Smaller businesses to start receiving carbon rebates today

About 600,000 small businesses will start receiving their long-awaited federal carbon rebates today.

The federal government has promised to return about $2.5 billion collected from small and medium-sized businesses through carbon pricing since 2019.

The initial plan was to return the money annually through various programs to encourage energy-efficiency investments, but those mostly failed to materialize.

Small businesses had complained repeatedly they were paying a significant portion of carbon pricing collected by Ottawa but were getting nothing back because 90 per cent of the revenue collected was returned in rebates to households.

Individual businesses will start receiving their rebates today. The amounts will depend on which provinces the businesses operate in and how many workers they employ.

The funds were to go out next month but Small Business Minister Rechie Valdez told a news conference in Ottawa on Monday that payments are being sent now instead.

Valdez said a small business with 10 employees in Winnipeg can expect to receive $4,810, a business in Mississauga with 50 employees will receive $20,050 and a medium-sized business in Calgary with 200 employees will receive $118,200.

The rebates affect smaller companies with lower emissions that don't trigger the big industrial carbon pricing system. These businesses pay the same carbon price as individuals do on things like natural gas for heat and gasoline for fleet vehicles.

Big industrial companies with high amounts of greenhouse gas emissions instead pay the carbon price on a portion of their actual emissions.

At the same news conference, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland urged opposition parties to co-operate with the government so it can pass legislation to provide a GST/HST holiday on some essential goods that would start on Dec. 14 and run through Feb. 15, 2025.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the affordability measure last week as well. The federal government also plans to cut $250 cheques in spring 2025 for working Canadians who made $150,000 or less last year. 

In October, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said he estimates the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The final tally for last year's deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.

Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at that level, and said in her spring budget it would stay in line with the promise.

The new fiscal guardrail was part of an effort to quell fears that high government spending would fuel price growth and undermine the Bank of Canada's inflation-taming efforts.

Asked Monday whether the government surpassed its fiscal guardrail and when public accounts would become available for viewing, Freeland pivoted to the Conservatives, saying their filibustering has been "blocking routine Parliamentary business."

"I'm glad to have this opportunity to say to the Conservatives that it is high time to stop these dilatory games and to let Parliament do its job," she said. "We do intend to publish a fall economic statement and the public accounts."