Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew says the province dropped the ball on helping farmers lower their costs.
He claims the government never completed a survey looking at the cost of the federal carbon tax on grain drying and heating of barns.
"It's disappointing that the province didn't actually do the work of summing up the cost of the carbon tax," stated Kinew. "Because if they would have presented those numbers and presented a really strong case to the federal government, I think there's a good chance that the federal government would have actually given that exemption. They would have actually given a break to farmers, at least for this year."
Manitoba Agriculture & Resource Development Minister Blaine Pedersen had this response.
"This is the same NDP that wants to have a $300 per tonne carbon tax on everyone and there isn't a tax that the NDP doesn't like, so for them to claim great negotiating skills is ridiculous."
Keystone Agricultural Producers recently sent a letter to Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, asking the government to reconsider providing an exemption for those carbon tax costs. Bibeau had previously stated that the costs weren't high enough to warrant an exemption.
In the letter, KAP provided the following example:
A corn grower in Manitoba, growing 250 acres of corn spent $33,664 on propane to dry their crop in 2019. The carbon tax added another $1,043 to their fuel bill or 3%. A Manitoba chicken farmer heating their barn from October 24, 2019 – January 21, 2020 spent $5,935.10 on natural gas. The carbon tax added another $1,315.17 to their fuel bill or 22.16%. These costs are going to increase as the fuel charge rates rise. Our data projects that the same farmer drying the same 250 acres of corn will pay almost $3,400 in carbon tax alone in 2022, the year in which the federal government has proposed a freeze on increases to the carbon tax. The same chicken farmer heating the same barn will pay over $5,000 in carbon tax in 2022.
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