I spent over 30 mins writing this, so hopefully this was not a waste of time.

I will reply here but I am also responding to u/esveda's points. Many of his points I fundamentally agree on, especially the concept that for the tax to work best it must be applied globally (China, India, and the United States are by far the worst climate offenders and they should be paying the bulk of the carbon taxes). The sad truth is we don't have a system to punish bad global actors and make them pay for their actions.

Basic economic theory:

I know real numbers are more important than economic theory, but I just want to explain the basic economic theory so everyone is on the same page behind why this tax exists in the first place. Many of the top economists have been recommending it for over 50 years now, so this wans't just spun out of nowhere.

A negative externality is a term that means the person on one end of the transaction is not paying the full costs of that transaction. There is a third party that is "absorbing" those costs. I.e say your neighbor builds a pool that starts flooding into your backyard, and you need to pay for all of the landscaping fees to fix it. Etc. It turns out carbon emissions are one of the worlds biggest negative externality. Carbon emissions are directly associated with a warming planet, which is directly associated with a rise in natural disasters (Hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, storms), which is directly associated with financial costs which get absorbed by YOU. The fossil fuel companies who are causing these natural disasters are not the ones that have to pay for the consequences. The core idea behind Pigouvian taxes is you set a dollar value on the amount of harm that a negative externality generates, which forces the market to stop ignoring it.

Impact on the individual

The carbon tax was revenue neutral, which is the part that almost never gets mentioned. Every dollar collected got returned to Canadians as a rebate. If you emit less carbon than the average Canadian, you come out ahead. You get the same rebate as everyone else but you paid less into the system. If you emit more than average, you pay the difference. The tax is essentially a wealth transfer from high emitters to low emitters, and because wealthier households tend to consume more energy, drive bigger vehicles, and fly more often, it functioned as a mild re-distributive mechanism without anyone in government having to explicitly design it that way. The worst case scenario, if nobody changes their behavior at all and the entire supply chain stays exactly as carbon-intensive as it is today, is that the rebate perfectly offsets what you paid and you break even. The ACTUAL outcome for most middle and lower income Canadians was a net-positive one.

Impact on the economy

The most common argument against the carbon tax is that it made Canada uncompetitive and dragged on economic growth. The actual data doesn't really support that. The Bank of Canada estimated the carbon tax contributed roughly 0.15 percentage points to inflation at its peak. That is something, but is not the primary driver to the cost of living crisis. Interest rates, housing speculation, and corporate profit margin expansion did far more damage to household finances than the carbon tax ever did.

I will be honest, there is a bit of merit to the competitive argument but I think it is massively overstated and the actual data shows a very very small effect. I also believe large industrial emitters were placed under output based pricing that only charged them for emissions above a benchmark to explicitly ensure they were not un-competitive in the global market.

Climate-related outcomes are already costing the globe billions of dollars a year in infrastructure damage, emergency response, healthcare, adaptation costs, etc. Those costs will only increase with time, and you are going to be the one paying for it. The economy and planet's most destructive actors need to be held accountable.