Jean Charest vows to repeal consumer carbon price plan if elected Conservative leader

Jean Charest also pledges to eliminate the federal portion of the HST on low-carbon purchases should he win the Sept. 10 Conservative leadership election.

Conservative leadership candidate Jean Charest is promising to repeal the Liberal government’s consumer carbon price and eliminate the federal portion of the HST on low-carbon purchases.

He also pledges to stick with an older target for reducing the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 should he win the Sept. 10 leadership election – and return the Conservatives to power.

The plan shared with The Canadian Press is high level in nature and contains no details about how much it would cost.

It promises to eliminate the “Trudeau consumer carbon tax,” which is what it calls the current federal price on carbon.

It also proposes to make industrial emitters pay a carbon price as part of an overall “heavier focus on industrial emissions.”

“There is a price on carbon, and we’re choosing to go the route of the large emitters,” Charest, a former Quebec premier, said in an interview Monday.

“That’s the approach that I feel is going to be the most efficient.”

The federal carbon levy, now set at $50 per tonne of emissions, applies directly in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, where consumers receive rebate cheques from the federal government in those provinces.