ENJOY YOUR LEVEE WHILE COMPLAINING ABOUT YOUR LEVY

Unpopular carbon tax is set to increase to $30 a tonne at the start of the new year

Instead of calling it a carbon levy, maybe the government should have called it a carbon levee.

Levy is a fancy word for a tax while a levee is a fancy word for a party.

Albertans can partake in both on Jan. 1, although participation, come to think of it, is voluntary in only one.

Lt.-Gov. Lois Mitchell will hold the annual New Year’s Day levee at Government House in Edmonton. If you’re in the neighbourhood, I highly recommend you pop in to say hello. Government House is not usually open to the public, so this is an opportunity to take a peek inside and enjoy a taxpayerfunded snack while meeting the lieutenant-governor.

As celebrations go, it’s a lowkey affair, like a tea party thrown by Queen Victoria.

But it’s free and voluntary, unlike the increase in the carbon levy.

If you drive a car, heat a home or run a business, you’ll be paying the tax, um, levy.

The carbon levy began Jan. 1 of this year at $20 a tonne and will increase to $30 a tonne Jan. 1, 2018.

That means, for example, the 4.5 cent per litre tax on the price of gasoline that began this year will increase by another 2.25 cents next year.

Whether you call it a tax or a levy, it has been one of the most controversial policies introduced by Alberta’s NDP.

The government is acutely aware of this, which is why Environment Minister Shannon Phillips a few days ago reiterated the government’s plan to leave the carbon tax alone until 2021. At that time, it will move in step with federal carbon pricing at $40 a tonne and increase to $50 a tonne in 2022.

The official Opposition has been using the unpopular tax to criticize the government, and United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney pledges to scrap it.

It doesn’t seem to matter that if he kills Alberta’s carbon tax, it will be replaced by a federal price on carbon.

Simply promising to abolish the tax is proving popular with many Albertans.

But the force of Kenny’s attack will be blunted if construction finally begins on the proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline to B.C.

Differences over the environment illustrate one of the biggest gaps between the UCP and NDP. The UCP barely talks about the environment. The NDP has made it a cornerstone of government policy.

Same with the federal Liberals. This week, the two levels of treehugging government — the federal Liberals and Alberta NDP — signed an agreement to formalize their shared responsibility to monitor Alberta’s oilsands.

The agreement itself wasn’t new. It’s based on a deal signed by the two levels of government in 2012 when the Progressive Conservatives ran Alberta and the Conservatives ran Canada.

Back then, they were squabbling behind the scenes over who should take the lead on monitoring the oilsands.

The Alberta government at the time tended to run in circles. In 2011, it appointed the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Panel that led to the Alberta Environmental Monitoring Working Group which preceded the Alberta Environmental Management Board that finally set up the Alberta Environmental Management Agency.

The Alberta NDP and federal Liberals don’t seem to be running in circles and they’re making all the right noises about “providing clear and scientifically rigorous information on the environmental impacts of oilsands development.”

Phillips created a bit of controversy in 2016 when she announced her department was taking over the duties of the arm’s-length Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency.

Skeptics thought she was making the system more political and less transparent.

But the government’s chief scientist, Fred Wrona, disagrees. He said monitoring the environment is a crucial public service that should be run directly by the government.

How the government monitors the oilsands should probably be a bigger issue. But the official Opposition tends to ignore the environment to focus on the economy.

For the UCP, debate over the NDP’s environmental policy invariably leads to criticism of the carbon levy.

But you have to think the levy would have been much more difficult to attack if it was called the carbon levee.