B.C. Greens would keep carbon tax but increase rebate: Furstenau

B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau says her party would maintain a price on carbon but put larger rebates into people's pockets.

B.C. taxpayers currently get quarterly rebates to offset its cost.

While B.C. NDP Leader David Eby and Conservative Party of B.C. Leader John Rustad are promising to end the tax, either in part or completely, Furstenau said she would be focused on reforming, rather than eliminating, carbon pricing in the province.

"Carbon pollution is expensive, and to not have a price on that, to not have a price that we then return back to people, that we return to communities, so that they can become more resilient in the face of these climate events, is folly," she said.

Furstenau said closing a series of loopholes she sees in the current policy, including carbon offsets for companies, would bring in more than an extra $1 billion, which then could be used to increase the rebate sent to British Columbians.

"We will increase the price of carbon, but unlike before, we will not be a burden on the household budgets of people," she said.

"Because with the rebate increasing, with the price of carbon being fair and applied to the biggest polluters the way it needs to be, people will see bigger rebates."

Furstenau said a portion of the revenue would also go to municipalities, something that was requested by delegates at the Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention in the lead-up to the election campaign.

It was at that same convention that Conservative Party of B.C. Leader John Rustad told delegates that while he believes humans are contributing to climate change, "taxing people into poverty is not going to change the weather."

Rustad said he wants to take "a different approach" to addressing the province's changing climate and mentioned issues such as food production, water management and infrastructure while offering few details.

And while Eby and the B.C. NDP have been hammering Rustad over past comments and social media posts that cast doubt over climate change science, Eby's party has also adjusted its position on a carbon tax.

At a campaign event on Sept. 12, Eby said a re-elected NDP government would scrap British Columbia's long-standing tax and shift the burden to "big polluters" if the federal government dropped the legal requirement, critiquing how the tax had been handled by the previous B.C. Liberal government, which Rustad was a part of.

LISTEN | A history of B.C.'s carbon tax: 

On The Coast10:00Carbon tax, explained

Felix Pretis, an associate professor at the University of Victoria’s economics department, explains what the carbon tax is, and how it has affected emissions in B.C. over the last 10 years.

The Green leader said she's not focused on how her policy position would mesh with the other leaders in the event of a minority government provincially.

"We are being transparent about where we stand. We are putting out evidence-based solutions. We want the other parties to catch up with us. I'm not focused on what is going to happen after the election," she said.