Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has repeatedly said the government didn’t exempt propane and natural gas used in grain dryers and other farm functions because the cost to an individual farm was less than $1,000 a year. That is far below what farm groups have found from their members who actually pay the bills: Grain Farmers of Ontario show the numbers and the cost averaged to $5.50 per acre on corn, which means that on a 1,000 acre farm the carbon tax bill would be more than $5,000.
Gunter Jochum, President of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, says farmers should be outraged by the assertion the amount of carbon tax paid for grain drying during last fall’s harvest wasn’t significant enough to change the tax.
“It is shocking Minister Bibeau and her Department have arrived at this decision. As the tax comes directly out of our bottom line, grain farmers cannot pass the carbon tax imposed on them on to the end user. The Minister doesn’t understand that we compete with farmers globally who don’t have a carbon tax.
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