People across Ontario will be paying more to fill up their cars and heat their homes starting Jan. 1, when the Liberal government’s new cap-and-trade plan takes effect.
A study commissioned by the province projects cap-and-trade will drive the price of gasoline up 4.3 cents per litre, and push up costs for people who heat with natural gas or furnace oil by an average of $5 per month.The government projects the total extra costs of the initiative will amount to $156 per year for the average household.
“People don’t want to pay more and I get that, but I also know that people want to see results,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said in a year-end interview with CBC Toronto.
“There’s a lot of support for having clean air and taking pollution out of the air in the province,” the premier said. “We need to play our part. Climate change is the single biggest threat that we’re facing as the human race.”
The Wynne government is going ahead with the cap-and-trade model to reduce carbon dioxide emissions rather than the carbon-tax model favoured by other provinces, like British Columbia and Alberta.
“We’ve chosen the cheapest, most cost-effective and most efficient system in cap-and-trade,” Wynne said. “We made a decision to put a different system in place because it was cheaper for people and also because it will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions more efficiently.”
Unlike the carbon-tax model, in which people get rebates or income tax cuts designed to offset the extra costs, Ontario’s cap-and-trade plan is not revenue-neutral.
Source: CBC News
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