Sask. court reserves carbon decision
After two days of arguments from 18 governments, environmental groups and other interested parties, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal reserved its decision over a constitutional challenge to Ottawa’s carbon backstop.
Chief Justice Robert Richards was as conversational on the second day as he was on the first, repeatedly questioning Canada’s arguments for the constitutionality of its Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act.
“I’m having a bit of trouble putting the puzzle together here,” Richards said of federal lawyer Sharlene Telles-Langdon’s submission to the court.
Telles-Langdon dove into issues that Saskatchewan lawyers had called “irrelevant” on Wednesday, the first day of proceedings in Regina. Provincial lawyers said the reality of climate change has nothing to do with the case.
They said it’s about division of powers, and whether Canada can survive as it now exists.
“You don’t need to destroy the federation in order to save the planet,” Mitch McAdam, counsel for Saskatchewan, reiterated on Thursday.
But Telles-Langdon spoke of the “grave risks” of rising seas, melting permafrost and shrinking sea ice. She warned of heat waves causing “illness and death,” and plagues of insects carrying Lyme disease.
She drew on the scientific consensus around the “urgency” of action. She used it to defend a federal right to deal with the “cumulative dimensions” of climate change as an issue of national concern.
“One province’s refusal or failure to sufficiently regulate greenhouse gas emissions impacts Canada as a whole,” Telles-Langdon said.
But Richards said he was struggling with one “key difficulty.” He quizzed Telles-Langdon again and again about what “cumulative” meant, and wondered whether her argument would allow Ottawa to occupy the entire space of greenhouse gas regulation for itself.
What, he wondered, would be left for the provinces to do?
Telles-Langdon said the federal government wants to address only the “national aspects” of greenhouse gases.
Nine interveners followed Canada and B.C. to defend the carbon tax. A lawyer for the Canadian Public Health Association called climate change the “biggest global health threat of this century.” Counsel for the David Suzuki Foundation called it a “national emergency.”
The last word came from Saskatchewan, whose lawyers had the chance to respond to Canada and its allies.
McAdam said he hopes the five-judge panel will have a ruling by April 1, the date the carbon tax on fuel comes into effect. But given the amount of material submitted over two days and 16 interveners, he said six months to a year would be more typical.