The BC government has announced that it will completely eliminate the provincial consumer -oriented carbon tax on April 1 and urges the service stations to prepare for change.
The government previously announced that it would introduce legislation on March 31 to stop a programmed tax increase, after a promise of Prime Minister Mark Carney to do the same at the federal level.
However, the Ministry of Finance now says that the legislation will allow the complete elimination of the tax to April 1.
British Colombians will soon have to pay less when they fill their gasoline tanks. The province and the federal government are canceling the consumer carbon tax, as of April 1. But with the disappearance of the associated fiscal credit, will the cancellation put money again in British Columbia pockets?
He says he hopes that natural gas suppliers and those who sell fuel stop collecting the tax on that date.
According to current numbers, the carbon tax adds approximately 17 cents per liter to the price of gas in BC and 15 cents per cubic meter to natural gas.
It was also projected that it would add around $ 1.5 billion to the provincial budget in the next fiscal year, money that has not yet been counted in other ways since the announcement that the tax would be coming to an end. Program money is destined for groups such as Translink and BC Transit, among others.
The Government has said that it will change its approach to “large industrial emitters”, which says it will “encourage” to adopt low carbon technologies.
First Carbon Tax in Canada
The British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce carbon prices through a consumer tax, under the then Prime Minister Gordon Campbell of the BC liberals, which was, at that time, the part of the center of the province of the province.
The tax, introduced in 2008, was initially established at $ 10 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions and was destined to be neutral in income, and the government reimbursed the costs of low -income residents.
The NDP opposed its creation, which launched a “Ax The Tax” campaign, arguing that it would kill jobs and campaigned in a promise to repeal it if it won the next elections.
He did not, and the tax was popular. Several economists accredited him to help reduce emissions while increasing the economy. Finally, the NDP also arrived, and kept it in its place after forming the government in 2017.
But popularity decreased when Justin Trudeau introduced federal requirements in 2019 that the provinces put their own price in carbon or presented themselves to federal guidelines.
In the years that followed, the federal conservatives under Pierre Poilievre campaigned in a promise to “eliminate the tax.” While campaigning for the leadership of federal liberals, Carney said that politics was “too divisive” and promised to kill him despite his support for carbon prices.
During the provincial leadership campaign last year, EBY also recognized the carbon tax division and declared that if the federal requirement of having one in his place was retired, he followed his example.
With the elimination of carbon tax now, the official policy of the Federal Liberal Party and the Provincial PND, the federal and provincial conservative parties have focused their attention on the price of carbon in industrial issuers, arguing that it should also be eliminated.
