Bill C-234 Exempting Carbon Tax for Farmers Moves to Senate

By Harry Siemens

Bill C-234 will extend an exemption related to carbon pricing for on-farm propane and natural gas uses. According to the Canola Growers of Alberta having this exemption is a relief for grain drying operations.

To support farmers in their efforts, Bill C-234 seeks to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to extend the exemption for qualifying farming fuel to marketable natural gas and propane. In addition, the current carbon price rebate, introduced last year through Bill C-8, needs to fully account for the individual breadth of carbon surcharges applied to farms.

Farmers pay a carbon price on essential farming activities such as irrigation, grain drying, feed preparation, barns heating or cooling, and other agricultural growing structures.

Bill C-234 would provide an exemption, limited to on-farm fuel use for these necessary farm practices, allowing farmers to invest their money in the efficien-

The bill passed third reading with a 176-146 vote, as agriculture committee chair Kody Blois and two other Liberal MPs from Prince Edward Island voted in favour with the Conservative, New Democrat, Bloc Quebecois,

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dalhousie University said the bill went through the first reading at Senate and

“It’s a Private member’s bill...no timeline, Senate can take forever, but it seems to have support by good leadership right now…,” said Charlebois. That’s as of the middle of April 2023.

Gunter Jochum, president of the Wheat Growers Association said it primarily covers fuel for grain drying, which is natural gas and propane used for drying grain and the fuel like propane or natural gas for heating barns. It may not cover the electricity used in those operations.

“A bigger factor for farmers is that somebody takes grain off tough every year. Many farms don’t have dryers, so they rely on the elevator to dry their grain,” said Jochum, “The elevators with dryers will charge the farmer drying costs.”

He said it’s a line item on the check farmers get for that grain, highlighting their drying costs. But, the fuel that the elevators use to dry farmers’ grain is not exempt under that bill. The exemption is only for the fuel used on the farm.

“It’s good because it’s a step in the right direction,” said Jochum. “We got an exemption for some things we do on the farm. But, ideally, we want to see the carbon tax completely scrapped from food production. It’s a terrible tax to have on primary food production.”

The CFIB did a study that showed the carbon tax collects over $8 billion a year, and small businesses including most farms are receiving less than one per cent of the carbon tax back. In turn, that means that those small businesses will have to raise the costs of the goods they sell.

“And so who ends up paying? It’s the everyday Canadian like you and I and everybody else’” said Jochum. “And it is not revenue neutral. It is a complete drain on all Canadians.”