating up, by Sun activity giving off Flares of radiation ( natural Sun spots )
CO2 in a natural way the earth deals with itself, to protect its self. It did in the Medieval period. 950 onwards. ( No cars around then was there ? )
WAKE UP ALL YOU PEOPLE.
http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U&news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_claims_documentary
Hi ,,, but what a great way to Tax people, keep the economy afloat and make lots of money !! What a bunch of lunar ticks we have ruling us
This guy will in my opinion be bought out and any good thing I think will be filed away quietly so other poeple can carry on making lots of money !
SCIENCE: MAN-MADE MICROBE ‘TO CREATE ENDLESS BIOFUEL’
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor – UK Telgragh Last Updated: 1:58am BST 08/06/2007
A scientist is poised to create the world’s first man-made species, a synthetic microbe that could lead to an endless supply of biofuel. Craig Venter, an American who cracked the human genome in 2000, has applied for a patent at more than 100 national offices to make a bacterium from laboratory-made DNA. It is part of an effort to create designer bugs to manufacture hydrogen and biofuels, as well as absorb carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases. DNA contains the instructions to make the proteins that build and run an organism. The J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is applying for worldwide patents on what it refers to as “Mycoplasma laboratorium” based on DNA assembled by scientists. Yesterday, Mr Venter said: “It is only an application on methods.” As for whether the world’s first synthetic bug was thriving in a test tube in Rockville, all he would say was: “We are getting close.” The Venter Institute’s US Patent application claims exclusive ownership of a set of essential genes and a synthetic “free-living organism that can grow and replicate” that is made using those genes. To create the synthetic organism his team is making snippets of DNA, known as oligonucleotides or “oligos”, of up to 100 letters of DNA.
To build a primitive bug, with about 500 genes in half a million letters of DNA, Mr Venter’s team is stitching together blocks of 50 or so letters, then growing them in the gut bug E coli. Then they turn these many small pieces into a handful of bigger ones until eventually two pieces can be assembled into the circular genome of the new life form. The synthetic DNA will be added to a test tube of bacteria and the team hopes that one or more microbes among the one hundred thousand million starts moving, metabolising and multiplying. The Canadian ETC Group, which tracks developments in biotechnology, believes that this development in synthetic biology is more significant than the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago. Yesterday, an ETC spokesman, Jim Thomas, called on the world’s patent offices to reject the applications. He said: “These monopoly claims signal the start of a high-stakes commercial race to synthesise and privatise synthetic life forms. Will Venter’s company become the ‘Microbesoft’ of synthetic biology?” A colleague, Pat Mooney, said: “For the first time, God has competition.
Venter and his colleagues have breached a societal boundary, and the public hasn’t even had a chance to debate the far-reaching social, ethical and environmental implications of synthetic life.” However, Mr Venter did ask a panel of experts to examine the implications of creating synthetic life. His institute convened a bioethics committee to see if its plans were likely to raise objections. The committee, led by Mildred Cho at Stanford University, had no objections to the work but pointed out that scientists must take responsibility for any impact their new organisms had if they got out of the lab. The organisms can be designed to die as soon as they leave laboratory conditions. Mr Venter first announced the project to build a synthetic life form in 2002. In theory, by adding functionalised synthetic DNA, the bacterium could be instructed to produce plastics, drugs or fuels. Mr Venter’s institute claims that its stripped-down microbe could be the key to cheap energy production. The patent application specifically claims an organism that can make either hydrogen or ethanol for industrial fuels. The research was partially funded by the US Department of Energy.
| |
|
| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/8/2007 4:01:31 PM | That is correct by one of the posts screw the comsumer, and watch the some of manfacturing proceduers move out of Quebec to Alberta, or Alamba some state or province with less red tape, and eviromental regulations. Politicans are not thinking rationally about the livelyhood of cosumers here, or producers that create jobs and provide tax dollars to the local economy.  Well, if Quebec loses jobs from this the carbon tax will do it, and the goverment will never spend money like a business would do at its most efficent use. Taxpayer, and comsumer getting screwed and the lobbytists, and goverment regulators get to create more useles jobs at the taxpayer expense. | |
|
| Quebec to collect nation's 1st carbon tax
Posted: 6/13/2007 1:45:20 PM | You are right OP, about this tax being passed on to the consumer. That does not mean it will not have any of the intended consequences, however. If people consume less, as can be expected with a price hike, then there will be less carbon emitted to the atmosphere.
But this is probably just
a tax grab sold as a benefit to the environment. If Quebec is serious about making this a benefit to the environment it would commit to spending what is raised by this tax on measures that reduce carbon emission.
If it was serious that would be specified in the legislation. I bet it is not. | |
|
|
Home
login 
