.hscoffield: Inflation, climate change and war: This budget has a sense of panic about Canada’s future via torontostar
The valiant talk, the catchy alliteration, the big spending in the name of a beautiful economy for everyone that was supposed to come at the end of the pandemic — those have been replaced in this year’s budget by pervasive uncertainty, crisis after crisis, and a shortage of capital to confront the cascading challenges.
That’s led to some experimentation with fiscal levers which could lead us there — but it’s far from guaranteed. The finance department figures we need investment of between $125 billion and $140 billion every year — yes, every year — to get to a net-zero economy by 2050. Right now, we see between $15 billion and $25 billion.The biggest piece of the experiment is a hefty tax credit for carbon capture and storage — $2.6-billion in writeoffs for the oil and gas sector to encourage it to develop more capacity to store underground the carbon dioxide emissions that come from extracting energy.
The second bet is on $4 billion for critical minerals. Over eight years, the government will provide a tax credit to find and mine the metals the world desperately wants for the production of greener and more digitally advanced phones, computers and cars. Canada has lots of these minerals, and the budget envisions the country’s capital markets, manufacturers and workers alike piling into this zone to compete against the likes of China.
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