Taxpayers should not foot the bill for carbon capture

As long as Canada continues to underwrite the oil and gas industry, it cannot make meaningful progress on the economic transformation needed to address climate change. This week, Liberal ministers Jonathan Wilkinson and Steven Guilbeault doubled down on their proposed investment tax credit in carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), yet another example of how Canada is failing to act at the scale and on the timeline of the climate emergency in front of us.

We are three of the more than 400 Canadian climate scientists and academics who called for the government to scrap the proposed tax credit in January, pointing out that it would provide a boost to the oil and gas industry instead of implementing a real strategy for its managed decline. We accompanied our letter with a request to meet with Minister Chrystia Freeland about the tax credit, so far with no result. As Canada continues to suffer the effects of climate change, a carbon capture tax credit is a short-sighted approach that sticks Canadians with the bill.