B.C. scrapping consumer carbon tax altogether on April 1, government says
Government urges gas companies to remove tax from pricing
The B.C. government has announced it will completely scrap the provincial consumer-facing carbon tax on April 1 and is urging gas stations to prepare for the change.
The government previously announced that it would introduce legislation on March 31 to halt a scheduled tax increase, following a promise from Prime Minister Mark Carney to do the same at the federal level.
However, the Ministry of Finance now says the legislation will enable the complete removal of the tax as of April 1.
It says it expects natural gas providers and those who sell fuel to stop charging the tax on that date.
According to current numbers, the carbon tax adds about 17 cents a litre to the price of gas in B.C. and 15 cents per cubic metre to natural gas.
At a Vancouver gas station on Tuesday afternoon, many people who spoke to CBC News reacted positively to the tax cut.
"Living in Vancouver, definitely, budgeting as a young professional can be challenging," said Lynsey Stevens. "So if you can save a couple dollars here and there to, like, buy a house or go out with your friends ... I appreciate that."
The tax was also projected to add about $1.5 billion to the provincial budget in the coming fiscal year — money that has yet to be accounted for in other ways since the announcement that the tax would be coming to an end.
The government has said it will shift its focus to "big industrial emitters," which it says it will "incentivize" to adopt lower-carbon technologies.
Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas, a climate campaigner with the non-profit Wilderness Committee, said the scrapping of the carbon tax raises major questions about how organizations like TransLink — which are already facing a funding crisis — could survive.
"There's a lot of talk about the carbon tax as kind of, like, the centrepiece of B.C. climate action," she said. "And so, it's sad to see it rolled back, but we were under no illusion that it was the thing that was going to get us out of the climate crisis."
The campaigner said that the province's commitment to reduce carbon emissions has been lacking.
She pointed to B.C.'s fast-tracking of natural resource extraction projects — something the government has said it would do in response to U.S. tariffs — as something that would not help it meet carbon reduction targets.
"Fast-tracking resource extraction and speeding up these projects, you know, that is, 'Drill, baby, drill,' just dressed up in different words, right? And that is Donald Trump's flagship policy," she said.
First carbon tax in Canada
British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce carbon pricing through a consumer tax, under then-premier Gordon Campbell of the B.C. Liberals, which was, at the time, the province's centre-right-leaning party.
The tax, introduced in 2008, was initially set at $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions and was meant to be revenue-neutral, with the government refunding costs to lower-income residents.
Its creation was opposed by the NDP, which launched an "axe the tax" campaign, arguing it would kill jobs and campaigned on a promise to repeal it if it won the next election.
It did not, and the tax proved popular. Several economists credited it with helping reduce emissions while also growing the economy.
Eventually, the NDP came around, as well, and kept it in place after forming government in 2017.
But the popularity waned when Justin Trudeau introduced federal requirements in 2019 that provinces either put their own price on carbon or submit to federal guidelines.
In the years that followed, the federal Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre campaigned on a pledge to "axe the tax." While campaigning for the leadership of the federal Liberals, Carney said the policy was "too divisive" and promised to kill it despite his support for carbon pricing.
During last year's provincial leadership campaign, Eby also acknowledged the divisiveness of the carbon tax and stated that if the federal requirement to have one in place were dropped, he would follow suit.
With the removal of the carbon tax now the official policy of both the federal Liberal party and the provincial NDP, both the federal and provincial Conservative parties have turned their attention to carbon pricing on industrial emitters, arguing it should be removed as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Janella Hamilton and The Canadian Press