British Columbia Premier David Eby says his government is preparing legislation to remove the province’s consumer-based carbon tax.
The plan to kill consumer carbon pricing was announced immediately after newly sworn-in Prime Minister Mark Carney signed an order-in-council to end the federal requirement for the tax effective April 1.
“People in B.C. are doing everything they can to fight climate change,” Eby said in a statement.
“But we don’t want people to have to choose between affordability and climate action. That’s why we made the commitment last year to get rid of the consumer carbon tax at the first opportunity if the federal government removes the national carbon tax requirement.”
The premier said the legislation to repeal the B.C. carbon price will be introduced during the current legislative session.
“As that work is underway, B.C. is also readying legislation to eliminate the scheduled increase to the carbon tax that would otherwise have occurred on April 1,” Eby said.
The B.C. legislature doesn’t sit again until the end of the spring break on March 31 and Eby says he won’t recall the legislature to remove the tax before then.
The province implemented the consumer carbon price in 2008, when the B.C. Liberal government of the day legislated the tax on the purchase of all fossil fuels, including gasoline and diesel.
The current tax rate is $80 per tonne of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions, amounting to approximately 17.6 cents per litre of gasoline and 20.74 cents per litre of diesel.
The tax also applies to home heating and energy costs, with natural gas taxed at a rate of 15.25 cents per cubic metre.
While it is moving to scrap the consumer carbon tax, Eby said his government will continue to price carbon for large industrial emitters.
“I want to reassure people that we’ll be making sure that the big polluters continue to pay, not because we want them to have to be taxed, but instead to encourage them to adopt the technologies that reduce emissions to ensure we’re continuing to make progress on the fight against climate change,” Eby told reporters during a news conference Friday afternoon.
“Our goal is to incentivize industry to adopt lower-carbon technologies while maintaining their competitiveness.”
Eby says that with families facing increasing cost-of-living pressures due to inflation, U.S. tariffs and the low Canadian dollar, there is no longer broad support for carbon pricing in the province.
“People have less money to go around,” he said. “This will support them with that.”
