New Brunswick’s environment minister admitted that he was wrong when he told reporters Wednesday that Ottawa does not allow for the province to issue rebates with revenue generated from the carbon tax.
“I guess I misunderstood or misspoke,” he said. “But really to me the spirit of the exercise in general to reduce emissions, you’re taking the money out through a carbon tax it should go to climate change initiatives.”
Minister of Environment and Local Government Jeff Carr told Global News on Tuesday that revenue generated from the consumer carbon tax that will replace the federal backstop on April 1 will flow into the climate change fund and then be available for various climate mitigation and adaptation projects.
READ MORE: Carbon tax revenue to go to climate change fund, not rebates: N.B. minister
“That’s the plan for all of these funds that we would now have control of, is to put them into the climate change fund so there’s a transparent accountable process by which we can finance or fund climate change initiatives,” he said.
“It can go to adaptation plans, flood mitigation projects, energy efficiency projects that we know people want more access to, it could go to subsidies for electric vehicles. I think when we get this fund more fully set up we will come up with the parameters around it.”
When speaking to reporters Wednesday about why the government decided to funnel the money into the climate change fund rather than rebate it as currently happens under the federal backstop, Carr said Ottawa prevented the province from doing so.
“That’s not what Ottawa allows us to do,” he said.
- Joly says Israeli Rafah invasion would be ‘unacceptable,’ urges ceasefire
- Delivery issue: Why Canada Post ‘must change’ to avoid collapse
- Israel-Hamas conflict: B.C. human rights watchdog backs ‘peaceful encampments’ at universities
- Ottawa approves B.C.’s ask for public drug use ban in decriminalization pilot
“They want to see a portion go into a climate change fund so that’s what we’re doing. If that wasn’t there, that piece wasn’t there, we may or may not have rebated the whole thing, but that’s really just hypothetical at this point.”
READ MORE: Most Canadian households to get more in rebates than paid in carbon tax: PBO
But a page on the federal government’s website outlining carbon pricing in the country says that provinces and territories are free to do what they see fit with the revenue generated from carbon taxes.
During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Premier Blaine Higgs said that if New Brunswick was forced to have a carbon tax it would be revenue neutral.
When asked about Higgs’ electoral promise on Thursday, Carr said he would leave it up to the premier comment on it.
The climate change fund that will house the revenue is currently empty. It was created as part of the previous Liberal government’s carbon pricing plan that would have seen the provincial gas tax redirected towards climate projects. The federal government rejected that plan and the fund has stood empty since.
Higgs initally opposed any carbon pricing system in New Brunswick, even joining as an intervener in court challenges to the federal backstop in other provinces. But after the federal election in the fall that saw the vast majority of New Brunswickers vote for parties that supported a carbon tax, Higgs said the province would create it’s own in order to free New Brunswick from the federal backstop.
The provincial plan will actually see a reduction of about two cents on the price of gasoline and is similar to carbon pricing schemes in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labradour.
Comments