Wall’s debate on carbon tax goes nowhere

One is far more likely to find more political gamesmanship than answers in the Saskatchewan legislature ... or, in the case of Monday’s debate on a government motion opposing a national carbon tax, any sense of reasonable compromise.

So at a time when Premier Brad Wall seems desperate to find an issue around which he can rally Saskatchewan people — and, coincidentally, distract from issues like the Global Transportation Hub land deal — what we witnessed Monday was hardly surprising.

Of course, it would be unfair to say the motion was only about partisan politics — or that Wall doesn’t have legitimate concerns about the economic impact of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to price carbon emissions at $10 a tonne in 2018, rising to $50 a tonne by 2022.

Whether supporters of Trudeau’s carbon tax are prepared to admit it or not, Wall does have some devastatingly effective arguments that Saskatchewan’s primary industries can’t compete against producers from other nations that have no carbon tax.

That said, a skeptic might note that about the only time Wall did not take the side of the oil companies, which are big Sask. Party donors (with Cenovus Energy Inc., of carbon sequestration-fame, the largest of them all), was in changes to the Surface Rights Agreement when oil drillers were in conflict with farmers.

However, to now have the oil, gas, mining, business and agriculture sectors (representatives of which eagerly took in Wall’s speech Monday from the legislature’s public gallery) in unison against a federal Liberal tax is a dream come true for the premier.

To then foist upon the downtrodden NDP a debate in which it must unequivocally support your very own white paper on the environment, or risk being seen as anti-job during an economic downturn, would seem a political masterstroke for Brad Wall.

But even a debate like this that’s heavily weighted in Wall’s favour may not have been quite as effective a political tool as Wall had hoped it would be.

For starters, a legitimate debate requires someone to support a notion and someone to oppose it.

That the Saskatchewan NDP Opposition made it abundantly clear it actually supported Wall’s argument that Trudeau’s carbon tax is bad for this province made the idea of having this debate somewhat less politically clever.

In fact, this lack of disagreement on Wall’s reasoning for the debate allowed the NDP to confront Wall with another reality: Debates are always about ideas and alternatives — in this case, how jobs and the environment can coexist.

One thing Monday’s debate also reminded us is that any idea Wall has ever had for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preserving jobs has always been quickly abandoned.

For example, NDP MLA Cathy Sproule noted the 2007 Sask. Party election platform (one that quoted the David Suzuki Foundation saying Saskatchewan had “the highest greenhouse gas emissions of any province or territory on a per GDP basis”) promised to “stabilize greenhouse gas emissions by 2010; reduce GHG emissions by 32 per cent by 2020 and reduce GHG gases by 80 per cent by 2050.”

Sproule also noted Wall’s 2010 Management and Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Act, which then-environment minister Nancy Heppner described in the context of a “carbon compliance price.”

“Call me a hairsplitter” but a “carbon compliance price” sounds like a carbon tax, Sproule added.

Demonstrating that political hypocrisy has no borders, Wall noted in the debate that the NDP actually voted against that 2010 greenhouse gas act.

“(The NDP is) trying to find a way to be partisan on this issue, to be contrarian, and this isn’t an issue for that,” Wall told reporters later.

Maybe, but it was a strange comment from a premier whose sole reason for having this debate was to put the NDP on the political spot.

But maybe it isn’t so strange coming from a premier who set his own GHG emission goals and even a “carbon compliance price” and now tweets “not one” resource job should be sacrificed to environmental concerns.

Then again, maybe the legislature isn’t a good place for such debates. Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.