Make Rich Polluters Pay

While people around the world are wondering whether they have cooking gas tomorrow and are feeling the pain at the gas pumps, the owners of oil companies are having the time of their lives. With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, their profits have soared. When oil supply gets squeezed, oil companies make a killing. Canada’s Big Four – Suncor, Cenovus, Canadian Natural Resources, Imperial Oil – are on track to pocket $90 billion in extra profits from this crisis. What’s worse, they’re not using that money to invest in renewable energy sources. They’re paying it out to shareholders – about 60% of whom are American. So, every time you fill up your gas tank at the pump, a big chunk of that money quietly leaves the country.

Meanwhile you’re paying $2 a litre for gas. You’re sweating through another heat wave.  You’re watching people’s houses burn down across BC, where drought conditions are already worse than before the catastrophic seasons of 2017, 2018, and 2021. You might have watched your basement flood as 170mm of rain fell on Montreal in a single evening. Most likely, you are also one of the Canadians who saw their home insurance premium jump by $1,200 since last year or have no access to insurance at all because in 2024, Canadians filed $9.1 billion in severe weather insurance claims, twelve times the annual average from 2001 to 2010. 

There is something wrong with this picture. It’s you and me who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, and those responsible are cashing in. It’s time to change that!

One solution: tax rich polluters. A windfall profits tax is a government levy on extraordinary profits earned by a company as a result of unexpected circumstances, such as commodity shortages, geopolitical crises, natural disasters, etc. It’s not a new concept. These kinds of taxes have been levied in the past, even in Canada during the pandemic banks had to pay a 15% tax on profits exceeding $1billion. The tax raised billions for the pandemic response, the banks survived. 

While other countries in the EU are moving to introduce a windfall profits tax on oil and gas, the federal government’s response to record oil profits was to hand oil companies a $2.4 billion tax break when it suspended the federal fuel excise tax. Framed as relief for Canadians at the pump, economists noted it didn’t actually lower prices. 

Canada was already giving out $10.2 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in 2025, and has now added $3.5 billion more through the gas tax cancellation and the new pipeline deal with Alberta. A 15% windfall tax on just seven companies would raise $4.2 billion. The math isn’t hard. What’s hard to explain is why we’re not doing it. Two in three Canadians support a windfall profits tax for oil and gas – including Conservative voters, Liberal voters, people in Alberta, and people who have never once called themselves environmentalists.

It’s time that those who have caused the climate crisis, pay for it. Not you, not your lungs, not your insurance bill.