The B.C. Liberal government is expected to announce this week that it will freeze the carbon tax at current levels for five years, giving other jurisdictions time to catch up to the province’s “leadership position” on the issue.

The plan was announced to party faithful in an email Tuesday from provincial campaign director Mike McDonald outlining the week to come.

“B.C. is a world leader and remains committed to the carbon tax as a method of (incentivizing) people to choose cleaner forms of energy and reduce their carbon consumption,” McDonald said in the email. “At the time it was introduced it was believed other jurisdictions would follow B.C.’s leadership position, but to date that has not happened to the extent expected.”

The tax was introduced in 2008 to change behaviour by making it more expensive to burn fuels that release greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The carbon tax adds a $30-a-tonne surcharge to retail and industrial purchases of fossil fuel but returns every dollar raised to individuals and businesses through tax reductions.

After the 2009 provincial election, the NDP reversed its position on the tax. NDP environment critic Rob Fleming said his party would keep the tax but change its revenue-neutral model. The NDP would increase the corporate tax rate to 12 per cent from 10 to “make B.C.’s carbon tax revenue positive and allow for us to make targeted investments in areas where we can reduce greenhouse gases.”

“One of the flaws of the current carbon tax model is that not a penny of the money raised goes to support public transit or other green infrastructure that helps people lower their carbon footprint in their daily lives,” Fleming said.

On its website the B.C. Green party pledges to raise the carbon tax to 12 cents a litre of gasoline from the current seven. Leader Jane Sterk has said the party would expand the tax to industrial emitters and use the new revenue to fund infrastructure and introduce home and business initiatives so that people can make realistic choices to reduce their carbon footprint — by using transit, for example.

The provincial Conservatives say they will phase out the carbon tax, calling the levy unfair to those living outside Victoria or Metro Vancouver. The party notes that while the tax was designed to change citizens’ consumption habits, people living in the North and also those working in sectors such as agriculture, are unable to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

Environment Minister Terry Lake and McDonald were unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

With files from The Canadian Press

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