Environment Minister Won’t Confirm $170-a-Tonne Carbon Tax Cap Past 2030

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Nov. 28, 2023. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is refusing to guarantee the current $170-per-tonne cap on the carbon tax after 2030, saying it’s “a decision that hasn’t been made.”

Mr. Guilbeault, while testifying before the Commons environment committee on Dec. 14, was accused by the Conservatives of reneging on a 2021 cabinet promise to keep the current cap in place, the equivalent of 40 cents per litre on gasoline, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Can you promise Canadians your government will never raise the carbon tax higher than $170 a tonne?” Conservative MP Dan Mazier asked the environment minister.

“We have made a determination until 2030,” Mr. Guilbeault replied. “We haven’t made any determination for what will happen after 2030.”

“You once said you wouldn’t raise the carbon tax and then raised the carbon tax after an election, so now after 2030 you will never go over $170 a tonne?” Mr. Mazier persisted.

“I respectfully disagree with the characterization of what we said,” Mr. Guilbeault answered. “We said the price on pollution would increase until 2022. Then we said we would make an assessment to determine whether or not it should continue. That’s exactly what we did.”

Mr. Mazier again asked if the government would commit to “not going over $170 a tonne and increasing costs to Canadians.”

“It is a decision that hasn’t been made,” Mr. Guilbeault said.

Levied by the Liberal government in 2019, carbon pricing kicked off at $20 per tonne and was set to increase by $10 per tonne each year until it rises to $50 per tonne in 2022. The price was then set to rise by $15 per tonne every year, starting in 2023, until it reaches $170 per tonne in 2030.

‘Providing Certainty’

In 2019, then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said increases beyond 2022 could be a point of debate for election time.

“The price will not go up,” Ms. McKenna told reporters on June 23, 2019. “The plan is not to increase the price post-2022. We are doing exactly what we said we’d do.”

Ms. McKenna later told reporters at an August 2019 press conference, ahead of the election in October that year, that any decision to increase the cost would be done “in consultation with the provinces.”

A reporters asked, “Are you committing to not going over $50 per tonne?”

In response, she said, “That’s all we have.”

Then in December 2020, cabinet raised the tax cap 240 percent to $170 per tonne by 2030. The surprise announcement was made on Dec. 11, 2020, the last sitting day before Parliament adjourned for Christmas.

The increased price is the equivalent of 27 cents per litre of propane, 34 cents per cubic metre of natural gas, 40 cents more per litre of gasoline, 44 cents for aviation fuel, and an extra 47 cents per litre for diesel.

In 2021, then-Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson promised that the Liberals would not increase that new cap.

“No, we do not intend to accelerate the price on pollution,” Mr. Wilkinson said on April 22, 2021. “There is a price schedule out there for the very specific reason of providing certainty and that’s what we have done.”

The Epoch Times contacted the environment minister’s office for comment on the status of the carbon price cap but didn’t immediately hear back.

A 2021 report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated that even increasing the  federal fuel charge to $170 per tonne would not be sufficient to cut emissions to the desired target, but that “significant reductions from less visible non-price policies, already announced,” will be needed. To be effective, the report said, the government would need to raise the cap by another $91 per tonne, to $261 per tonne, or 62 cents per litre of gasoline, to meet its emissions targets.

Carbon Tax Fatigue

Mr. Guilbeault’s refusal to confirm a carbon price cap comes at a time when polls show increased opposition by Canadians to pay out of pocket in line with the government’s climate change policies.

A September poll of Canadians found that 68 percent are unwilling to pay more at the pump, up to 40 cents per litre by 2030, to support the Liberal government’s net-zero emissions policies, while 55 percent of survey respondents want the carbon tax scrapped (37 percent) or reduced (18 percent).

The Leger-National Post poll also found that only 18 percent of those surveyed agreed with the annual carbon tax increases as planned.

A poll last month by Abacus Data, meanwhile, found that 72 percent of Canadians want the federal government to exempt the carbon tax from all home heating bills, covering all heating fuels.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in October announced a three-year pause on the carbon tax for home heating oil for the 10 jurisdictions where the federal fuel charge is collected. These include eight provinces and two territories, with B.C., Quebec, and Northwest Territories being the exceptions. The move largely benefits Atlantic Canada, where 30 percent of homeowners still use furnace oil to heat their homes.

Since the announcement, the premiers of Ontario and the Prairie provinces have been demanding “fair treatment,” saying that the exemption helps very few of their residents who, predominantly, heat their homes with natural gas.

Mr. Trudeau has so far declined to expand the exemption to include other types of home heating, saying there will “absolutely not be any other carve-outs or suspensions of the price on pollution.”