**UNSPLASH/Blake Wisz**
**The Canadian government unveiled several measures designed to help small businesses, including payment of $2.5 billion in carbon rebates by year end.**

The federal government said Tuesday it would make $2.5 billion in payments under the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses program by the end of this year.

The payments will be delivered to about 600,000 small businesses, depending on when they filed their taxes, according to a joint statement from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Small Business Rechie Valdez. The rebates will return “a portion of the fuel charge proceeds” collected over the past five years to small businesses in jurisdictions where the charge applies.

The ministers also announced that reduced credit card fees to take effect on Oct. 19 will save small businesses about $1 billion over five years, and a new ‘code of conduct’ for the payment card industry in Canada that will help businesses compare prices from different payment processors.

“For the Canada carbon rebate for small businesses, we are distributing a portion of the proceeds from the price on pollution directly to small businesses,” Valdez said during a press conference.

With Tuesday’s announcement, the governing Liberal Party may be seeking to reverse some of the damage done by Pierre Poilievre and the main opposition Conservative Party, who have campaigned on a platform of eliminating the fuel charge—what they call the carbon tax—if they come to power in the next general election. The latest polls have the Conservatives ahead by a wide margin.

In 2023-24, with the federal fuel charge set at $65 per tonne, the Government will collect and return $11.8 billion in fuel charges in the provinces where the charge applies, with that amount estimated at $25 billion when the charge rises to $170 per tonne in 2030-31, according to estimates from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.