Impacts to reducing the carbon tax?

Estimates are that the elimination of the consumer carbon tax means a loss of $2.8 billion in revenue for the province, potentially impacting the budget and requiring adjustments to other programs, such as increasing the industrial carbon tax.

“That’s the biggest challenge because what ends up happening, for example, if an oil and gas company is being charged a carbon tax and you double it to make up the revenue, they’re just going to pass it on through the price of gas,” says Opposition Leader John Rustad. “So you won’t actually see a difference at the pumps. And that to me is very concerning. There’s also what’s called the low carbon fuel emissions standard, which is another carbon tax in British Columbia.”

Rustad says, that between the two taxes, British Columbians will still be paying 37 to 38 cents a litre in carbon tax, regardless.

Ron Camp concedes the taxman always gets his pound of flesh and, while there will be impacts at the pumps for BC drivers, the tax did indeed make businesses think about their carbon output.

“We’re seeing more big corporations who are doing that voluntarily. Are we seeing more organizations like Veritree out of Vancouver who is saying, well, let’s help the businesses want to be good corporate citizens to monitor, to see that they actually are and to communicate that out to the public.”

But the federal and BC Conservatives are saying it’s not enough.

“We want to get rid of the entire carbon tax,” says Rustad. “It’s a job-killing tax. David Eby said that during the election he was committed to removing the consumer tax if the federal government does. He has no room in his budget to do it. He hasn’t planned for it. My guess is that he will once again have misled the public in that promise and maybe he would consider it in a future year.”

However, while the Premier has committed to removing the consumer tax, in a news release he says: “we will continue to ensure big industrial polluters pay their fare share by maintaining an effective price on carbon for large emitters.”

by Cheryl Jahn

Impacts to reducing the carbon tax?

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