In a recent social media video, the owners of Dutchbern Farms in South Glengarry highlight their $1,000-a-day carbon tax, with Eastern Ontario MP Eric Duncan (left), last fall.
Mushroom farm paid $16,000 in one month in carbon tax for natural gas
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — Sparked by the Ottawa grinches who stole farmers’ carbon-tax relief before Christmas, a new campaign is underway to collect data from farm energy bills and “set the record straight” about the burden imposed on agriculture.
In December, Liberal-appointed senators derailed a private member’s bill that would have removed the carbon tax from propane and natural gas used for on-farm barn-heating and grain-drying. By insisting on amendments to Bill C-234, the involved senators prevented relief from coming into effect and instead ensured the bill’s return to the House of Commons where it’s likely to remain tied up indefinitely. An attempt to immediately return the bill to the Senate in original, unamended form failed to get the necessary unanimous consent in the House.
The bill is opposed by the governing minority Trudeau Liberals — and doubly so after the prime minister, in an embarrassing retreat from his key policy, cut the carbon tax from home heating oil to placate voters in Atlantic Canada at the end of October.
Enter the new #ShowYourReceipts campaign organized by the Agriculture Carbon Alliance. The coalition of 15 farm organizations has set up an online upload portal for farmers to share their fuel bills with the Alliance (See agcarbonalliance.ca/show-your-receipts.) The group says it will anonymize the data and use the information to educate government ministers, MPs and senators on the actual costs of the tax to agriculture.
“Our goal is to provide them with an exact understanding of what farmers, growers and ranchers pay and why farmers need Bill C-234 in its original form,” the website says.
The awareness strategy borrows a page from others who have gone public with the eye-popping carbon-tax costs carried by farmers.
Carleton Mushroom Farms’ plight has been highlighted repeatedly by Official Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre (CON — Carleton). “Justin Trudeau’s Christmas gift to one farm in my riding: $16,000 in carbon taxes in a month. Wonder why you can’t afford food?” Poilievre posted on X (formerly Twitter) with a photo of the $72,050 natural gas bill — covering Nov. 9 to Dec. 6, 2023 — at the Medeiros family mushroom operation. That total cost includes the jaw-dropping carbon tax figure as a line item on just over 129,500 cubic meters of natural gas consumed.
The monthly carbon-tax charged incurred on Carleton Mushrooms’ natural gas bill, as posted on X by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
Cornwall-area MP Eric Duncan (CON — Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry) drew similar attention to the $1,000 carbon tax imposed daily — yes, daily — on local cash-cropper Berny Dirven’s propane bill during the grain-drying season.
“There’s thousands of farms like this across the country that deserve the same carve-out and exemption from the carbon tax,” Duncan said in a Nov. 20 video post from Dutchbern Farms in Bainsville. The farm’s two most recent daily propane bills were $6,056 and $6,362, including respective carbon-tax charges of $975 and $1,008. That’s a 22 % tax on the farm’s propane bill when you include the HST that is also collected on top of the carbon tax, Dirven said.
One of the monthly propane bills at Dutchbern Farms, showing a carbon tax of over $1,000 from the grain dryer.
However, Ottawa’s carbon-tax adherents are touting their own numbers. In December, Justin Trudeau declared in the House that the average farm pays less than $1,000 per year in carbon taxes on natural gas, while ultimately dismissing Poilievre’s complaint on behalf of Carleton Mushrooms. And on the day that Bill C-234 was sent into limbo by the Senate, Quebec Senator Pierre Dalphond — sponsor of an amendment that helped sideline the bill — posted Statistics Canada numbers showing a 7.9 % increase in Canadian farmers’ cash receipts in the first 9 months of 2023.
The carbon tax on a litre of propane currently sits at 10 cents. That’s set to rise to just over 12 cents on April 1, with a series of increases scheduled to bring the charge up to 26 cents per litre in 2030 if the Trudeau Liberals remain in power. In the Dutchbern Farms example, the recent pre-tax price for propane was 45 to 46 cents per litre.
The carbon tax on a cubic meter of natural gas will rise to just over 15 cents on April 1, up from the current 12.3 cents. It’s slated to hit just over 32 cents in 2030.
