By Cheryl Jahn

Impacts to reducing the carbon tax?

Mar 17, 2025 | 3:27 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The gas pump. That’s where many British Columbians will feel the lack of a carbon tax. When newly-minted Prime Minister Mark Carney made scrubbing the federal tax his first order of business, Premier David Eby had this to say: “We have been preparing for and we will introduce the legislation to eliminate the carbon tax in British Columbia and will work with the Federal governments on the timing of their measures.”

The aim of the carbon tax was to drive industry and people to a clean energy economy, potentially through policies that support renewable energy and electric vehicles.

“The intent of the tax was less about raising prominent revenue. It was more about signaling more desired behaviour by corporations” explains Dr. Ron Camp II, Dean of the UNBC Faculty of Business and Economics. “So if you pass on this tax to the consumer, the consumer says, well, this business produces more carbon and it’s more expensive than that business, which produces less carbon. Let’s buy more from the non-carbon-producing businesses. So it’s meant to be a mechanism to reduce carbon.”

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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.”