B.C. backing feds in Sask. battle over carbon tax
Attorney general Morgan says provinces should not be pitted against one another
The British Columbia government will be fighting in favour of a carbon tax when Saskatchewan’s court challenge is heard early next year.
Attorney General David Eby said Tuesday that B.C. will argue the federal and provincial governments share a role in addressing climate change, but the federal government has the right and responsibility to put a price on carbon pollution.
“The significance of British Columbia’s appearance in support of the many aspects of the federal government’s arguments is that we may be the only provincial government attending court in support of what the federal government is doing with this legislation,” he said. “We think the court should hear a provincial perspective in support of the federal government’s efforts.”
Saskatchewan and Ontario are asking their respective high courts to determine whether the federal government has the authority to impose a carbon tax on the provinces. The Saskatchewan case is slated to be heard in February, while Ontario’s challenge goes to court in April.
Don Morgan, the attorney general for Saskatchewan, said he was not surprised to learn B.C. would be intervening, saying the western province has “taken a hard-line position all along on pipelines, on energy, and our position has been that we’re in the energy business, we export oil and we want to see that would take place. We think the carbon tax is completely counterproductive to that, so I’m not surprised at all that B.C. came out and indicated they were going to join in the challenge the other way.”
Morgan then launched into a defence of Saskatchewan’s position, saying the goal should not be to pit provinces against one another but to see how emissions can be reduced globally.
“We now see there are literally hundreds of coal-fired plants being built in China; can we take a position as North America and say we’re not going to import things that come from those coal-fired plants? Or we impose a tax on those type of imports? Those are the types of things we should do globally. We should also see globally an increase in the number of atomic energy plants that are being built,” he said.
The federal government has given the provinces until January to come up with their own carbon pricing or have targets imposed on them. The carbon price outlined by Ottawa starts at a minimum of $20 a tonne and increases $10 annually until 2022.
New Brunswick and Manitoba also have not signed on to the federal plan.
B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman said the province is already leading the country when it comes to carbon pricing with its decade-old carbon tax, but it believes the provinces should follow the national climate strategy.
“We strongly believe that the only way for Canadian provinces to fight climate change is to fight climate change together,” he said. “Each province has a responsibility to take this crisis seriously and to put forward a plan to adequately price carbon pollution.”