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Ottawa: New Federal Carbon Fuel Tax in Three Atlantic Provinces

Photo: Adrian Wyld, the Canadian Press.

Next year, the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island will have to pay Canada’s federal carbon fuel levy since they did not submit consumer carbon levies to meet Ottawa’s new climate goals.

On Tuesday, the federal government announced the specifics of how the carbon tax refund checks will be sent to Canadian homeowners and how much the new pollution pricing system is going to cost in 2023.

As of April of next year residents of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon, and Nunavut will get larger rebates under the Climate Action Incentive program. Starting in July, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island residents will receive payments for the first time. 

Separate pollution pricing systems will be established in British Columbia, New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, and Quebec.

The carbon levy increase comes at a time when consumers are already bearing increased costs of gasoline, diesel, natural gas and heating oil.

“First, inflation is tough,” stated at a press conference Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan. “Households are feeling the pinch and everything that we do right now as a government has to take that into consideration. Second, climate change is real and it’s not taking a break because of inflation. This is about making life more affordable while lowering emissions.”

In 2019, the Justin Trudeau administration set a progressive price on carbon pollution in an effort to motivate individuals and corporations to reduce their emissions. However, the federal pricing system is optional, and each province and territory is free to create its own structure depending on its unique requirements.

Next year, the tax is projected to increase to $65 per tonne, and then to climb by $15 per year until it hits $170 in 2030.

On April 1, 2023, the federal carbon tax will increase by 3.3 cents, bringing the total to 14.3 cents per litre of gasoline in most provinces.

According to O’Regan, residents of the three new Atlantic provinces won’t notice an increase in fuel prices until spring “so it won’t have any effect on prices this winter.”

Last month, the federal government announced that they would be investing $250 million to assist low-income households in making the transition from inefficient fossil fuel heaters like furnace oil to more efficient, environmentally friendly alternatives like electric heat pumps.

Original source material for this article taken from here

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