Canadians want to see carbon price paused on all home heating fuel, poll suggests
A shed sits at the side of a house, containing home heating oil, in Halifax, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michael MacDonald OTTAWA – A new poll suggests Canadians are broadly in favour of the federal government’s decision to exempt home heating oil from its price on carbon, and would welcome expanding the relief to all forms of home heating fuel. The governing Liberals announced last month a three-year reprieve from the carbon price for property owners who depend on heating oil, along with funding to help people make the switch to electric heat pumps. The abrupt about-face from a government that considers tackling climate change a cornerstone priority triggered an uproar in Ottawa over a controversial measure that has proven politically useful on both sides of the aisle. Climate activists denounced the reprieve as a short-sighted move that risks doing permanent damage to the Liberal government’s efforts to limit the impact of climate change. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, has vowed he would do away with the carbon price altogether as prime minister, rallying supporters at events across the country with cries of “axe the tax.” Just over half of respondents to the online Leger survey said they knew about the carve-out, while 48 per cent said they were not aware of it. Despite that, 63 per cent said they support the decision and only 37 per cent said they were opposed to it. Support was highest among those under age 44. The poll also suggests most people would be happy to see all forms of home heating fuel exempted : 70 per cent of respondents said they support an expansion, although that dropped to 58 per cent among people under 25. More than 1.2 million Canadian homes use home heating oil, according to Natural Resources Canada, and about a quarter of those are in Atlantic Canada. Almost a third of Atlantic Canadian homes rely on heating oil, meaning the policy has a disproportionate impact in that region. The Liberals have been accused by their critics of trying to save votes in Atlantic Canada. Some 78 per cent of Atlantic Canadians who took part in the survey said they were happy about the move. Opposition was highest in Quebec, where 43 per cent of respondents said they disagreed. Albertans were most likely to support an expansion to all home heating fuel, at 78 per cent, while 40 per cent of Quebec respondents felt the opposite. Asked about their grasp of the carbon pricing mechanism overall, about 44 per cent expressed a somewhat good or very good understanding, while 56 per cent said they understand it poorly or not at all. Men were more likely to say they understand the carbon price than women. Leger surveyed 1,531 people online, asking a range of questions about the carbon price. Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. OTTAWA – A Conservative private member’s bill to exempt more fuel used by farmers from the carbon price is stirring up intense lobbying efforts in the Senate, and leaving the Liberals on the verge of being forced to carve up their signature climate policy even more. Alberta Sen. Paula Simons said that the effort to convince senators of how to vote on this bill is extreme from both sides of the debate. She said she’s concerned that rhetoric is outpacing reality in every direction. “I’ve never been lobbied like this on private member’s bill,” Simons said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “This bill has become symbolic and it’s being used as a wedge issue.” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has already made eliminating the carbon price the centrepiece of his political messaging ahead of the next federal election, has launched a full-on campaign to get the bill passed. That includes new ads launched on Wednesday. The premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario all wrote letters to senators asking them to vote in favour of the bill. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has reached out to some senators himself, seeking to push the government’s reasons for not wanting the legislation to pass. Simons said senators are receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of emails about it, most of them sent by bots. Bill C-234 was introduced by Ontario Conservative MP Ben Lobb in February 2022, and passed the House of Commons last March with the support of all parties except the Liberals. The bill seeks to take the carbon price off natural gas and propane used by farmers for heating their buildings or running their grain dryers. Farmers are already exempt from the price on pollution for gasoline and diesel to run their farm vehicles and machinery, but they have said the carbon price is costing them thousands of dollars for heating barns and drying their crops. Dave Carey, co-chair of the Agriculture Carbon Alliance, told the Senate agriculture committee in September that there are “no viable alternatives” for heating and cooling livestock barns and greenhouses, or for grain drying. He said the carbon price isn’t an incentive to change, but rather is a “significant financial burden on producers who don’t have other viable options.” Tom Green, senior climate adviser at the David Suzuki Foundation, told the committee there are things farmers can do to lower their fossil-fuel use for both barns and grain dryers, pointing to poultry farms that have installed solar roofs or thick insulation that reduced their energy consumption. He also noted that the government has grant programs to help them transition to lower-emitting options, and offsets farmers’ carbon costs with a tax credit. That tax credit came into being after Bill C-234 was first introduced. It is not connected to the actual carbon price that is paid or the amount of fuel that is used, but is instead calculated based on a farm’s income. Greenhouse operators can also get 80 per cent of the carbon price taken off when they buy fuel for their greenhouse operations. “Bill C-234 sets Canada on a slippery
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