The federal Liberals have been facing pressure to extend a carbon tax exemption to fuels such as natural gas and propane after recently announcing a three-year exemption for home heating oils.
The pause is meant to give Canadians using oil to heat their homes more time to switch to subsidized electric heat pumps, according to the government.
Even though the carbon tax exemption for home heating oil applies to all provinces across the country, its effects will be felt the most by homes in Atlantic Canada.
There is a Conservative motion before the House of Commons in Ottawa to exempt all home heating fuels from the federal carbon tax, which will be voted on today.
Barrie-Innisfil MP John Brassard says he isn’t sure how the vote on the motion will go, but he feels “all tax needs to be taken off all heating in the country, which is why we put the motion forward,” he told BradfordToday and InnisfilToday on Saturday.
“We are a confederation, not a country of regions.”
Brassard says the announcement by the prime minister to remove the carbon tax from home heating oil in Atlantic Canada caused a lot of concern, “not just here in Barrie-Innisfil, but right across the country, from people who are paying the carbon tax to heat their homes.”
The NDP has recently signalled its support for the Conservative motion.
“Given the affordability and inflation crisis that is existing right now, every day I’m walking people in off the ledge who are finding a tough time paying for basic necessities of life.” Brassard said.
“And my view is, if it’s good enough for one region of the country, then it's good enough for all regions of the country,” he added.
“I’m getting emails from residents with examples of their home heating bill where the federal portion of the carbon tax is equal to and in some cases greater than what the delivery cost is. People are concerned about it.”
He says he has received a lot of emails and social media messages over the last several days since the Conservatives proposed the motion, asking for him to support it.
“Of course I’m going to support it. The question is whether the Liberals are going to support it,” Brassard said.
“Heating your home is not a luxury in this country,” he added. “It's a necessity. And there is no reason, whether it’s by home heating oil or by natural gas, or other forms of gas like propane, predominantly in rural areas, that the rest of Canada shouldn’t have the same exemption that Atlantic Canada has.”
Brassard says the carbon tax should not be applied to energy for heating homes in Canada, and he cites a Leger poll saying “70 per cent of people didn’t want to pay the carbon tax.”
A September 2023 Leger poll states 38 per cent of Ontario residents want the carbon tax eliminated in its entirety — 37 per cent of Canadians, overall. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of Ontarians want it frozen at current levels (27 per cent of Canadians, overall).
When asked about how many homes in the riding of Barrie-Innisfil use home heating oiI, he says he does not know the data.
“But obviously, in urban settings, people heat their homes with natural gas,” Brassard said.
“In the more rural settings, you just have to drive around to see propane is a predominant source of home heat, so eliminating the carbon tax from natural gas and off propane maintains equitability based on what's happening in Atlantic Canada to what’s happening here.”
He doesn’t think the government should be “punishing or penalizing people for heating their homes with a carbon tax that, quite frankly, has been ineffective in lowering emissions right across the country.
“The government has collected billions and billions of dollars from this carbon tax but we haven’t seen results in lowering emissions, or any measurable results in lowering emissions.”
Data confirming the effectiveness of the carbon tax in helping to reduce emissions in Ontario could not be found as of publication, however, a United Nations (UN) report on revenue-neutral carbon tax in Canada notes that in British Columbia “the tax is estimated to have reduced emissions in the province by up to 15 per cent from what they would have otherwise been (Murray and Rivers, 2015).”
The same research the UN cites also indicates that “the tax has had negligible effects on overall economic performance. Between 2007 and 2014, (B.C.'s) real GDP grew 12.4 per cent stronger than the Canadian average.”
