Or you could just stop subsidizing them and save about 4.8 billion a year. Why do we have to add more middlemen to document and collect taxes?
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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A lot of people don't understand just how well the oil and gas industry is treated here. The subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg. If we could see everything that they get away with, I'm sure we'd be upset to say the least.
Exactly. The poorer their behavior, the more toys get taken away.
Yeah. We signed the Paris agreement and we were supposed to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our oil companies are the largest producers of these gasses and we were supposed to reduce production. And what did we do instead? We fucking subsidized more development projects in these industries.
We should fucking sue the government, and especially the Trudeau administration for not holding up their promises in accordance with the Paris accord agreement. That shit was signed in 2015 or 2016. We should have done something by now and nothing was done.
They even fucking promised to plant millions of trees and they planted like, what... 3? And stopped there.
They talk the talk but can't walk the walk. We were duped.
Going over the list of subsidies the oil and gas sector receive, most of them are received on the basis of developing cleaner sources of energy.
If we are going to do something, taxing the windfall rather than giving up programs that are intended to help the environment means even if you end up giving the money straight back to them through those programs, they are earmarked to a specific goal that is to the benefit of the people and not left to their own discretion.
The same sources of cleaner energy that the oil companies have given up on and lied about?
No, they're talking about Carbon Capture. Which is a new source of clean energy the oil companies are lying about.
Honestly I don't care about this. I'd rather we just stop subsidising them and then slap them with a proper carbon tax. If they still manage to make a profit under those conditions, then we can talk.
If they're making record profits, why do they need so many subsidies?
No, if they aren't competing then the government should take stronger action than taxing them. We have more tools than this.
The Nash equilibrium for high entry industries (especially in a country like Canada where investors loathe anything new or risky) is to always charge what your competitors do, never lower.
You can charge them more taxes to which they'll just adjust their prices to compensate for reduced shareholder returns (while blaming the tax for their prices). They'll also find ways to hide earnings or wash them to reduce their tax burden.
The only solution is to break the equilibrium. Introduce a new player (by nationalizing one of them, even if only temporarily) which actually operates based on a fixed profit ratio instead. Or implement an emergency control which limits shareholder returns beyond some threshold.
The Conservatives will complain about the free market but an efficient market for strategic resources is more important than a free oligarchy. This should be Trudeau's "just watch me" moment.
They should be taxed regardless of profits....
CO2 tax please.
Sure, but you know theyβll just raise the prices we pay to make up for it.
Here's the weird thing: if they raise prices and we savagely tax all profits above a certain amount, it ultimately benefits EV people to a massive extent.
Even as a petrol car family, I'm hugely in favour of that plan.
EVs are a stop gap measure. We need better public transit infrastructure and better railways.
We had a great public transit system when most people lived rurally, but that age is behind us. Most people live in urban areas now. Urban areas don't need transit. You can walk everywhere. That's the whole reason cities were created.
Seems like all industries are experiencing record profits, while hard working folks are experiencing record debt.
There's no way the two are connected. /s π