The billions in subsidies in tax credits provided for clean energy in Minister Freeland’s 2023 budget could ultimately benefit the fossil fuel industry, warn the Bloc Québécois and the NDP.
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“This budget is not an ecological budget in any way whatsoever,” complained Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet during a press scrum on Wednesday.
The Minister of Finance has proposed some $20 billion in tax credits for various clean energy sectors over the next five years.
Among the envelopes provided is in particular a tax credit ranging from 15% to 40% for “clean” hydrogen.
“Grey hydrogen is produced from natural gas that is extracted from the basement of Western Canada. It is a subsidy to the oil companies for a technology that is not green and which is not ecological,” declared Mr. Blanchet.
The latter was also critical, even skeptical, of the carbon capture technology which, although promising, has not offered sufficiently convincing results so far.
According to Mr. Blanchet, carbon sequestration is “money going directly to the oil industry for extraordinarily expensive technologies that don’t work.”
These are “concerns” also shared by the NDP of Jagmeet Singh, who remarks that many companies in the field of carbon storage and capture are very often subsidiaries of oil companies.
“It doesn’t make sense to give a lot of money to companies that have made massive profits, record profits. We have to force them with the regulations to do what is necessary to protect the environment, especially when they have earned quite a massive income for several companies,” Singh said Thursday.
During the presentation of the 2023 budget, a senior official from the Ministry of Finance said that Canada could not get out of the game simply through regulation, and that tax credits to encourage the industry were necessary.
The US government has adopted a gigantic green energy investment plan to stimulate private investment in the sector and accelerate the energy transition.