Eby Says BC Will Cut the Carbon Tax Should Feds Change the Rules

B.C. Premier David Eby said Thursday that if federal requirements change, an NDP government would eliminate the provincial carbon tax while continuing to make big polluters pay.

“We had a consensus for a long time in British Columbia on the carbon tax,” Eby said at an NDP campaign event in Vancouver.

The tax helped reduce carbon emissions while allowing the economy to grow, he said, but many people are now struggling with affordability and the federal government has badly damaged the political consensus on the carbon tax.

“Our commitment is that if the federal government decides to remove the legal backstop requiring us to have a consumer carbon tax in British Columbia, we will end the consumer carbon tax in British Columbia,” Eby said.

“We believe climate change is a real and present threat, unlike [Conservative Party of BC Leader] John Rustad, who thinks it’s a hoax, so we will continue to ensure, and we will ensure, that big polluters are paying their fair share.”

Rustad has said he believes climate change is real but that it is not a crisis.

In 2008, B.C. was the first province in Canada to introduce a carbon tax when the then BC Liberal government announced it.

The federal government has since required all provinces to put a price on carbon and has mandated annual increases.

The B.C. government expects to collect $2.6 billion in revenue from the carbon tax this year.

Eby said that the amounts people are required to pay have gone up too quickly and that the federal government made a mistake by exempting certain products and not treating all provinces equally. Last year Ottawa introduced an exemption for three years on home heating oil, a fuel mainly used in the Atlantic provinces.

People in B.C. are under stress because of high interest rates and global inflation, Eby said. “We need to make sure we’re supporting British Columbians however we can right now.”

Eby referenced the floods, fires and heat dome the province has gone through in recent years and stressed that an NDP government would continue to put a price on carbon for large emitters.

“There’s a really stark choice between us and the BC Conservatives on the issue of climate change and taking climate action,” he said.

Eby was speaking alongside recently elected Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, the leader of the only other NDP provincial government.

Kinew, who had previously come out against the federal carbon tax, said climate change is real but governments have to show some flexibility to combat the affordability crisis.

“I’m worried that the politicization of this issue is causing us to lose a generation of Canadians, causing us to lose so many people from the blue collar, and we can’t afford that,” he said. “We have to keep moving forward with climate action.... We’ve got to keep a critical mass of Canadians on side with solving the climate crisis.”

Rustad, who was a BC Liberal MLA when B.C. introduced its carbon tax, called Eby’s change of position “a desperate, last-minute flip-flop.”

“I don't think that the public... are looking for a premier who is that wishy-washy, flipping back and forth between his policies, especially on something that David Eby claimed to be such a major piece and cornerstone,” Rustad said.

“As the Conservative Party of British Columbia, we are committed to removing the carbon tax in British Columbia,” he added. “We're committed to doing everything we can to make life more affordable for people in this province, so they have an opportunity to be able to build a future here in British Columbia.”

Rustad has said his party would scrap the carbon tax in B.C. even without a change in federal rules.

BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said in a statement the government should fix the carbon tax to make it fair and show how it can improve lives.

“This is a government with no principles and no direction,” she said. “It is obvious that the BC NDP is making up climate policy on the fly. He now says big emitters should pay for climate change, but his government is giving billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to increase fracking. B.C. deserves a clear, coherent plan for climate change and the clean economy, not confusing contradictions.”

A senior climate policy adviser for the David Suzuki Foundation, Thomas Green, said in a statement that pollution from the fossil fuel industry is largely responsible for driving the climate crisis and is a big contributor to making life less affordable.

“It’s not carbon pricing,” he said. “Sadly, it seems that pricing carbon pollution and giving rebates to consumers, a tool widely recognized as an effective way to tackle emissions, is falling victim to a targeted misinformation campaign.”

Governments need to support policies that make life more affordable for people, said Green, such as providing incentives for heat pumps, free transit passes for youth and affordable housing.

“We urge political leaders throughout B.C. to take seriously the unnatural disasters that have been hammering our province. This means relying on science and redoubling our efforts to lower emissions, improve affordability and pivot to an economy powered by renewables — and not being swayed by misinformation.”

With files from Jen St. Denis.