Business
New York and Vermont Seek to Impose a Retroactive Climate Tax
From Heartland Daily News
By Joshua Loucks for the Cato Institute.
Energy producers will be subject to retroactive taxes in New York if the state assembly passes Senate Bill S2129A, known as the “Climate Change Superfund Act.” The superfund legislation seeks to impose a retroactive tax on energy companies that have emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) and operated within the state over the last seventy years.
If passed, the new law will impose $75 billion in repayment fees for “historical polluters,” who lawmakers assert are primarily responsible for climate change damages within the state. The state will “assign liability to and require compensation from companies commensurate with their emissions” over the last “70 years or more.” The bill would establish a standard of strict liability, stating that “companies are required to pay into the fund because the use of their products caused the pollution. No finding of wrongdoing is required.”
New York is not alone in this effort. Superfunds built on retroactive taxes on GHG emissions are becoming increasingly popular. Vermont recently enacted similar legislation, S.259 (Act 122), titled the “Climate Superfund Act,” in which the state also retroactively taxes energy producers for historic emissions. Similar bills have also been introduced in Maryland and Massachusetts.
Climate superfund legislation seems to have one purpose: to raise revenue by taxing a politically unpopular industry. Under the New York law, fossil fuel‐producing energy companies would be taxed billions of dollars retroactively for engaging in legal and necessary behavior. For example, the seventy‐year retroactive tax would conceivably apply to any company—going back to 1954—that used fossil fuels to generate electricity or produced fuel for New York drivers.
The typical “economic efficiency” arguments for taxing an externality go out the window with the New York and Vermont approach, for at least two reasons. First, the goal of a blackboard or textbook approach to a carbon tax is to internalize the GHG externality. To apply such a tax accurately, the government would need to calculate the social cost of carbon (SCC).
Unfortunately, estimating the SCC is methodologically complex and open to wide ranges of estimates. As a result, the SCC is theoretically very useful but practically impossible to calculate with any reasonable degree of precision.
Second, the retroactive nature of these climate superfunds undermines the very incentives a textbook tax on externalities would promote. A carbon tax’s central feature is that it is intended to reduce externalities from current and future activity by changing incentives. However, by imposing retroactive taxes, the New York and Vermont legislation will not impact emitters’ future behavior in a way that mimics a textbook carbon tax or improves economic outcomes.
Arbitrary and retroactive taxes can, however, raise prices for consumers by increasing policy uncertainty, affecting firm profitability, and reducing investment (or causing investors to flee GHG‐emitting industries in the state altogether). Residents in both New York and Vermont already pay over 30 percent more than the US average in residential electricity prices, and this legislation will not lower these costs to consumers.
Climate superfunds are not a serious attempt to solve environmental challenges but rather a way to raise government revenue while unfairly punishing an entire industry (one whose actions the New York legislation claims “have been unconscionable, closely reflecting the strategy of denial, deflection, and delay used by the tobacco industry”).
Fossil fuel companies enabled GHG emissions, of course, but they also empowered significant growth, mobility, and prosperity. The punitive nature of the policy is laid bare by the fact that neither New York nor Vermont used a generic SCC or an evidentiary proceeding to calculate precise damages.
Finally, establishing a standard in which “no finding of wrongdoing is required” to levy fines against historical actions that were (and still are) legally permitted sets a dangerous precedent for what governments can do, not only to businesses that have produced fossil fuels but also to individuals who have consumed them.
Cato research associate Joshua Loucks contributed to this post.
Originally published by the Cato Institute. Republished with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Business
Chrystia Freeland Didn’t Leave Power. She Just Took It Somewhere Else
Canadians were told freezing bank accounts was “necessary.” We were told sending billions overseas without a vote was “solidarity.” And now we’re told that Chrystia Freeland the architect of some of the most aggressive financial overreach in modern Canadian history advising a foreign government on economic policy is “normal.” It isn’t. It’s a closed circle of power rewarding itself, while ordinary Canadians are expected to forget what was done to them and quietly foot the bill.
I don’t believe in coincidences in politics and I don’t believe in “honourary” appointments when billions of dollars and unchecked power are involved. So when Chrystia Freeland, the same woman who helped freeze Canadians’ bank accounts, torched public trust, and oversaw economic decisions that hollowed out this country is suddenly appointed as an economic adviser to Ukraine, Canadians should stop and ask a very uncomfortable question.
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Who exactly is Chrystia serving? Because it doesn’t look like us and doesn’t feel like us at all. I’m going to make something very clear and spell it out for Canadians… this is the same elite just moved to a different country.
Chrystia Freeland did not leave politics because she failed. She didn’t resign because she was rejected. She exited after years of consolidating power at the highest levels of government and immediately landed an advisory role with a foreign head of state.
That is not a fall from grace. That is a lateral move inside the same elite ecosystem.
Multiple Canadian outlets have now confirmed that Freeland has been named an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. This is not symbolic. This is not charity. This is about economic reconstruction, international financing, sanctions, and the movement of billions of dollars, much of it, if not all of it is Western taxpayer money.
Including ours.
Has everyone forgotten what this women did to Canadians?? Before anyone starts calling this “statesmanship,” let’s remember the record.
Chrystia Freeland was a central figure during one of the most dangerous moments in modern Canadian governance: the normalization of financial punishment against citizens.
Under her watch, the federal government froze bank accounts without criminal charges, without due process, and without judicial oversight. Whatever your view of the Freedom Convoy, that precedent should have terrified you and if it doesn’t you need to wake up.
Once a government proves it can financially erase you for dissent, it never unlearns that lesson.
She also presided over years of reckless spending, inflationary pressure, and policies that pushed Canadians into a cost-of-living crisis while telling them everything was fine. Housing exploded. Food prices surged. Small businesses collapsed.
