A carbon tax has the potential to suck all profit out of agriculture in Canada
According to the Western Canadian Wheat Growers, the federal government doesn’t seem to understand that the carbon tax impacts farmers’ bottom lines. The carbon tax gets added to almost everything we buy, but unlike many consumer goods, we cannot pass it on to the end consumer. We sell our grain on the world market.
The 2019 harvest was extremely hard – flooding, rain and multiple snowstorms across the prairies mean that we’re using grain dryers A LOT! Dryers are a great technology, but running them isn’t cheap. To add insult to injury, the federal government adds on a carbon tax and tags on the GST.
“Upon the swearing-in of the new ministers, we sent a strong message to Ottawa urging the federal government to eliminate the carbon tax on farm-related inputs and energy,” said the Wheat Growers. “But we also want to show the federal government the impact of their actions.”
Please sign our “NoFarmCarbonTax” petition and tell us how much carbon tax you’ve paid.
“We’ll send your petition response to the Minister of Agriculture and Food as well as the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. Let’s flood their inboxes with your concerns.”
I support the Wheat Growers whole-heartedly, and so should all farmers, including the Keystone Agricultural Producers, hog, beef, dairy, potato, poultry producer organizations. Please go to Wheat Growers or https://wheatgrowers.ca/end-carbon-tax/
William Pallister farms at Portage la Prairie, MB and is a director with WCWG.
He explained to me what this petition is about and what farmers and suppliers should do with it.
“Most farmers are aware that this harvest was pretty much the most difficult one on record. And then to boot, once we went to put our grain into the grain dryer, we realized that there was a carbon tax on top of the propane and the natural gas that we use in drying our grain and preventing it from spoiling in the bin,” said William. “So as a farmer organization, the Wheat Growers have launched a petition on www.nofarmcarbontax.com, but there’s a second part where you can enter your grain drying, your propane and natural gas bill with the carbon tax portion on that. And once you enter it, it’s anonymous. We start tallying up the total carbon tax that farmers pay so that we can go to Ottawa with sharper teeth.”
As a farmer and as a director of a farm organization Pallister said this is unfair because there are absolutely no alternatives to drying our grain other than propane and natural gas.
“So far, the response is good because it frustrates farmers to no end, and so we’re going to get a response from them on that because it’s extremely unfair. There are no other alternatives. It’s not like there’s a green alternative to drying your grain. You have to use fossil fuels. So a carbon tax is just a money grab for Ottawa. That’s all it is.”
Next, he told me about their harvest.
“Oh, it was extremely tough. After wheat harvest, once it started to rain, we had to dry every kernel, but we did get harvest completed. The yields are pretty poor actually, just because we didn’t have any rain all summer. So the drought all summer punished us, and then it didn’t stop raining all harvest,” he said.
The rate changes from location to location, making it even more confusing. In Manitoba, they call it a Carbon Surcharge and usually just a line item towards the bottom.
“The confusing thing is that across Western Canada it ranges in how much the tax is. Sometimes it’s 17 per cent of your bill. Other times it’s up to 43 per cent. It raises the cost of drying your grain substantially. It’s a tax on everything because once you deliver your grain to the elevator, then the shippers pay a carbon tax, the elevators pay a carbon tax on their grain drying. And then when you receive inputs as well, there’s a carbon tax on top of the transportation costs,” said Pallister.
“A carbon tax has the potential to suck all of the profit out of agriculture in Canada.” •