In part 1 of the bill, there are situations where some people will have the right to use exemption certificates. If you want to talk mainly about farmers, I can talk about farmers.
As a general rule, as I explained in my presentation the other day, the people who pay the fuel levy are distributors or wholesalers who sell these products. It isn't the buyer who pays, generally. So, if it is in compliance, the exemption certificate allows the fuel supplier not to pay the fuel levy. Since the fuel supplier doesn't pay this fee, the value isn't included in the price charged by the fuel vendor.
As far as a farmers are concerned, they will have to provide a certificate of exemption. It isn't something that the Canada Revenue Agency gives to the farmer, but rather the farmer who produces the certificate in the manner specified by the agency.
There are a number of conditions that must be indicated in the exemption certificate, which is a document in which a person certifies certain facts. If these facts are certified, the seller may not pay the fuel levy. There are four things that farmers have to certify in the document. First, they must certify that they are farmers. Then they have to certify that the fuel is delivered to a place that is a farm. The third condition is that the fuel will be used exclusively in the operation of eligible farming machinery. The fourth condition is that all, or almost all, of the fuel will be used for eligible farming activities. If these four conditions are met, the distributor does not have to pay the fuel levy itself, and the farmer does not have to pay that cost either.
The concepts of farmer, eligible farming machinery and eligible farming activity are all defined in the bill. So, a farmer is defined as a person who operates a farming business in a reasonable expectation of profit. Eligible farming machinery generally consists of property that is primarily used for agricultural purposes: it must be a farm truck, a tractor, an industrial machine, a portable engine, or a vehicle that is not licensed to be operated on a public road. However, this eligible machinery doesn't include an automobile, as defined in the Income Tax Act, nor property used for providing heating or cooling to a building or similar structure.