Quote:
Originally Posted by casper
Or perhaps it caused prices to come down. More energy efficient refrigeration equipment in the food supply chair. Taxi and uber drives moving to EVs. Utilities retiring coal generations. The list goes on and on. Airlines flying more fuel efficient aircraft.
The carbon tax has caused individuals and industry to make changes. Those changes have longer term cost savings.
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Show me the examples of companies willingly lowering their prices because their energy usage goes down with efficiency? Taxi fares are regulated, I don't see gas and EV fares and the EV cab also costs more to buy (and perhaps also needs to be taken out of service at inopportune times to charge, costing revenue but that would be a planning issue for the operator). If Air Canada buys a whole new fleet of "more fuel efficient" aircraft than what WestJet has, Air Canada is still going to charge what they can get away with, and they also have to pay for those aircraft.
Gas isn't going to suddenly drop 17 cents a litre if the carbon tax came off tomorrow. It might for a short period, for marketing (just like how the gas companies throw us the odd bone by dropping the price leading into a summer weekend, but then jack you on the way home) but gas prices always fluctuate all over the place. Pretty soon we will be switching to summer gas and the price will go up, 6 months later we will switch to winter gas and the price will go up. Notice they always say the seasonal switch causes prices to go up but the switch back at the next season never is cheaper? Hell, going back in history, the GST was supposed to make some prices go down because it was changing from a built in higher hidden tax to a lower added on tax. Hardly anything dropped in price when the old tax was taken off