While the former Minister of Environment Catherine McKenna publicly denied that the Liberals would be hiking the carbon tax to exceed $50 a tonne, documents obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter reveals that the Department of Environment was planning an increase as far back as February 2017.
“The overall price will be reviewed in 2022 to ensure that it is effective and to confirm future price increases,” stated Briefing Material For Canada’s Climate Change Envoy.
The document mentioned a potential carbon tax increase more than once and confirmed that the government didn’t believe that the current rate of the carbon tax was sufficient in reaching its emission targets.
“The overall approach to pricing carbon pollution will be reviewed by 2022 to ensure that it is effective and to confirm the path forward, including future price increases. The review will consider potential competitiveness impacts and will account for actions by other countries,” claimed the note.
Documents from the Department of Employment placed the projected revenue from the carbon tax to be $5.7 billion by the 2022-2023 period.
Although bureaucrats were already aware that the carbon tax would be reviewed and potentially increased, McKenna was telling the public that there were no plans to increase the carbon tax.
“The price will not go up. The plan is not to increase the price post-2022. We are doing exactly what we said we’d do,” McKenna told the public on June 13, 2019.
Recently, current Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson revealed that the government intends on reviewing the $50 cap in 2022 in light of new reports detailing that Canada would have to raise the tax to $210 a tonne by 2030 to reach emission targets.
When introducing the tax, the Liberal government also ensured Canadians that the tax would be “revenue neutral” for the government in the form of tax rebates. However, earlier this month it was revealed that the Liberals were reducing the rebate for Canadians in provinces that are fighting the federal carbon tax.
