No decision on carbon past 2030: Guilbeault

Defends capture technology at committee

OTTAWA • Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told MPS Tuesday he doesn't know what will happen to the country's carbon tax after 2030, saying the government has only planned that far.

“We've made a commitment all the way to 2030. We've made no commitments as to what would happen after 2030,” Guilbeault told MPS on the Commons environment committee in response to a question from Conservative MP Dan Mazier.

The carbon tax is set to rise by $15 per year from now until 2030, when it will reach $170 per tonne. The government estimates the carbon tax needs to rise that much to change consumer behaviour and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to respect Canada's international climate commitments. Those commitments are in line with a goal of keeping temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius.

Canada's 2030 target is to reduce emissions by between 40 and 45 per cent below 2005 levels, with a goal of reaching net zero by 2050.

Department officials told Mazier they had not made any recommendations to increase the tax after 2030.

Mazier asked Guilbeault if the department had considered what the current carbon tax increase will do to the cost of food and whether synthetic fertilizers, currently produced using fossil fuels, would be available for Canadian farmers in the future.

Guilbeault said he was confident Canadian farmers could adapt to the changing realities.

“There are a number of technologies and agricultural practices that can help us reduce the emissions of the agricultural sector in Canada and, in fact, a number of farms across the country are adopting some of these technologies,” he said.

NDP MP Laurel Collins also took aim at Guilbeault's plan, but for the government's decision to offer a tax credit for carbon capture and storage projects. She argued it's another subsidy to the oil and gas sector.

“It's a technology that hasn't been proven at scale, and oil and gas companies have been using it as an excuse to increase their production,” she said.

Guilbeault defended the decision and said some amount of oil and gas will be necessary in the long run. He argued to Collins that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had seen promise in the technology and didn't understand why the NDP didn't as well.

“The IPCC — which is considered by many, perhaps not you, as an authoritative figure when it comes to climate change — in its last report, refers to carbon capture and storage as a critical technology,” he said.

Canada's greenhouse gas emissions did drop in 2020, but Guilbeault told MPS it is hard to distinguish at this point if that is the result of the pandemic or actual changes in behaviours.