British Columbia's government will follow through on its promise to repeal the province's consumer carbon tax after new Prime Minister Mark Carney moved to eliminate the federal version of the levy on Friday.
Premier David Eby said at a news conference in Surrey that legislation is being prepared to repeal the consumer carbon tax during the current legislative session, with sittings scheduled to resume on March 31.
While Eby said he won't recall the legislature before then to remove the tax, the legislation will not only repeal the carbon price but also get rid of a planned increase set for April 1.
That's the day the federal consumer carbon price will end.
"With the low Canadian dollar, people have less money to go around," Eby said. "This will support them with that. But also, I want to reassure people that we'll be making sure that the big polluters continue to pay."
Eby's announcement came about an hour after Carney said his cabinet had agreed to end the federal consumer carbon price.
The premier had made a commitment last year to get rid of the consumer carbon tax at the first opportunity — if the federal government removed the national carbon levy requirement.
Eby said work is also underway at the provincial Finance Ministry to make sure that B.C. is "able to accommodate this commitment within the budget."
Families who had been receiving carbon tax rebate cheques under the program will not be getting them anymore, he said.
Earlier Friday, Carney made eliminating the consumer carbon price his first move after taking office as prime minister, undoing the signature policy of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
Carney made the announcement after the first cabinet meeting under his watch, saying that his government is "focused on action."
The order-in-council signed by Carney stipulates that the federal charge will be removed from consumer purchases as of April 1.
Eby said people in B.C. are doing all they can to fight climate change, and he doesn't want them to have to choose between affordability and climate action.
While Eby said the carbon tax has been an important tool for the province for over 15 years, cost-of-living pressures for households and the pending removal of federal carbon pricing showed there was no longer support for the tax.
However, he said that "output-based pricing" — which is "industry-specific" and places carbon charges on sectors based on their individual capacity to reduce emissions through technology — remains in place.
"It puts a price on carbon that encourages them to adopt those technologies without creating such a burden that all of a sudden people are importing concrete from Indonesia that's high carbon and takes a huge amount of carbon to ship here," Eby said.
"We are not removing the output-based pricing system. We want to continue to send that signal to industry that we want them to adopt these technologies to reduce pollution in our province."
The Opposition B.C. Conservatives have previously voiced concern that Eby's New Democrat government would scrap the consumer carbon price but then boost charges on businesses, which would still affect consumers in the end.
