After the Manitoba budget enflamed worries about rising taxes, the government needed something to calm taxpayers.

 

So Premier Brian Pallister’s communications director took to Twitter with a reassuring message.

 

“I have no idea what the bottom line will be over this and the next three budgets,” wrote Chisholm Pothier. “But there will be more in tax cuts than carbon revenue.”

 

So have faith all ye weary and heavy laden taxpayers, ask not how or when tax relief will come, but ease your minds that all will be well in the end.

 

Of course, there are always a few abominable apostates who prefer facts from budgets rather than partisan orthodoxy, so let’s double check.

 

Pallister is imposing a carbon tax of 5.3 cents per litre on gas and 6.7 cents per litre on diesel starting in September. Then, starting in January, personal income taxes will fall as $1,010 will be added to the basic personal exemption. Total up those and a few other tax changes and this budget will raise taxes by a total of $117.7 million.

 

A year later, income taxes will fall again as the basic personal exemption will expand by another $1,010, but the carbon tax will cost Manitobans $258 million for a net tax increase of $95.3 million.

 

The government is quick to point out that a carbon tax will force people use less fuel and therefore pay less tax. It’s sure conservation will shrink carbon tax costs by 4.7 per cent over five years to save taxpayers $12 million annually.

 

Ah, but those nagging doubts reappear. What if families still need to drive their minivans to the grocery store? What if truckers still need to fill their tanks with diesel?

 

Consider the plight of British Columbians. People there pay a carbon tax of 6.7 cents per litre on gas and 7.7 cents per litre on diesel. But, according to Statistics Canada, net sales of gas and diesel increased by 235 million litres from 2012 to 2016. If Manitoba’s fuel consumption grows by the same rate, the carbon tax bill will grow by about $10 million instead of shrinking.

 

But what does Statistics Canada know? How about a comment from an avid carbon tax advocate.

 

“BC’s latest emissions data mark years of failure to reduce emissions by more than a token amount,” wrote Jens Wieting, of the Sierra Club. In fact, BC’s emissions rose by 1.6 per cent from 2014 to 2015. BC’s actual experience seems at odds with Manitoba’s scheme.

 

Then, after the budget, the government tucked this nugget of information at the bottom of a release: “The province will return all revenue collected from the carbon tax to Manitobans over the next four years through various measures, which include personal income tax relief, small business tax reductions, and rolling back the retail sales tax to seven per cent by 2020,” stated the release.

 

Well that’s quite an explanation. When the Progressive Conservatives decried the injustice of the NDP’s PST hike and promised to reverse it, what they meant is that they’d reverse some of it. Woe unto taxpayers who believed they’d actually get to keep all of the money from a PST cut. Obviously, Pallister always planned to take back a chunk of that cash through a carbon tax.

 

It’s funny though. The Sun’s own clairvoyant heretic Tom Brodbeck put this very question to Pallister’s carbon tax architect David McLaughlin on June 6, 2017.

 

“If you guys bring in a carbon tax, it will be political suicide because people know it’s a hoax,” wrote Brodbeck. “It will be seen as revenue to offset the PST cut.”

 

“That would be true only if the money went into general revenues to offset,” shot back McLaughlin. “[That] will never be the case.”

 

Now the carbon tax money is going into general revenues and it’s offsetting the PST cut.

 

It seems this government’s most honest statement to date is this: “I have no idea what the bottom line will be.”