Your grocery bills are skyrocketing. Your favourite restaurant put up a sign warning of increased menu prices. You’re dipping into your savings to make ends meet. This is the reality of the cost of living crisis facing Canadians. But not so for fossil fuel executives and shareholders – they’re laughing all the way to the bank. On your dime.
While ordinary people struggle to put food on the table, oil and gas companies are raking in extraordinary profits: in the second quarter of 2022 alone, Canada’s top fossil fuel companies made $12 billion in excess profits, a three-fold increase compared to the same period last year. [1] These profits are directly fuelling the cost of living crisis and UN Secretary General António Guterres just named the F-word in the room: Fossilflation. [2]
They’re taking from your wallet to line shareholder pockets. [3] We urgently need the government to stand up to greedy oil and gas companies. Will you add your voice to our new petition calling for a Windfall Tax on scandalous fossil fuel profits to give this hoarded wealth back to struggling Canadians?
YES: Make fossil fuel companies pay their fair share!  |
How does fossilflation work? Canada’s record inflation is largely being driven by sky-high oil and gas prices. [4] The extra billions in fossil fuel profits are coming out of your pocket when you pay higher prices at the pump, and as other companies pass on their increased fuel costs through higher sticker prices on food and necessities.
This is hurting the most vulnerable, driving inequality and fuelling the climate crisis. A Windfall Tax will immediately support struggling Canadians while helping to untether our economy from fossil fuels, leaving us less vulnerable to future price spikes and freeing funds for the just transition to green energy. [5]
Will you help us ramp up the pressure? Tell the Canadian government that a Windfall Tax on excessive profits is urgently needed to ease the cost of living crisis and fund the transition away from fossil fuels.
#TaxItBack with a Windfall Tax!  |
Windfall Taxes aren’t new: they were used during WWI and WWII to prevent companies from profiting off the war while redistributing excess profits back into the economy. [6] Big Oil is currently engaged in profiteering off the crisis in Ukraine [7] – and Canada is letting them get away with it. [8]
Join me in demanding a Windfall Tax on greedy fossil fuel companies now.
Thank you for fighting for the greener, more equal world we all know is possible.
Keith
Senior Strategist, Greenpeace Canada
Sources:
[1] Oil and gas companies’ sky-high net earnings renew calls for windfall tax
[2] Press Conference by Secretary-General António Guterres at United Nations Headquarters
[3] Oil and gas companies’ sky-high net earnings renew calls for windfall tax
[4] Call it by its name: Fossilflation
[5] Oxfam Media Brief: the case for windfall taxes
[6] Where is Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on the climate emergency?
[7] “Big Oil is intentionally profiteering from the war”: Exxon profits double after Putin’s invasion