...based their high-profile analysis of the federal fuel charge — commonly known as the carbon tax — on calculations that included more than just the federal fuel charge.
It turns out the PBO's complex computer code had actually included the federal output-based pricing system — commonly known as industrial carbon pricing — when it wasn't supposed to.
The new numbers is not going to available for a while:
As we've heard, Giroux doesn't think the "economic" costs will be all that different once the PBO is done rerunning all its mathematical models in several months' time.
When people talk about the federal "carbon tax," they are typically referring to the surcharge most Canadians pay when filling up their vehicles and the extra fee on their natural gas bills, which are accompanied by rebates that are direct-deposited into their bank accounts every three months.
Oilsands facilities and power plants and other large-scale industrial emitters are subject to this parallel system of carbon pricing and, instead of rebates, they receive "output-based" credits.
Both the PBO and the other group of economists agree the majority of Canadian households receive more in rebates than they pay in these direct and indirect fiscal costs, combined.
Economists, meanwhile, often argue that carbon-pricing, which leaves emissions reduction largely up to the free market, is the least costly kind of policy, especially when compared to more heavy-handed government regulation.
Giroux added that the PBO's choice of counterfactual scenario — a world with no carbon tax and nothing to replace it — is logical from an analytic perspective but isn't meant to be prescriptive.
Given the complexity of the modelling, Tombe said "the details really matter," but he believes the PBO's reports are often short on the kinds of methodological specifics that one would typically find in economic analyses published by other groups.
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