NORTHEAST —The federal government will enact a carbon tax in Saskatchewan – despite the provincial government’s objections.
Fred Bradshaw, MLA for Carrot River Valley, said he’s not seeing how the federal government’s announcement made on Oct. 23 will help reduce emissions.
“I really question the federal government on what they are doing,” he said. “It seems to me that all they’re trying to do right now is buy votes because they have an election coming up next fall.”
Ralph Goodale, the federal public safety minister, said the federal government is filling in what it believes are gaps with the province’s Prairie Resilience environmental plan. The plan has a system that requires large industrial facilities like mines, pulp mills and refineries to reduce their emissions that the federal government accepts. Everything else not covered by that system will face the federal carbon tax.
“As so far as it goes we’re embracing the provincial plan and adding to it,” Goodale said. “Our approach is to pick up the best elements of various plans across the country and trying to make that work for the good of the country overall.”
Bradshaw said the Prairie Resilience strategy is about creating a made-in-Saskatchewan plan that would reduce emissions by up to 12 million tons by 2030.
“Here’s the stupid part: the federal government accepts it, yet they’re still going to come down with the carbon tax. How can they say we accept this and still put a carbon tax on you?”
Starting in April 2019 the federal government plans to add cost to fuel. In Saskatchewan it will be 4.42 cents per litre of gasoline and 3.91 cents per cubic metre of natural gas in home heating.
The federal government expects to give family-based rebates. In 2019, an adult living outside Saskatchewan’s two biggest cities will receive $336, their partner $138 and each child $84. That will increase over the next three years.
Goodale said the rebates will give families an incentive to make renovations so they can keep more of it in future years.
“When they say we’re going to return all of this money, well, how are you going to pay the bureaucrats to figure all of this out, who gets what?” Bradshaw said. “You’re going to have a whole slew of bureaucrats. There’s going to be expenses to it.”
Farm fuels are exempt from the carbon tax.
“Agriculture in Saskatchewan has a very large and particular significance and the argument was made at the very beginning that the charge in relation to farm fuels would be very difficult challenge for rural Saskatchewan,” Goodale said.
Bradshaw said the federal government’s forgetting all of the other things that come in play. Custom haulers, trains, fertilizer companies and farm chemical companies will all have to pay the carbon tax – and pass that expense to the consumer.
“They say the fuel won’t be taxed, that’s only one aspect of it but the other aspects of it are going to substantially increase the farmers’ expenses.”
This announcement comes two weeks after a report from the world’s leading climate scientists. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change where they stated there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5°C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
“Will there be controversy? It’s hard to believe there won’t be, but we’re going to work very hard to take a constructive approach as we always have,” Goodale said.
Bradshaw said the federal government should have considering the constitutional challenge the province has been pursuing.
“We wished they just wait until we’re done with our court proceedings, but unfortunately they are going ahead.”
