Jonathan Wilkinson expressed disappointment in Jagmeet Singh and David Eby over their flip-flopping on the carbon tax, but acknowledged that the two cases were different.The Liberal energy minister said he agreed with the British Columbia premier that more needed to be done to ensure the tax was balanced with affordability, and suggested the province might be better off adopting a federal pricing system."This is a man who has voted many times in favour of a price on pollution, and he is now essentially saying that he has no plan to address climate change," Wilkinson said of Singh when asked by the Western Standard at a press conference in West Vancouver. "There are effectively two parties federally in this country who have climate plans."He went on to contextualize Eby's announcement, pointing out that BC, "has been a leader with climate change," with, "a comprehensive climate plan which includes investments, regulations, and a price on pollution.""Eby's comments yesterday were interesting," Wilkinson added. "I would say I agree with them, in terms of affordability, that we have to ensure that we're implementing carbon pricing, and anything else, that it's affordable."He acknowledged that the challenge BC has faced is that, "at a retail level, … not a lot of money is actually returned to consumers.""The federal system," he argued, "ensures that eight out of ten families get more money back than they pay, and it works in reverse to income, so it's the people who live on the most modest means that actually are better off because of the carbon price. So certainly here in British Columbia, if the concern is about addressing affordability, perhaps they want to consider having the federal system put in place."In his announcement, Eby said he would end the consumer carbon tax if the federal government removed the regulation requiring the province have one.Wilkinson broke down the difference between that and industrial carbon tax, explaining that the former, "essentially puts a price on pollution associated with the utilization of gas, and gasoline, and natural gas, and diesel," while the latter, "is focused largely on large emitters.""It uses essentially best in class performers, and drives all of the industries towards that," he added. "So the output-based pricing system is very important. I would say that it's something that many provinces have implemented in their own systems. In fact, Alberta was the first province; they implemented a federal-based pricing system way back in 2008 or 2011."
