Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm the director general of the sales and excise tax division at the Department of Finance. I'm going to talk briefly about clauses 81 to 86. These propose to implement the new THC-based duty rate on certain cannabis products. This proposal builds on the cu

Agriculture committee  I can respond directly on why, perhaps, it would be a support program rather than an exemption. There are a couple of reasons. There are some technical issues. For example, the delivery of natural gas and propane is slightly different from the delivery of gasoline and diesel, w

Agriculture committee  I think that's a question you'd have to pose to the minister and to the government. I can explain the policy that's being put forward in the budget and maybe talk about Bill C-206, but I couldn't answer that question. I'm sorry.

Agriculture committee  I might have to turn to my colleagues at Agriculture and Environment to see if they may be aware of those.

Agriculture committee  I can certainly give you my view as an official from the Department of Finance. I want to give you a caveat first, though, which is that the administration of the GGPPA, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, is the responsibility of the Canada Revenue Agency. Ultimately, fo

Agriculture committee  That's our view, yes. If you had a combine harvester that ran on propane or natural gas, then it would be relieved of the fuel. However, it's too vague. We don't think it's specific enough with regard to heating or grain-drying equipment.

Agriculture committee  Yes, precisely. I can walk you through the $100-million figure. You start with the four provinces in which the backstop applies: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Using data from Statistics Canada on farm operating expenditures, it's roughly $50 billion annually in tho

Agriculture committee  Unfortunately, you're right. It is early days. It's too early to be specific about that. Those details are still being determined. I wouldn't say it would be a per capita basis, necessarily. That's one of several options and one of many dimensions across which you could return th

Agriculture committee  That's correct, and that's the intention of the two measures announced in the recent budget. One is to maintain the price signal, but returning the funds where it's not possible to adopt more efficient machinery or technology. The second aspect, which my colleague Matt spoke to,

Agriculture committee  I should clarify. I did not personally draft the GGPPA. We have a team of very capable legislative drafters at the Department of Finance. There is no exemption in the bill for propane and natural gas use. If I understand your question correctly, the measure posed in the budget d

Agriculture committee  No, we haven't consulted. I think you probably would have heard that via the committee and via witnesses you have had. I can imagine that it's an argument for the farmers to make themselves, that they would probably prefer a complete exemption from this rather than the money co

Agriculture committee  Yes, thank you, again with a caveat that it would be up to the CRA to finally determine this. Our view at the Department of Finance would be that yes, it is a bit too vague, and in fact you yourself, in your question, just mentioned that it “could”. It talks about an industrial

Agriculture committee  I don't know that's the specific reason. I think it's probably because the bulk of the fuels used on farms are gasoline and light fuel oil or diesel—

Agriculture committee  One of the considerations that would go into this is that farmers are trade-exposed. There is a limit to how much they can pass prices along, and I think that's reflected in the overall carbon-pricing regime, in which, as we heard at the beginning, the vast majority of emissions

Agriculture committee  Yes, certainly, and it would be to reiterate an answer that I provided slightly earlier. That portion will be $100 million at a price of $40 per tonne on carbon, and as the price goes up, that $100 million will go up too. However, that just looks at the total operating expendit