Rustic paradise 40 minutes from Saint John not rural enough for extra carbon rebate

By just about every reasonable definition, Bayswater, New Brunswick, is a rural area.

There's the scenic ride on the Westfield ferry from the tip of the Kingston Peninsula, part of the 40-minute drive to Saint John.

In the other direction, there's the narrow, winding, bumpy Route 845 leading to the postcard-perfect, 104-year-old covered bridge at Milkish Inlet.

And there's the gorgeous view of the hills surrounding Grand Bay, where the St. John River makes a sharp turn to meet the Kennebecasis — a panorama Cathy and Doug Morrison enjoy from their back deck.

Yet for federal bureaucrats in Ottawa, this rustic piece of paradise is metropolitan — part of the Statistics Canada-designated "census metropolitan area," or CMA, of Saint John.

That means people here won't get the rural top-up on their federal carbon tax rebates. 

"We've always assumed that we lived in rural New Brunswick, till we put in an application for the rural supplement for the carbon tax rebate," said Cathy Morrison, tongue partly in cheek.

There are no traffic lights out here, nor any sidewalks, or buses, or grocery stores — nothing the least bit metropolitan.

So when Morrison realized that the CMA designation put her and her husband on the wrong side of the rural rebate criteria, she contacted provincial MLAs and federal MPs.

"We began to question our own interpretation of the mapping when we got replies from them saying 'We didn't realize that this was a problem,'" she said.

For the Morrisons, the new doubled top-up starting in April would mean an additional $27.60 each quarter above their $138 rebate — if they were eligible. 

"This isn't money that's going to break the bank," said Cathy Morrison. "But on principle, it just seemed wrong that they were using this metric when perhaps there were other things they could be using."

WATCH | 'That's completely nonsensical':

Are you rural enough for the carbon rebate top-up?

10 months ago

Duration 2:01

Residents of Bayswater, N.B, don’t have traffic lights, buses, or a single grocery store, but they're too ‘metropolitan’ for the rural top-up on their federal carbon tax rebates.

Even more annoying to the Morrisons, everyone in New Brunswick outside of the CMAs of Saint John and Moncton are eligible for the "rural" top-up — including everyone in Fredericton.

That's right: people living in the provincial capital's downtown core — folks who don't emit much carbon as they walk or cycle to work, to stores and to their favourite cafés and bars while occasionally dodging city buses at busy intersections — will get the rural top-up.

They include Brian Macdonald, a former provincial MLA who lives a few blocks from downtown and who is now running for the federal Conservative nomination for Fredericton on a promise to "axe" the carbon tax.

"It's part of what I like about living in Fredericton: it's very walkable, so you can get anywhere you want within a few minutes if you live downtown," he said during an interview at the corner of King and Carleton streets.

Macdonald didn't know until CBC News told him that he qualifies for the rural top-up.

"There's no common sense in this carbon tax to begin with, and we're just seeing more and more examples of how it's not working and how it doesn't make any sense," he said.

"It's not surprising that the government has found a way to make it even more confusing and more dysfunctional.… They've complicated it and they're not going to get it right because they can't consider all the variables."

Until last year, New Brunswickers paid a provincial carbon tax designed by the Higgs government, a system with no direct rebates.

When the province scrapped that last July, Ottawa's version kicked in, along with quarterly rebates designed to ensure most people get back more than what they pay in carbon tax.

The theory is that consumers will have an incentive at the gas station to reduce their carbon consumption without actually being out-of-pocket in the end.

Because rural residents can't opt for public transit or to walk to where they need to go, Ottawa tops up their rebate by 10 per cent and will boost that to 20 per cent in April.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the doubling last October, he said his government recognized that "people who live in rural communities face unique realities … because they live outside a large city."

To claim the supplement, Canadians must check a box on their tax return this spring. They'll get their 2023-24 amounts retroactively. 

Morrison doesn't begrudge downtown Frederictonians who claim it.

Macdonald plans to take a pass.

"I have no intention of declaring myself in a rural area. I mean, that's completely nonsensical," he said.

Morrison said Ottawa could have used other Statistics Canada metrics, such as those that measure urban density or community remoteness, to decide who needs the top-up.

The federal finance department said Tuesday it will "continue to examine the eligibility criteria" for the rural supplement to ensure they "appropriately" target rural residents.

Another absurdity in Morrison's view is that the criteria for designating a CMA include the percentage of people in outlying communities who commute to the urban core.

"If these people are having to travel into the CMA, does that not tell you that they're having to travel further for work and should be considered rural?" she said.

"Perhaps there was another metric they could have used that wasn't going to exclude areas such as ourselves, when really, anybody would look at it and would say, 'Yes, you're rural, and downtown Fredericton is not.'"