Climate change is a serious problem, but skepticism abounds over carbon taxes as a solution. Northern communities already face higher costs than people living in Yellowknife and the south. That's a fact.
Putting a fee on carbon will increase the cost of living for everyone, but that effect will be exacerbated most in rural households of the territory.
These are households that may not feasibly have the option of reducing their personal consumption of gasoline or heating fuels.
In these communities, there's a greater dependence on vehicle travel to larger centres to buy goods.
There's also an increased cost for home heating in the North, where we see close to eight months of cold temperatures and alternative heating sources generally aren't available, reliable, affordable or they still pose environmental harm.
Out of necessity, families in these communities spend a higher portion of their income on heating and goods that are about to become even more expensive. Each litre of gasoline will cost 4.7 cents more when the carbon tax hits on July 1 next year and that tax will increase each year until 2022, when the carbon tax on gas will reach 11.7 cents a litre.
For Indigenous people living a traditional lifestyle – who make their living from the land, not from a fat government paycheque like Yellowknife bureaucrats enjoy – they will realize a carbon tax punishment when fuelling boats and snowmobiles to get out on to the land.
It is unlikely that a $400 to $700 yearly rebate from the GNWT will come close to offsetting the increased costs to remote subsistence lifestyles.
The territorial government needs to reconsider the actual impacts carbon taxation will have on the welfare of the people in our remote communities and make this clear to Ottawa. The introduction of a carbon tax is already on shaky legs due to the example set in British Columbia.
There, the provincial government imposed a carbon tax in 2008-09 with promises that it would be revenue neutral.
Guess what? By the end of next year, the province figures it will have reaped $865 million extra in taxes on carbon since 2013-14. Do you honestly believe all that extra revenue is being converted into creating a greener B.C.?
The GNWT has chosen not to push back on a federal carbon tax like some other provinces are doing right now. Our politicians are making a mistake by foisting the responsibility of reducing carbon emissions onto the backs of hard-working NWT citizens. One of the primary sources of carbon pollution in our territory is the diesel power plants in the communities.
If the territorial government is truly serious about effecting change then it should lead by example and replace those diesel power plants with hydro alternatives.
Spare Northerners the burden of doing the heavy lifting on this issue.