Thank you for the question.
When we first undertook this analysis, we were bringing together two streams of our work. One was done estimating the economic impact of carbon pricing. We had several reports over 2018 through 2021. At the same time, we were also undertaking distributional analysis of carbon pricing that didn't include the economic impacts. One stream was showing that there would be a negative impact on the economy, jobs and employment. The other stream was showing that the majority of households would receive more financially than they would pay.
We had several questions from parliamentarians and the media: How do you reconcile these two streams of analysis? That was the original motivation for bringing them together in our March 2022 report.
I would just add that we were not trying to undertake a cost-benefit analysis. Our office really stays away from that line of inquiry. It's not because it's not important; it's just that it's outside of the scope that we view as our mandate. We really don't want to appear as being partisan by only looking at certain benefits or only certain costs, nor do we want to be perceived as the arbiter of whether this policy should or should not be implemented. We really try to restrict the scope to that financial cost lens.
We've been very clear in our reports that we are not taking into account the benefits of reducing emissions or the costs of not reducing emissions.
Thank you.
