Fastest way to transition Canada to a green economy? Tyee

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/01/IMF-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies/

Psst, Trudeau: IMF Now Pegs Our Fossil Fuel Subsidies at $46 Billion

Fastest way to transition Canada to a green economy? Quit the giveaways.

By Mitchell Anderson, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

Justin Trudeau has a problem. How can Canada meet our international climate commitments so recently inked in Paris with an increasingly empty economic larder? The International Monetary Fund may have the answer. Last summer, the IMF updated its global report on energy subsidies and found that Canada provides a whopping $46.4 billion in subsidies to the energy sector in either direct support or uncollected taxes on externalized costs.

Globally, this figure balloons to US$5.3 trillion or 6.5 per cent of the world's GDP. To put that enormous sum in perspective, the global giveaway to the energy sector amounts to 40 times more money than is contributed in aid to the world's poorest people.

To be clear, the IMF is including all untaxed externalized costs of energy use under their definition of subsidies. The figures flagged for Canada still include $1.4 billion in direct "pre-tax" subsidies -- the kind of direct public giveaways that Trudeau campaigned to eliminate. The remaining $44.6 billion is in the form of externalized costs to society from dirty and dangerous fossil fuels -- things like air pollution, traffic congestion and climate change.

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