Officials hail $5M carbon tax grant

Lloydminster fuel retailers to benefit from level playing field starting April 1

Following months of lobbying, Lloydminster fuel retailers will be able to apply for grants April 1 to offset the provincial carbon tax.

Straddling the Alberta- Saskatchewan border, Lloydminster is in the unique position of gas stations charging a per-litre 4.49cent carbon tax on just one side of the city.

The grant program for retail fuel dealers, announced Thursday, will offset the difference between the carbon and fuel taxes in Alberta, and the fuel tax in Saskatchewan.

For consumers, that means the same price at the pump — or close to it — on both sides of the border.

Grants will cover the equivalent of 2.49 cents per litre of gasoline, 3.35 cents per litre of diesel and 3.48 cents per litre of propane.

The program will cost between $3 million and $5 million in 201718, funded from carbon tax revenue, and will be reviewed annually.

In a city where most gas stations are on the Alberta side, and are often packed with trucks trundling along Highway 16, the chamber of commerce and Mayor Gerald Aalbers raised concerns about the carbon tax late last year.

Aalbers said Thursday the new program is good news for Lloydminster, which strives to create a seamless city from one province to another.

He worried the carbon charge would literally drive business to Saskatchewan.

While he hasn’t noticed a great disparity between fuel prices on either side of the towering orange border markers lining Meridian Avenue since the tax kicked in, Aalbers said the grant will go some way to levelling the playing field.

Rob Saunders, a member of the Lloydminster chamber of commerce political action committee, helped lobby the province for some sort of carbon tax dispensation.

He says he’s glad the government has recognized the inequalities in his city, calling the grant program “a good first step.”

“Hopefully, the process (to apply) will be user-friendly, and doesn’t encumber businesses,” he said.

Those details will be unveiled closer to April, but Finance Minister Joe Ceci said it will likely be as easy as hitting a button on a website and entering a business’s details.

When Postmedia spoke with Aalbers and Saunders in December, they were angling for an exemption similar to the Saskatchewan PST arrangement.

That didn’t happen, but Ceci thinks the new program is in the best interests of Lloydminster and its residents.

“What we’re doing is ensuring there’s the same kind of consideration in terms of the amount provinces levy onto fuels between Saskatchewan and Alberta,” he said.

“It assures that Albertans won’t go across the border to Saskatchewan and buy fuel there, and remit fuel taxes to Saskatchewan.”