Commentary: What helps pay for your family allowance and child benefits – oil and gas taxes
Between 1969 and 2019, Canadian parents received $499 billion in family allowance payments and children’s benefits from the federal government. That 50-year cost was matched almost exactly by $505 billion in revenues to governments from the oil and gas sector. That included everything from oil and natural gas royalties to corporate and personal income taxes (from those in the oil and gas sector) to property taxes, except that such taxpayer cash was collected over just 20 years, between 2000 and 2019.
Drive a Ford F-150? You will pay over $1,150 in just carbon taxes in 2030
With the exception of a few blessed spots in southern Ontario and southern British Columbia, Canada is a cold northern country. That means that for six months of the year or more, snow can pile up on streets, highways, your driveway, and condominium and apartment exit ramps. And if one takes a trip beyond urban Canada any time of the year, it sometimes helps to have a sturdy vehicle that manoeuvres well on mountain roads in case of a late or early-season snowfall.
Commentary: Research firm’s new base case helps build oil and gas bridge to global emissions reductions
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton once talked about building a bridge to the 21st century. If the goal today is to help reduce global emissions in the 21st century, why can’t oil and gas be the foundation for that bridge?
Commentary: Canada’s ‘Just Transition’
Pardon me while I channel up the lyrics from a 1971 Ten Years After song: “I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do.”
Commentary: Who needs oil and gas in the next 30 years? Africa and Asia
When the International Energy Agency (IEA) called for an immediate halt to all new oil and gas investment worldwide back in May, it appears they neglected to account for two important realities: Africa and Asia.
Commentary: Canada’s record on carbon emissions intensity
Want to know why Canadian oil and gas gets so little respect from anti-oil and gas activists? It’s not because Canada’s main energy sector is somehow a miscreant on measures of carbon emissions or anything else. Instead, it is often due to three approaches: focusing only on absolute emissions and ignoring the effect of economic growth and per capita measurements; skipping over the reality of a cold northern country; and making the perfect (utopian end) the enemy of the good.