Two days into the 20th legislative assembly, MLAs are grilling the GNWT on why residents are still paying carbon tax on home heating fuel up front.
During oral question period, Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart asked Finance Minister Caroline Wawzonek why the process is taking so long.
“On Nov. 8 of last year, the federal government exempted home heating fuel as part of their carbon pricing regime for three years,” said Testart. “I’m just wondering why it’s taken so long to get to this point after the decision was made by the federal government.”
Wawzonek said she had been examining options, particularly how removing the tax on home heating fuel would affect government revenue and how it would affect other aspects of the GNWT’s carbon tax law.
She noted her department has asked the federal government if it can extend a full exemption across the NWT for all fuels and has been given a hard no.
However, she pointed out that all carbon taxes paid on home heating fuel, as well as on propane, natural gas and carbon-intensive forms of home heating are all reimbursed by the NWT’s carbon tax subsidy. She added that she’s working to ensure homes heated by heating oil, which according to the GNWT is in use “everywhere in the NWT, but to a lesser extent in Norman Wells, Hay River, and Inuvik” are able to avoid paying the tax at the front-end, like jurisdictions currently under the federal carbon tax program.
Wawzonek said anyone who has filed taxes received rebates in October and January and will receive another one in April.
“I can’t change the cost of fuel. I can only impact on the cost of the tax and rebates for the tax,” she said. “To that extent, our rebate system was taking into account the higher costs of the tax so the rebate system we designed, in fact, more than paid for the average cost of impact of carbon tax on average residents in the Northwest Territories.
“The fact that (the federal government) changed these goalposts is exactly why I wanted to hang on to the carbon tax administration here in the Northwest Territories so that we can continue to adapt as we need to as much as possible to conform to what the realities are that we see here for residents in the territories.”
More than 17,000 people were evacuated from the territory last fall after climate change-fueled wildfires put many of the communities in danger. The hamlet of Enterprise was almost completely destroyed and remains largely uninhabited. Low water flow because of reduced glaciers has limited hydroelectric power generation in the territory and limited the range of barge supplies. The NWT Water Monitor Bulletin reports that Great Slave Lake is at it’s lowest ever recorded water level for this time of the year.