The leader of the opposition of British Columbia, John Rustad, has found a carbon tax that he likes, that proposes such a tax on the US thermal coal that left the provincial ports as a way of pressing the White House so as not to impose tariffs Fresh in Canadian soft wood.
Rustad said that the American coal tax could be a “tool to defend” on soft wood tariffs and duties proposed by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has also proposed tariffs on all Canadian exports.
“We need to be able to create the environment to have an agreement with the Americans. We cannot continue like this in soft wood,” Rustad said on Monday.
Rustad was expelled from the old Liberal Party of BC in 2022 after questioning the role of carbon dioxide emissions about climate change and for a long time has been a critic of the BC carbon tax itself.
In tariffs, he and BC conservatives had previously said that BC should avoid retaliation and, instead, focus on the growth of the BC economy.
PERIOD OF QUESTIONS IN THE BC Legislature, Prime Minister David Eby congratulated the conservative leader of BC for looking for ways to retaliate against the tariff threat, qualifying him as a “significant exit.”
But Eby said that taxing the American coal that travels through the BC ports on its way to other export markets would raise important challenges.
“It is an export good that passes through a port regulated by the federal government, and we cannot place export taxes on products like that,” Eby said.
Idea of taxing the previously proposed coal
The idea of taxing thermal carbon shipments in response to US tariffs has been floated before BC
In 2017, then Prime Minister Christy Clark proposed a tax that added around $ 70 per ton of coal exported through BC ports in response to tariffs fired in soft wood exports in BC
Clark’s general response to the soft wood dispute was considered reckless and irresponsible by the then leader of the PND John Horgan.
Soft wood has been a point of inflammation between Canada and the United States for decades.
The United States has applied anti-dumping and compensation duties for products for soft wood products, while Canada has brought its arguments to the World Trade Organization and challenged the tasks under NAFTA and the United States-Mexico Agreement of Canada and Canada.
Last week, the Minister of Forests, Ravi Parmar, said that combined tasks and the United States tariffs on Canadian soft wood could increase to more than 50 percent.
BC forest minister, Ravi Parmar, was in California this week in a commercial mission, presenting the case against tariff BC. As Katie Derosa reports, officials in California say that Canadian wood will be key to their forest fire rehabilitation efforts
Rustad distinguished between reprisals against Americans with tariffs and applying a “tax on graduated carbon” that would increase until BC obtained a soft wooden agreement.
He said that 18 million tons of American thermal coal were sent through Vancouver, but the province does not use it.
“Until the time when American and unjustified American tasks are eliminated in our soft wood, we must be ready to hit Americans where Rustad said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the ruling NDP requested unanimous support for a motion to condemn Trump and support the National Strategically directed reprisal action “.
The motion was approved, but not unanimously, in the vote on Monday night.
All the votes did not come from the conservative members of BC: Tara Armstrong of Kelowna-Lake Countrystream, Dallas Brodie de Vancouver -quhena, Brent Chapman of Surrey South, Jordan Kealy de Peace River North and Heather Maahs of Chilliwack North.
