The province is cancelling the carbon tax by introducing legislation to drop the rate to zero dollars, effective Tuesday, April 1st.
Premier David Eby says British Columbians are doing everything they can to reduce their emissions. But people shouldn’t have to choose between climate action and being able to afford their bills.
“Recently, the carbon tax played an important role here in British Columbia for many years, assisting us in reducing our emissions. Well, our economy continued to grow. It was supported by parties from many different backgrounds in the province. However, the tax has become divisive, and at a time like this, when British Columbians and Canadians need to be pulling together, when there are huge pressures that are coming from the threats out of the Trump White House to employment, to economic growth and to affordability for British Columbians and Canadians, it was important for us to recognize that we need to act quickly to ensure that British Columbians were not having to pay the consumer carbon tax. It’s it’s not an easy decision, but it’s an important decision for British Columbians.”
Eby says it will continue ensuring big polluters continue to pay while encouraging industry to innovate and giving British Columbians affordable options to make sustainable choices. “We have something called output based carbon pricing for big companies, for big polluters. And some of these are industries like the concrete industry, oil and gas industry, mining sector, and what we do is we work with them to do to ensure that and sense them, to adopt technologies that reduce their pollution, but don’t chase those jobs to other jurisdictions where there are no restrictions.”
“We need them to reduce their emissions. We need them to be maintaining British Columbia’s reputation as as one of the cleanest jurisdictions in North America, leading on clean technology and its implementation. And we need those jobs to be here in the province as well. So it is, it is an industry by industry approach for continuing to take that we’re going to push them to be the cleanest possible to create and keep jobs in the province and that’s the work that we’re going to continue to do with industry.”
The reduction of the tax to $0 is an immediate step to align B.C.’s carbon tax rate with the new federal carbon tax rate.
The elimination of the carbon tax means people in British Columbia will no longer be required to pay the consumer carbon tax, taking approximately 17 cents per litre off the cost of fuel and “We anticipate that British Columbians will be seeing savings of 17 cents at the pump,” says Eby. “Now, like many British Columbians, I’ve been watching the price of gas go up in the 10 days since we made this announcement. We have transparency legislation in place with the Utilities Commission to ensure that they have the authority to shine a light on any gouging that takes place of British Columbians, so just little heads up to the oil and gas companies.”
Eby adds that there should be a savings of about 15 cents per cubic metre for natural gas on home heating bills.
The climate action tax credit, developed to help offset the impacts of the consumer carbon tax on people and families, will also be cancelled. The final payment will be distributed in April 2025.
