Saskatchewan government debates proposed federal carbon tax

The Saskatchewan government will be holding a debate in the legislature Monday afternoon over the federal carbon tax proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

At the same time, the government will be looking for support to the climate change plan Premier Brad Wall outlined last week.

READ MORE: Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall outlines climate change plan as alternative to Trudeau’s carbon tax

Wall said he is hoping the motion will receive unanimous support in order to send a strong message to Ottawa about the province’s opposition to the national carbon tax.

“The federal carbon tax will hit Saskatchewan’s economy and Saskatchewan workers particularly hard, given the importance of the resource, mining and agriculture sectors in this province,” Wall said.

“Now is not the time for Ottawa to force a job-killing carbon tax on our province. I hope members on both sides of the House can stand together and send a clear message to Ottawa – ‘no’ to a national carbon tax.”

READ MORE: Brad Wall says Justin Trudeau should take note of Hillary Clinton’s climate plan

Earlier this month, Trudeau announced a minimum price on carbon, starting at $10 a tonne in 2018 and rise ten-dollars yearly until reaching $50 a tonne in 2022.

Wall has been a vocal critic of the plan since it was announced and said the province will fight the carbon tax.

“I hope all MLAs will vote to represent the view of the strong majority of Saskatchewan people on this important issue,” Wall said, referencing a poll that said at least 70 per cent of people in Saskatchewan oppose the carbon tax.

READ MORE: Carbon tax will cost jobs: Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association

The Opposition NDP has stated it opposes any plan imposed on the province by Ottawa but added “Twitter tantrums” by Wall doesn’t help carbon talks.

The motion reads as follows:

“That this Assembly supports the Government of Saskatchewan’s position on climate change as outlined in the Climate Change White Paper released on October 18, 2016, and further;

“That this Assembly opposes the Federal Government’s plan to impose a national carbon tax.”

Due to the amount of speakers in the debate on Monday, the session had to be adjourned because they ran out of time. A vote is expected to take place on Tuesday.

Despite the lack of resolution, both Premier Wall and Opposition Leader Trent Wotherspoon spoke with media about the motion.

Wall still hopes for unilateral support of his motion.

“We’ve done that in the past with pipelines before. It is an indication to Ottawa that this isn’t just the Saskatchewan Party, or government that has this view. It is the other party in the assembly as well,” Wall said.

Wotherspoon said the NDP are against the federal government imposing a tax on the provinces, but they have reservations about throwing their support behind Wall’s plan.

He pointed to issues surrounding the Boundary Dam Three Carbon Capture facility, and a lack of implementing the province’s Green Technology Fund that would price carbon for high emitters.

“The Conference Board of Canada has stated that had it been in place, we’d have over a billion dollars within it that would be redeployed, and in fact 8,500 jobs would have been created,” Wotherspoon said.

Wall said his government would implement the Green Technology Fund when the economy recovers. He said it wasn’t implemented earlier because necessary agreements with the federal government weren’t reached.

For now, the premier has a baseline for when he’d start the conversation to introduce the fund.

“As a starting point, we’d need to see all the jobs that were lost in the resource sector recovered,” Wall explained.

With files from Alexa Huffman, David Baxter