Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was at Honda Canada in Alliston, Ont. last week to promote new and expanded investment tax credits in the government’s federal budget.
According to a release issued by Ottawa about Trudeau’s visit, the following tax credits outlined in Budget 2023 will support job-creating investments in a made-in-Canada clean economy across the country:
- A 15 per cent refundable Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit for eligible investments in technologies required for the generation and storage of clean energy and its transmission between provinces and territories, which is available to taxable and certain tax-exempt entities.
- A refundable Clean Technology Manufacturing Tax Credit to cover 30 per cent of investments in new machinery and equipment used to manufacture or process clean technologies and extract, process, or recycle key critical minerals.
- Continuation of the Clean Hydrogen Investment Tax Credit, first announced in the 2022 Fall Economic Statement, that will support between 15 and 40 per cent of eligible project costs to produce clean hydrogen domestically.
- Expansion of the Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Investment Tax Credit to additional types of equipment used to capture carbon dioxide emissions for storage or other uses in industrial processes, and provide tax credit access to geological storage projects in British Columbia.
- Expanding eligibility for the refundable 30 per cent Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit to include geothermal energy systems, further supporting the growth of Canada’s clean technology sector.
“These clean investment tax credits build on the work we have already done from coast to coast to coast to grow our clean economy and create and secure tens of thousands of good middle-class jobs,” the release stated.
“Since the beginning of 2022, Canada has attracted historic investments across our electric vehicle supply chain – from mining to manufacturing – and secured or created over 18,000 jobs in the process.” These included the March 2022, Ottawa announcement of a new federal investment of up to $131.6 million, matched by the government of Ontario, to help Honda Canada retool its manufacturing operations in this town located 100 kilometres north of Toronto.
Last week, funding was also provided for carbon capture. In Edmonton on Wednesday, François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry and Randy Boissonnault, minister of tourism and associate minister of finance, announced the signing of a partnership with Heidelberg Materials.
The partnership, a release stated, “will help support the company’s $1.36 billion project to build a full-scale carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) system and a combined heat and power (CHP) system at its Edmonton cement facility.
“This CCUS system, a first of its kind in North America, would enable the company to produce carbon-neutral cement through the capture and compression of carbon dioxide (CO2) for subsequent transportation and permanent storage, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to one million tonnes annually. This is the equivalent of removing more than 300,000 passenger vehicles from the road annually.”