Liberal attack on parliamentary budget officer implodes
Now that the shouting is over, you have to ask yourself what was the Trudeau government thinking when it decided to attack the credibility of Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux on the economic cost of carbon pricing?
As it turns out, the ginned-up controversy started by the Liberals was much ado about nothing, given that they finally acknowledged last week that their own economic data agrees with Giroux’s conclusion that carbon pricing has a negative impact on the Canadian economy.
The federal data estimates the annual hit to our economy will reach almost 1% of GDP by 2030, or $25 billion, while Giroux predicted in a 2022 report that the negative impact would be 1.3% of GDP by 2030.
The difference between the federal and PBO numbers is insignificant given that the input data is constantly changing and these are estimates of what will happen six years from now.
What’s significant is that the feds have now conceded the PBO’s point that carbon pricing has a negative impact on the economy.
