Farmscape for October 31, 2017
The President of Keystone Agricultural Producers is applauding the Manitoba government's recently unveiled carbon pricing plan.
In September of last year the federal government announced that a carbon pricing system must be in place in all provinces by the end of 2018.
On Friday the Manitoba Government made public its proposed provincial plan.
Dan Mazier, the President of Keystone Agricultural Producers, says heading into the development of the plan agriculture's biggest concern was the issue of competitiveness and the fear that the industry could be taxed out of out of the market place when competing with farmers in other jurisdictions, especially the United States, who won't be facing such costs and that taxes on heavy emitters would be passed to farmers adding to their costs.
Clip-Dan Mazier-Keystone Agricultural Producers:
I would say they very much listened and we got a lot of what we asked for.
We did get the exemptions on the purpose fuels, the marked fuels, that's a for sure.
Also they explained how they were gong to deal with heavy emitters such as fertilizer manufactures like Koch here in Brandon and what that meant.
Basically they've taken the federal approach and an output based approach.
They're going to set them at a standard right across Canada and they're going to be compared to that so, if they emit more than the average fertilizer manufacturer in Canada, they'll be taxed and if they do better they'll actually get a carbon credit and that's part of that funding and all of that but they're not going to be paying from zero up which was a concern all last winter.
That was going to cost up to 20 dollars a maker and there was a lot of concern around that.
Mazier acknowledges the provincial plan has not yet been discussed by KAP's full membership but, judging from past discussions and resolutions on the issue, he is confident members will be supportive of the provincial plan.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork
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