Federal government unveils details for carbon taxes
Like it or not, every province will soon see some form of carbon tax trickling through its economy as the federal government pushed ahead with detailed plans for a countrywide carbon price on Monday.
Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Finance Minister Bill Morneau released the government’s carbon tax framework and a draft of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act for public comment. The legislation includes new charges on consumer fuels such as gasoline, diesel, propane and natural gas. It would also set an emissions limit for industrial facilities such as oil and gas projects, pulp and paper mills, chemicals facilities, cement plants, mines, fertilizer facilities and steel mills.
Any facility that emits more than its limit will need to pay, and those that emit less could be eligible for carbon credits that could be sold to bigger polluters.
The government is also considering ways to apply carbon taxes to the offshore oil and gas sector and to electricity generation. The release said the government may eventually extend the tax to other sectors of the economy.
Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have all implemented carbon pricing systems that satisfy the federal government’s requirements but the federal government could impose the new set of rules on other provinces — such as Saskatchewan and the Atlantic Provinces — unless they develop their own carbon tax system by September.
For provinces that don’t develop their own carbon tax or don’t adopt the federal plan, the legislation would allow the federal government to directly disburse carbon rebates to residents of those provinces, bypassing provincial governments, in a move that is likely to escalate tensions with Saskatchewan.
“Four out of five Canadians live in jurisdictions that already have a price on carbon — and right now, those provinces are leading Canada in job creation,” McKenna said in a statement.
Morneau described the carbon tax system as positive for middle-class jobs — something that has been hotly contested in Alberta, where carbon taxes rose this month, and in Saskatchewan, where the government has vowed not to implement a carbon tax.