Ottawa rejects Sask. bid to opt out of carbon pricing

The federal government is rejecting Saskatchewan’s request to be exempt from a carbon pricing plan.

“To be clear, we cannot accept your request not to price carbon in Saskatchewan. Among other reasons, it would be patently unfair for one jurisdiction to avoid participating in this important national effort to support clean growth and cut pollution,” wrote Catherine McKenna, minister of environment and climate change, in a letter to Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan.

Her correspondence is in response to a letter sent by Duncan at the end of February, in which he formally told the federal government Saskatchewan would not sign on to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. In doing so, the province rejected $62 million in federal assistance to help aid climate change efforts.

McKenna reasserted the longstated position that, “We believe your government is best placed to design a carbon pricing approach that works for Saskatchewan,” and pointed out four of five Canadians live in jurisdictions that already have a price on carbon. Full-time employment numbers dropped in Saskatchewan from February 2017 to February 2018 by one per cent, but went up across Canada (including in B.C. and Alberta).

The federal minister said she’ll “remain hopeful” the province will change its course before the Sept. 1 deadline to put in place its own plan. If Saskatchewan fails to do so, the federal government has said it will impose a carbon pricing scheme on the province.

The letter also responded to Saskatchewan’s own climate change strategy, dubbed Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy. It does not include an explicit carbon tax and lowers the threshold of what is considered a “heavy emitter” from 50,000 tonnes of emissions to 25,000 tonnes, which is largely the same as a policy the province advanced seven years ago.

Saskatchewan’s strategy also calls for a “carbon offset” to be purchased by emitters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a best performance credit for companies demonstrating low emissions or investments in reducing their emissions.

The initial response of the federal government was lukewarm at best — with McKenna saying in an online statement the plan doesn’t hit the standard set by the Canadian government in asking all provinces to establish a carbon pricing plan through an explicit price on emissions or a cap-andtrade system.

But in her letter, McKenna said she’s “pleased to see your recent Prairie Resilience climate strategy signal a renewed interest in pricing pollution through your commitment to adopt a carbon market system for large industrial emitters and to develop an offset system. I hope that this is a foundation we can build on.”

The provincial government continues to maintain it won’t accept the federal government’s plan to impose a carbon tax on Saskatchewan and says it will advocate for Prairie Resilience to be accepted by Ottawa, as well as continue to apply for the $62 million in federal funding.

It would be patently unfair for one jurisdiction to avoid participating in this important national effort ...