Business
Mark Carney’s carbon tax plan hurts farmers

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Liberal leadership front-runner Mark Carney recently announced his carbon tax plan and here are some key points.
It’s expensive for Canadians.
It’s even more expensive for farmers.
Carney announced he would immediately remove the consumer carbon tax if he became prime minister.
That sounds like good news, but it’s important to read the fine print.
Carney went on and announced that he would be “integrating a new consumer carbon credit market into the industrial pricing system.” Carney also said he would “improve and tighten” the industrial carbon tax and impose carbon tax tariffs on imports into Canada.
If that sounds like Carney isn’t getting rid of the carbon tax, that’s because he isn’t. He’s trying to hide the costs from Canadians by imposing higher carbon taxes on businesses.
What that means is that Carney’s plan would tax businesses and then businesses will pass those costs onto consumers.
That also means farmers.
Under the current carbon tax, farmers have an exemption from the carbon tax on the gas and diesel they use on their farm. The hidden industrial carbon tax is applied directly to industry. Businesses are forced to pay the carbon tax if they emit above the government’s prescribed limit.
But businesses don’t just swallow those costs. They pass them on. The trucking industry is a great example.
“Due to razor thin margins in the trucking industry, these added costs cannot be absorbed and must be passed on to customers,” said the Canadian Trucking Alliance when analyzing the current Trudeau carbon tax.
The same concept applies to the Carney scheme.
If Carney removes the consumer carbon tax and replaces it with a higher tax on businesses under the hidden industrial carbon tax, that means more costs for farmers.
There isn’t any exemption for farmers under the industrial carbon tax. Oil and gas refineries will be paying a higher carbon tax and they will be forced to pass that cost onto their consumers. Farmers use a lot of fuel.
The pain doesn’t stop there. Farmers also use a lot of fertilizer and Carney’s carbon tax means higher costs for fertilizer plants. Then farmers will be stuck paying more for fertilizer.
Some businesses, like those fertilizer plants, could pack up and move production south. But farmers are still going to need fertilizer. Carney’s plan compounds the pain with carbon tax tariffs.
Fertilizer is only one example. If Canadian farmers need to buy a part to fix equipment that can only come from the U.S., it could be more expensive because of Carney’s carbon tax tariffs.
This will hurt Canadian farmers when they’re buying supplies. But it’ll also hurt when farmers when they go to market. Canadian farmers compete with farmers around the world and majority of them aren’t paying carbon taxes.
Farmers wouldn’t be at a disadvantage because American farmers are smarter or farm better, but because, under Carney’s carbon tax, they would be stuck paying costs competitors don’t have to pay. And farmers know this all too well.
“My competitors to the south of me in the United States do not pay that [carbon] tax, so now my cost goes up and I have no alternative,” said Jeff Barlow, a corn, wheat and soybean farmer in Ontario. “By penalizing me there’s nothing else that I can do but just be penalized.”
And if farmers won’t be the only ones hurt.
Families across Canada are struggling with grocery prices and increasing the cost of production for farmers certainly won’t lower those prices.
Carney says that he wants to cancel the consumer tax because it’s too “divisive.” That statement misses the nail completely and hammers the thumb. Canadians don’t want to get rid of the carbon tax because of perception, they want to get rid of it because it makes life more expensive.
Carney needs to commit to getting rid of carbon taxes, not rebranding the failed policy into something that could end up costing Canadians and farmers even more.
Business
Top Canadian bank ditches UN-backed ‘net zero’ climate goals it helped create

From LifeSiteNews
RBC’s dropping of its ‘net zero’ finance targets came just one day after the Liberal Party under Mark Carney was re-elected in Canada.
Just one day after the re-election of the Liberal Party under Mark Carney, the Royal Bank of Canada joined the growing list of top banks withdrawing from a United Nations-backed “net zero” alliance that supports the eventual elimination of the nation’s oil and gas industry in the name of “climate change.”
The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) on Tuesday quietly dumped its UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) sustainable finance targets, which called for banks to come in line with the push for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The NZBA is a subgroup of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which Carney was co-chair of until recently.
RBC’s departure comes despite the fact that it was one of the NZBA’s founding members.
RBC joins Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Bank of Montreal (BMO), National Bank of Canada, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) who earlier in the year said they were withdrawing from the NZBA.
The bank announced the move away from a green agenda in its 2024 sustainability report, noting it would no longer look to pursue a $500 billion sustainable finance goal. It cited changes to Canada’s federal Competition Act as the reason.
The changes to the act, known as the “greenwashing law,” now mandate that companies provide proof of their environmental claims.
“We have reviewed our methodology and have concluded that it may not have appropriately measured certain of our sustainable finance activities,” noted RBC in its report.
RBC also noted it would not make public any of its metrics regarding its energy supply ratio.
Monday’s election saw Liberal leader Carney beat out Conservative rival Poilievre, who also lost his seat. The Conservatives managed to pick up over 20 new seats, however, and Poilievre has vowed to stay on as party leader, for now.
Carney worked as the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England and spent many years promoting green financial agendas.
The GFANZ was formed in 2021 while Carney was its co-chair. He resigned from his role in the alliance right before he announced he would run for Liberal leadership to replace former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Large U.S. banks such as Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo and Bank of America have all withdrawn from the group as well.
Since taking office in 2015, the Liberal government, first under Trudeau and now under Carney, has continued to push a radical environmental agenda in line with those promoted by the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.” Part of this push includes the promotion of so called net-zero energy by as early as 2035.
Business
Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

From the Montreal Economic Institute
The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.
“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”
Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.
Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.
In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.
It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.
The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.
The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.
In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.
A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.
The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:
- What is the purpose of the regulation?
- Does it serve the public interest?
- What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
- What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
- Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
- Is there a net benefit?
According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.
“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”
The MEI Viewpoint is available here.
* * *
The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
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