B.C. municipal governments, spurred by Nelson City Council, want the province to keep its consumer carbon tax.
Participants at the annual Union of BC Municipalities conference voted on Sept. 20 in favour of a Nelson resolution that would redirect the tax revenue to help municipalities cope with the effects of climate change.
The vote follows Premier David Eby's Sept.12 statement that if elected he could scrap the consumer portion of the carbon tax if it is discontinued at the federal level, as federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to do if his party is elected.
The Conservative Party of B.C. has also promised to get rid of the carbon tax if elected in the Oct. 19 provincial election.
As the UBCM conference was winding down on its last day, Nelson councillor Rik Logtenberg introduced the motion asking that the province modernize carbon pricing to support local governments.
"Climate change represents a host of unavoidable costs to local governments," he said, citing flooding, wildfires and infrastructure upgrades.
Such a last-minute motion at the large multi-day conference would not usually make it to the voting stage, Logtenberg said, but this one was accepted as an emergency resolution and passed overwhelmingly by delegates representing municipalities and regional districts from across the province.
"This resolution," said Logtenberg, "is a message from B.C. municipalities to the premier (and to all parties) that we need to protect the carbon pricing system as a vital source of revenue for local governments to respond to climate change."
Logtenberg cited a current construction project in Nelson as an example of climate-related costs that should not be borne by the city.
"The Civic Centre is a huge carbon cost to taxpayers just to heat that building, with the amount of emissions," he said. "It is tens of millions of dollars to do that work, and from the day we initially began to work on that building to today, the costs have increased three times if not more due to inflation."
Other examples of Nelson projects necessitated by climate change and drought include the upgrading of the city's storm sewer system, the addition of more drinking water sources, the EcoSave energy efficiency program, and the FireSmart program.
The UBCM executive can now use the resolution to advocate for the protection and improvement of carbon pricing in their meetings with the next government, Logtenberg said.
Since the UBCM conference, B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau has stated that if elected her party would keep the carbon tax and improve it by increasing the rebate to consumers, increasing the price on emissions, making emissions costlier for polluters, and using the proceeds to fund climate action.
