APAS calls on Ottawa for carbon tax exemption

Agricultural producers in Saskatchewan are predicting the federal carbon tax will cause a 12 per cent hit on their incomes by 2022, according to a media release from their lobby group.

“Federal Minister of Agriculture Marie-Claude Bibeau has asked the agriculture industry for evidence of what the carbon tax is costing Canadian farmers,” Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) president Todd Lewis said in the release. “We’ve responded with estimates that are backed up by producer bills in 2019.”

The lobby group did a costing review to get its numbers.

It says its data shows that on average, Saskatchewan farmers can expect to lose eight per cent of their total net income in 2020 to the carbon tax.

“For a household managing a 5,000-acre grain farm in Saskatchewan, this will take the form of a $8,000-10,000 bill,” the APAS release said.

APAS said the costing review considered farm expenses not exempt from the carbon tax, which includes grain drying, rail transportation, heating and electricity and trucks hauling crops off the farm.

The lobby group predicted that when the carbon tax goes up to $50 per tonne in 2022, income loss for the same size and type of farm will go up between $13,000 and $17,000.

“Farmers don’t set our prices, so those increased costs are coming directly off our bottom line,” Lewis said.

APAS is using its latest data to call on Bibeau and her colleagues to issue a carbon tax exemption “on all farm expenses, including those from 2019,” the media release said.