Feds’ unwillingness to put a GHG tax directly on fossil fuels says much

Among the more germane points carbon tax opponents made before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal on Wednesday was a rather simple and somewhat overlooked one from Saskatchewan government lawyer Mitch Mcadam:

If the federal government wanted to simply and fairly tax greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollution, why would it not simply increase the federal goods and services tax (GST) on gasoline and other fuels? Why not just tax the tailpipe? Why not tax fossil fuels burned for home heating or electricity? Wouldn’t that better accomplish the end goal of applying economic pressure to alter Canadian behaviour directly contributing to GHG pollution?

To be clear, the federal government is calling it industry regulatory carbon pricing, rather than a tax. But even if deemed a tax, federal government lawyer Sharlene Telles-langdon argued before the court Thursday that it’s well within the authority of the federal government to use tax tools to address matters of “national concern” because of constitutional provisions like peace, order and good government (or POGG, as it’s known in legal shorthand).

Telles-langdon argued Thursday that “indivisible” GHGS are a threat to humanity that knows no international or provincial boundaries. No single province or territory can deal with the “cumulative dimension” of climate change. And Canada cannot meet its commitments to fight climate change if provinces simply choose to opt out of what amounts to “minimal national standards,” she said.

Essentially, this is the argument that many legal academics say will not only carry the day when the Court of Appeal rules but also why it was folly for the Saskatchewan Party government to have challenged the federal Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in the first place.

But why wouldn’t the feds eliminate the messy concerns we heard from Mcadam and others Wednesday that the federal government has: exceeded its jurisdiction by applying carbon pricing on local companies regulated by provinces; unfairly applied its carbon prices in places like Saskatchewan because it simply doesn’t like this province’s Ghg-reduction efforts; and is not really applying “regulatory pricing” but a “tax” in all but name?

“If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Mcadam told the Court of Appeal.

Why we are now having this debate rather than a direct solution can be found in the politics.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government did not want to tax fuel because the political consequence would have been to make voters angry.

However, there’s less political consequence for the federal Liberals in taxing industry where the federal government has arbitrarily determined provinces were not doing enough to reduce GHGS. And there’s a lot of really great politics in giving it back through rebates to families even before the pollution pricing is levied, in an election year.

Of course, giving rebate money to families to simply pour it back into their gas tanks so they can pay for higher fuel prices doesn’t change Canadian behaviours that Telles-langdon, on behalf of the federal government, argued are now an urgent threat to humanity.

In fact, giving rebates equally to everyone, whether or not you are the “biggest polluter on the block,” noted Canadian Taxpayers Federation lawyer Bruce Hallsor on Wednesday, would seem to undermine the federal government court argument that it needs to use POGG to deal with this national concern.

Of course, one should take similar umbrage with the cheap and easy popular politics of governments in Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick, the United Conservative Party and the CTF opposing any Ghg/pollution penalties.

While Mcadam may be right that his Sask. Party government clients are not “climate change deniers,” that doesn’t mean they aren’t driven by their own partisan motivations.

That said, wouldn’t we have better avoided their concerns with an even, fairly applied tax on all Canadian consumers?

Sadly, the past two days in court may have been less driven by the fight to save the planet than by cynical vote-buying politics.