Consumer carbon price removed April 1

Mar 18, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet has set the consumer carbon price to zero after March 31st, 2025, providing much-needed relief for Canadian farmers.

“Farmers are being squeezed from seemingly all sides at once with inflation and tariffs from both the U.S. and China. The long-awaited removal of the carbon tax will provide farmers a bit of relief from this pressure and can be seen as recognition for the difficult place Canadian farmers and consumers find themselves in today,” said Keith Currie, president, Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

For years CFA has been pushing the government to allow for exemptions to the carbon tax for farmers to help improve competitiveness and increase farm financial sustainability. Based on estimates in 2023 from the Parliamentary Budget Office, farmers would save more than $100 million a year with the removal of the consumer carbon tax.

“The signing of this order-in-council is a reassuring step in the right direction, but we need to see Parliament reconvene and provide a long-term solution that removes the consumer carbon price from legislation and ensures farms of all sizes are exempt from the carbon price. We look forward to continuing to work with the Government of Canada to ensure future environmental policies enable long-term sustainable productivity growth and the competitiveness of Canadian agriculture,” added Currie.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.