OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is sounding the alarm over today's Canada-Alberta Implementation Agreement for hiking the industrial carbon tax.

“Politicians should be getting rid of carbon taxes, not hiking them,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It doesn't matter how politicians dress up their carbon taxes, all carbon taxes make life more expensive and make Canadian businesses less competitive.

“The carbon tax hike is a certainty, a pipeline is a maybe.”

The federal and Alberta governments confirmed today that Albertans will pay a higher industrial carbon tax starting next year.

“When we signed the MOU in November, an oversupply of credits had driven [industrial carbon tax] as low as $20 per tonne,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told the media covering the announcement today.

“Credits are trading at $40 per tonne, compared with the current federal headline price of $110 per tonne,” according to the Implementation Agreement documents. “The effective price – the market value of carbon credits and offsets in Alberta – will rise to $130 in 2040.”

Today’s announcement means a higher industrial carbon tax.

Carney previously said that by “changing the carbon tax … We are making the large companies pay for everybody.”

Earlier this week, Cenovus Energy CEO Jon McKenzie said no other oil-producing nation maintains an industrial carbon tax and the tax “incents industry to invest outside of Canada.”

“We have created a set of national policies and regulations that make resource development and investment in Canada uncompetitive with the rest of the world,” McKenzie said.

A Leger poll shows 68 per cent of Canadians believe businesses pass most or some of the cost of the industrial carbon tax on to consumers. Meanwhile, just 12 per cent believe businesses pay most of the cost.

“Hardworking Albertans and their job sites will be paying higher carbon taxes starting right after Christmas, but there's no guarantee we'll ever get another pipeline,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “Instead of hammering Albertans with higher carbon tax costs, Premier Danielle Smith should have told Carney to stop roadblocking development and to scrap all of his carbon taxes so businesses can build pipelines with their own money.”

The CTF recently testified in Parliament’s environment committee calling on the federal government to scrap the industrial carbon tax.