And now — suddenly — she’s being handed influence over another country’s economic future? The money no one voted on is now gone with no recourse and she knows it.
Canada has already sent billions of dollars to Ukraine, including roughly $2.5 billion tied to frozen Russian assets — without any direct vote from Canadians and with minimal parliamentary scrutiny.
Let that sit for a minute.
Our government helped set a precedent where foreign sovereign assets are frozen, leveraged, and redirected — and now one of the architects of that approach is advising the very government receiving the funds.
You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand how rotten that looks. At minimum, this is a conflict of interest. At worst, it’s a closed-loop system where the same political actors make the rules, move the money, and then step into advisory roles on the receiving end.
That’s not democracy. That’s managed power. People will say, “Ukraine needs help rebuilding.” Fine. That’s not the argument. The argument is who decides, who benefits, and who is accountable.
Chrystia Freeland still carries enormous influence inside Canada’s political and financial institutions. Her appointment creates a pipeline — informal, opaque, and unaccountable between Canadian decision-makers and a foreign government dependent on Western funds.
If an average Canadian MP took a paid or unpaid advisory role with a foreign government, alarms would be ringing, but when it’s Chrystia Freeland, we’re told it’s noble. Necessary. Above criticism.
That’s how corruption survives. Not through secrecy, but through normalization.
Canadians are always last, here’s the pattern Canadians are starting to see clearly, I hope. Canadians are being forced to tighten their belts. Canadians lose purchasing power on almost everything and Canadians are told to accept less and the sad part is Canadians are good with this.
Meanwhile, political elites move effortlessly between governments, NGOs, global institutions, and advisory boards. All it is, is different flags. Same class of people.
The people who suffered under Freeland’s economic policies don’t get to resign into prestige. They get debt. They get anxiety. They get silence.
She gets influence.
In case your wondering, this isn’t really about Ukraine, this is not an attack on Ukraine or its people. This is about Canadian democracy, accountability, and the dangerous precedent being set when unelected influence replaces public consent.
If Canadians are expected to fund wars, reconstruction, and foreign policy projects — then Canadians deserve transparency, debate, and representation.
Instead, we’re getting appointments behind closed doors and press releases that assume we won’t ask questions.
That era is long over.
Chrystia Freeland didn’t disappear. She didn’t retreat. She repositioned.
If Canadians don’t start calling this what it is — elite continuity without consent — then we shouldn’t be surprised when the same tactics used against citizens at home are exported abroad.
Power always practices somewhere first.
KELSI SHEREN
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Business
Policy uncertainty continues to damage Canada’s mining potential
From the Fraser Institute
By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari
According to a new survey of mining investors, despite the rich mineral potential of many Canadian jurisdictions, government policies are deterring investment
Canada is renowned for its abundant minerals and network of engineering firms with mining experience. These advantages, coupled with the rising global demand for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare-earth elements, should spur growing interest in our mining sector among investors. Yet, mining investment in Canada is on the wane.
In nominal terms, exploration investment alone fell from $4.4 billion in 2022 to $4.2 billion in 2023, with preliminary numbers for 2024 suggesting a further 2 per cent drop. And several leading exploration companies including Solaris Resources Inc., Falcon Energy Materials and Barrick Mining Corporation (the world’s second-largest mining company) have either moved their headquarters out of Canada or are considering doing so.
This downward trend extends beyond just exploration investment. In 2023 (the latest year of available data) investment in Canada’s mining sector totalled $15.2 billion, 26 per cent below the record-high $20.5 billion in 2012 (inflation-adjusted).
So, why is one of the most mineral-rich countries on Earth losing investor interest?
According to a new survey of mining investors, despite the rich mineral potential of many Canadian jurisdictions, government policies are deterring investment.
Take British Columbia, Yukon and Manitoba, for example. Although all three rank among the world’s top 10 most attractive jurisdictions for their mineral endowment, all three fall far behind in policy perception, ranking 32nd, 40th and 43rd out of 82 jurisdictions, respectively. The Northwest Territories (56th), Nunavut (59th) and Nova Scotia (76th) also rank low in terms of policy, while Saskatchewan (3rd), Newfoundland and Labrador (6th) and Alberta (9th) are the only Canadian jurisdictions that perform well.
Indeed, in multiple editions of the mining survey over many years, investors have cited policy uncertainty as a key deterrent to investment in many Canadian jurisdictions. In particular, uncertainty around disputed land claims, protected areas and environmental regulations.
Of course, Canadian jurisdictions compete with jurisdictions around the world including in the United States. And the differences in investor perception are striking. While a strong majority of survey respondents for B.C. (76 per cent), Manitoba (75 per cent) and the Yukon (69 per cent) say uncertainty around disputed land claims deters investment, the percentages are much smaller for Nevada (13 per cent) and Arizona (16 per cent). Similarly, the percentage of respondents who say uncertainty around protected areas deters investment for B.C. (76 per cent), the Yukon (76 per cent) and Manitoba (63 per cent) was much larger than for Wyoming (11 per cent) and Nevada (27 per cent).
To build new mining projects, develop technologies that improve productivity, create jobs and help spread prosperity, Canadian jurisdictions must attract investment. In 2023, mining was Canada’s second-leading export, trailing only energy, and contributed $117 billion to Canada’s total economic output. More importantly, that same year the industry provided a livelihood for 711,000 Canadians while paying wages that nearly double the average of other industries. And according to a 2021 census, the sector provided jobs to more than 17,300 First Nations people, making it one of the largest employers of Indigenous workers in the country.
Bad policies create uncertainty and deter investment. If policymakers are serious about unleashing Canada’s mining potential, they must eliminate regulatory uncertainty and establish a predictable policy framework. Otherwise, the country will keep declining in the eyes of investors.
Elmira Aliakbari
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