Manitoba taxpayers better prepare themselves for the cost of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax on home heating this winter.

If you decide that you want to keep warm this winter instead of having icicles featured as a new interior decoration, it’s going to cost you because of Trudeau’s carbon tax.

If you heat your home with natural gas, like the majority of Manitoba households do, you will be paying a lot more to stay warm this winter.      

Trudeau doesn’t seem to realize that winters get cold in the prairies. Cold winters mean lots of furnaces working overtime.

Trudeau charges you 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas in carbon tax. The average household in Manitoba uses about 2,091 cubic metres of natural gas per year. That means that the carbon tax will cost you an extra $318 on your home heating bills this winter.

And it’s only going to get worse because the federal government plans to keep hiking the carbon tax. Ottawa is increasing the carbon tax on natural gas to 18 cents per cubic metre on April 1, 2025. That will cost you $379 more next winter. By 2030, you will be paying $697 more to heat your home because of the carbon tax.

But Trudeau is still trying to argue that despite the costs, that families are somehow “better off” paying the carbon tax. That doesn't pass the smell test.

Average families are worse off paying the carbon tax when all costs are considered, even after the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The federal government doesn’t just charge Manitobans the carbon tax on gas and home heating, it also charges the GST on top of it all. That means you pay more tax on top of the carbon tax. This year, Ottawa is raking in $600 million in GST charged on top of the carbon tax. The government doesn’t even pretend to rebate any of that back to taxpayers.

The point of a carbon tax is not to make people better off. The point of a carbon tax is to make petroleum-based fuels more expensive. According to the federal government, the carbon tax is working correctly if it’s more expensive for you to heat your home.

But it gets cold in Manitoba. The capital is called Winterpeg for a reason. Many households don’t have any other option but to heat their homes, and all the carbon tax does is make that necessity more expensive.

But that’s not a new revelation.

“Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn’t a choice,” said former federal NDP leader Jack Layton. “We shouldn’t punish people, and that’s what a carbon tax does.”

The government should not be punishing people for staying warm.

And the government knows it’s a punishment, because they have given some Canadians a break on the carbon tax. Last year, Trudeau removed the carbon tax from home heating oil for three years. That’s a fuel that’s primarily used in Atlantic Canada and it’s much dirtier than natural gas. On the flipside, about zero per cent of Manitoba households use home heating oil.

That was a purely political decision. It shows that the government knows how much they are costing families.

And it’s a cost that isn’t likely to come with any reward. The carbon tax is supposed to reduce emissions, but for years British Columbia had the highest carbon tax in the country and emissions continued to increase. In 2022, B.C.’s emissions were higher than in 2007 when the B.C. carbon tax was first imposed in the province, according to the most recent data.

The numbers shows that carbon taxes cost families, but it’s not solving global climate change.

Manitoba families don’t have a choice in heating their homes in the winter. Ottawa needs to stop punishing taxpayers for keeping warm and scrap the carbon tax.