Madam Chair, not a single jurisdiction in the country has a carbon tax that has returned more in tax relief than it has collected in new taxes. In each of those jurisdictions, governments have more and taxpayers have less.
The minister can understand why taxpayers would be suspicious when he says he will simply collect this money from them in higher gasoline and home heating taxes, and then give that money to a bunch of provincial politicians to manage. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says that the minister's new tax will cost $2,500 per family. Trevor Tombe, a professor at the University of Calgary, says it will be $1,100. Which of those two numbers is closest to the finance department's estimates?