Carbon tax hits Man. and Sask.

Apr 03, 2019

The federal levy came into effect April 1

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Canadians in four provinces woke up Monday with a new federal tax in place.

The federal carbon tax came into effect in the four provinces without pre-existing carbon pricing policies: Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The federal tax will begin at $20 per tonne this year and increase by $10 until it reaches $50 per tonne in 2022. It will add almost five cents to a litre of gasoline and about four cents to a cubic metre of natural gas. The price of butane, propane and aviation fuel will also rise.

The tax won’t apply to gasoline and diesel purchases that are stored on farms, used in machinery or purchased at cardlocks.

Producers like Richard Dureault, a cash crop producer from Fannystelle, Man. are concerned about how the new tax will affect their operation.

The cost of drying grain is likely to go up, Dureault said.

“I’m more concerned with propane on the drying side of things,” he told Farms.com. “We’re not doing that until fall but for us that’s going to be the one that stings the most.”

Producers can apply for tax exemptions using form L402.

Those exemptions, should they go through, will help farmers adjust to life with a carbon tax, Dureault said.

Some farmers in Saskatchewan are also concerned about the new tax.

Assessing its initial toll on agriculture will be tough because there’s no way to determine exactly how much the carbon tax is contributing to the increase of production.

“The carbon tax will affect everything that’s transported to or from our farm,” Melvin Foth, chair of SaskMilk, told Farms.com.

“It’s going to have a significant impact on anything we haul, but there’s no way to know right now exactly how much is because of the tax.”

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