BC Prime Minister David Eby says that his government is writing the legislation to discard the consumer carbon tax of the province after a promise from Prime Minister Mark Carney to do the same.
Eby made the comments on Friday afternoon at a town hall in Surrey to discuss the threat of the tariffs of the United States.
“This is the first time we share this, is that the British Columbia will present a law before April 1 that ensures that British Colombians do not have to pay that increase on April 1,” he said, referring to the scheduled increase of $ 15/ton that is required by federal legislation.
After that, he said, his party would move to discard the tax “completely.”
Eby’s announcement occurred just moments before Mark Carney, in his first act as a new Prime Minister of Canada, gave an order in the Council to eliminate the federal carbon tax.
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 Liberals of BC, which at that time was the inclined part 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 said that if the federal requirement of having one in place retired, he followed his example, instead of focusing to aim to aim to “large pollutions” to pay for his “fair participation.”
He said the same Friday, telling people in surrey that climate change is a continuous threat and that his party will take measures to ensure that “large pollutants pay” and move to adopt reducing technologies
