It is official: consumer carbon tax is over, starting today.
Mark Carny canceled The rate on its first day as Prime Minister last month, signing a directive for the fuel position that will be eliminated on April 1. The tax had been added to the sale price of carbon emitting products by type of fuel. For gasoline, it was 17.6 cents per liter, and natural gas was 15.25 cents per cubic meter. (The average Canadian home uses about 2,500 cubic meters of natural gas per year).
Carney initially supported the carbon tax, but Inverted course While campaigning for the leadership of the Liberal Party, saying that he had become too “divisive.” Although the price of carbon consumer is gone, the industrial price for large -scale pollutants remains.
The Liberal Government under Justin Trudeau put the tax for the first time in 2019 as a way of encouraging Canadians to make the transition to more ecological energy sources. But even in the first days, politics faced the opposition of provincial governmentswhile the promise of the conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to “make the tax” later became a central part of its platform.
The federal carbon price for consumers will disappear today in all provinces, except Quebec, where a provincial price on carbon meant that the federal price did not apply. BC also had its own consumer carbon tax, but He hastened on Monday to get rid of him For April 1, too.
Now that the tax is gone, how could that affect your wallet? Experts say there will be some cost savings transmitted to consumers almost immediately, but the loss of carbon reimbursement will also have an impact later.
Impact on the pump and register?
Andrew Leach, economist of energy and environment at the University of Alberta, says that the canceled tax will feel more immediately in the gas pump.
The gasoline pollution price was translated at a cost of approximately 17.6 cents per liter until today. Leach says that the amount is likely to come out in a matter of days.
“It’s a point of sale … so you should see that it goes almost instantly,” Leach said.
Christopher Ragan, director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, says that the fall in prices could be more gradual, although he agrees that he is coming.
“One of the least charming attributes of capitalism is that prices tend to fall more slowly than they increase,” Ragan said. “Therefore, I could take a little time for those 17.6 cents to leave the price.”
If gasoline prices fell in 17.6 cents per liter as a result of the tax leaving, it would save around $ 8.80 when filling a car with a 50 -liter standard gasoline tank.
Depending on how oil markets increase or decrease in the next few days or weeks, they will determine whether gas prices remain low or not, Leach adds.
And because natural gas and other heating costs are billed monthly, the elimination of carbon tax will take a little longer to feel there, according to Leach.
Several other factors will affect the weight of their next billing cycle, he says, as where he lives, which fuel source heats up his home and how he is transported home. But in Alberta, where Leach lives, the reduction of invoices of the average family could be close to 30 percent per month, he said.
However, people in Saskatchewan will probably not feel the fall in taxes of natural gas invoices, since the government already He has not been raising carbon tax in natural gas since January 1, 2024.
And any decrease in the price of products that do not supply directly, think that things like food or clothing, will be smaller and more subtle, according to Ragan.
When these items are transported by cars, ships or other carbon methods, the carbon price is baked in their supply chains. Ragan says that because transport differs from one product to another, the price decrease will vary.
Also points out the research of the University of Calgary that suggested that the The consumer carbon tax had a minimum impact on inflation. The minimum impact on the general price of consumer goods, such as food, means that eliminating it will also have a relatively small impact, Ragan said.
Low income families will feel the greatest reimbursement loss
Eligible Canadians who have received quarterly carbon reimbursements in the past can expect one more on April 15. Almost all Canadian residents who are at least 19 and live in the provinces where the federal tax applied received the reimbursement, which amounted to about 12 million people the last time the refund was issued in January.
Depending on the province, the average annual refund of a home to 2024 to 2025 varied from $ 719 to $ 1,779.
The refund worked like a jug, as Leach expresses. If you and three people put an established amount of money in the bottle every time you cursed, then they divided the money into the bottle at the end of each month, who swears that would least earn the greatest amount of money. On the other hand, the person who swore loses the most money.
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Similarly, Canadians who have smaller carbon footprints recover more in reimbursements, while those with larger carbon footprints pay more due to the tax. Low income households have much smaller carbon traces than the richest families, says Leach, which means that the loss of refund will probably feel more dramatically for those with lower income.
“So you take away the price of carbon, take refunds, so that is a net negative for most low -income households and a positive net home for most of the households with the highest income,” Leach said.
Ragan agrees. The carbon tax policy was designed with the intention of giving a larger reimbursement than the cost lost in the pump or at the payment counter for 80 percent of Canadians, and says that those who received reimbursement could feel their absence.
“They will notice that the price of gasoline will go down and they will feel better … but very soon, they will realize that they no longer receive those quarterly reimbursements.”
