B.C. Premier David Eby says he will drop the provincial carbon tax if the federal government removes the legal requirement to keep it in place.
Eby made the comments at an unrelated news conference on Sept. 12, after NDP leader Jagmeet Singh
signalled his party did not favour the Liberals’ version of the consumer carbon tax. Singh said that the current tax puts a burden on the “backs of working people” and that his party would introduce its own climate change policies, but didn’t confirm whether that includes a consumer carbon tax.
Eby said he would also focus on “big polluters” rather than B.C. residents who are struggling with affordability.
“The context and the challenges for British Columbians has changed. A lot of British Columbians are struggling with affordability,” he said.
The premier said Ottawa’s approach to the carbon tax “badly damaged” the political consensus on the issue in B.C.
The province first
introduced the carbon tax in 2008, the first province in Canada to do so. In 2018, the Trudeau government brought in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, requiring provinces and territories to implement a carbon gas pricing system or adopt the federal government’s.
Conservative Party of B.C. Leader John Rustad, similar to the federal Conservatives, has called the carbon tax a burden on Canadians, and said he would remove it.
“Taxing BC’s everyday, hardworking people into poverty will not change the weather,” Rustad said in a Sept. 12
post on the X platform.
BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said the NDP was abandoning a good policy for political reasons.
“Make the price on carbon pollution transparent and fair, use it to benefit people and communities, and stop giving sweetheart deals to the oil and gas industry,” she said in a Sept. 12
post on X.
B.C. will have its provincial election on Oct. 19, 2024.
An Angus Reid survey
published this month said that cost of living is the most important issue on the mind of B.C. voters, followed by health care and housing affordability.
Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.
