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OTTAWA — Carbon taxes have been applied unequally in different provinces, a new report from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is pointing out, with some Canadians paying as little as half a cent more per litre of gas than they were before carbon pricing came into effect.

The federal carbon tax, which was rolled out in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick on April 1, has added about 4.4 cents to the price of a litre of gasoline. The tax was applied to those four provinces because they refused to develop their own carbon prices, and is supposed to increase to 11 cents per litre by 2022.

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But in other provinces whose carbon pricing plans have the federal government’s approval, the actual increase in gas prices is substantially smaller than that. Both Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island have offset their carbon taxes by cutting existing provincial gas taxes, such that Newfoundlanders are now paying just 0.42 cents more per litre than they were before the carbon tax was levied, and Islanders are paying just one cent more. P.E.I. also plans to increase its carbon tax by just one cent per litre in 2020 — less than the federal backstop, which is expected to increase by 2.2 cents per litre next year — and it’s not clear whether it will continue to increase past 2020.