Canada’s carbon price is set to increase next month despite several premiers asking Ottawa for a pause.
The carbon price is a “cornerstone policy” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government, said Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
But provincial leaders like Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Premier Andrew Furey are calling for a halt over affordability concerns.
So how much is the carbon price going up by? Here is what you need to know.
Why is the carbon price increasing?
The looming April 1 carbon price hike is not an “unexpected increase,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
“The idea is that by putting a price on pollution, people will use fewer fossil fuels, and that drives down overall emissions from the economy,” Mertins-Kirkwood told Global News.
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Annual increases make up the government’s overall pricing scheme. In fact, increases are planned until at least 2030.
“A province or territory can decide to voluntarily adopt the federal pricing system,” the government said on its website.
“If a province or territory decides not to price carbon pollution or proposes a system that does not meet the minimum national stringency standards, that jurisdiction is subject to the federal pricing system to ensure there is an appropriate price on carbon pollution across Canada.”
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British Columbia, Quebec and the Northwest Territories are the only regions that have their own carbon pricing systems in place.
Where will the carbon price increase be reflected?
The planned April 1 increase will be most noticeable at the gas station and on energy bills in provinces and territories where the federal backstop plan applies, Mertins-Kirkwood said.
“It’s still a smaller effect on your energy bills than just the global price of oil, or even things like corporate profitability,” he said.
“It’s one factor, but on its own, the kind of effects of the carbon price are overblown when it comes to household affordability.”
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Mertins-Kirkwood added Canadians will also see “indirect effects” of the carbon price, pointing to transportation costs that can filter down into food prices.
Inflation has been cooling in Canada after peaking at 8.1 per cent in June 2022; inflation came in at 2.9 per cent in January, Statistics Canada said, and as part of that, food inflation at the grocery store cooled to 3.4 per cent, down from 4.7 per cent in previous two months.
However, the prices of food purchased from restaurants were up 5.1 per cent annually in January, the agency said, down from growth of 5.6 per cent in December.
Why are premiers calling for an April 1 pause?
In a letter to Trudeau, Furey said that while his government is “deeply invested” in environmental sustainability, the planned increase “is causing understandable worry as people consider how they will manage the mounting financial strain.”
Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, Alberta United Conservative Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who leads the conservative Saskatchewan Party, each signaled their endorsements for Furey’s call by reposting the letter to their own X accounts on Tuesday.
“If they don’t start putting money back in people’s pockets instead of filling their pockets, guess what? They’re going to get annihilated, as I’ve said before, they’re done. They’re done like dinner,” Ford told reporters in Pickering, Ont., on Wednesday.
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Furey asked for Ottawa to address ramifications currently faced by families and “to not compound them,” urging the government to pause the increase until inflation cools, interest rates lower and pressures on the cost of living “significantly cool.”
The federal Conservatives have criticized carbon pricing for much of its existence, with Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre promising to remove it if the party takes government in the next election.
Trudeau didn’t signal a pause was coming when speaking to reporters in Calgary on Wednesday.
“The price on pollution was designed to do two things: send a clear signal to investors, to companies, to Canadians that it makes good sense to invest in reducing our carbon emissions and saving energy, and a price signal is the clearest way of doing that,” he said.
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“The second goal of the price on pollution was to make sure that middle-class families and vulnerable families across the country weren’t carrying the brunt of that price on pollution, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
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Mertins-Kirkwood said a pause wouldn’t drastically change affordability.
“The politics here are totally out of sync with what the actual policy is. Now, of course, it doesn’t mean every household is better off. If you’ve got a big house that you heat with gas, you got two big trucks in the driveway, you are going to pay more, but that actually doesn’t describe most households in Canada,” he said.
“Corporations, the private sector, make investment decisions based on the carbon pricing schedule. They are counting on it going up, and that’s an important factor for investors. If you put a pause on this policy arbitrarily for one year, that’s going to affect those sorts of investment decisions, and that is going to have an impact on our economy.”
So, how much is the carbon price set to go up?
Right now, the carbon pricing plan is set at $65 a tonne. As of April 1, it will be $80 a tonne, and will continue to rise annually by $15 until it reaches $170 a tonne by 2030.
At the pumps, the April 1 hike will add roughly three cents to the cost of gas, Mertins-Kirkwood said.
It’s a “much smaller increase than you’d normally expect through a fluctuation of oil prices,” he said.
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Part of the government’s carbon pricing system is the Canada Carbon Rebate, formerly known as the climate action incentive payment. Ottawa rebranded the program in February, which sees quarterly tax-free payments delivered to eligible Canadians.
The government has said about 80 per cent of Canadians are getting more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing. Ottawa’s rebate impacts those in provinces where the federal carbon price applies.
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Mertins-Kirkwood said the carbon price is a “classic case” of a policy that’s great on paper, but is bad politics in practice.
“We all see the cost and we don’t really see the benefits, versus shutting down a coal plant, where we see the benefit and none of us experience the costs directly, even though of course there are costs to the economy. My point here is that the discussion around carbon pricing is overblown,” he said.
“It distracts from a lot of the work we need to be doing, both on the climate front and also on the affordability front. If we’re concerned about affordability, there’s way more important things than pausing the carbon price. We need to invest in housing, we need to invest in public transit, there’s so many other problems we have as a country that we should be focused on, and carbon pricing is frankly not that high up the list.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
