The federal government is keeping the information they relied on to decide against exempting grain dryers from the carbon tax to themselves.
Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says her department analyzed information through the Agriculture Taxation Data Program and figured out the carbon tax applied to grain dryers would cost someone between 210 and 819 dollars per year.
She adds, that is at most 0.42 per cent of revenues, which isn’t high enough to exempt grain dryers as they did for fuels used to heat greenhouses or run farm vehicles.
Bibeau’s spokesman says the analysis won’t be made public at this time and refers back to the 2-year-old report that estimated the added costs of the carbon tax for farms.
A conservative MP from Alberta, John Barlow, says he’s being flooded with bills from farmers that he says show Bibeau’s estimates are “completely out of touch.”
Barlow says some farmers are showing bills in excess of $10,000 for the carbon tax.
