Sask. GHG reduction strategy still about oil rather than environment

However fleeting it might have been, Premier Brad Wall’s years in power will be forever defined as the era of the oil economy.

This time of US$140-a-barrel oil (not to mention a billion dollars a year to government coffers from potash royalties) was a time when the industry was exceedingly generous to the Saskatchewan economy. And Wall’s Saskatchewan Party felt it could be a little generous to the notion of environmental protection.

The Sask. Party promised in its 2007 election campaign to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2010 (never met), and reduce them by 32 per cent by 2020 (unlikely to be met).

The young Wall government bet heavily on carbon capture and storage at its Boundary

Dam 3 facility — the province provided all but $200 million of the $1.6-billion wager on scrubbing lignite coal clean at the facility. It was a plan that had no negative economic consequences on the oil sector. If anything, it was a healthy subsidy to those oil companies partaking in carbon capture and storage.

Then came the Wall government’s 2010 Management and Reduction of Greenhouse Gases Act (really, a carbon price, albeit one never enforced) that would have tracked and limited emissions and forced emitters to pay into a technology fund. These were still halcyon days when the oil money was still pouring in and lip service was still required.

However, oil prices had already badly tanked by the time of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2015 win that produced a Liberal government calling for its own carbon pricing (read: carbon tax) that would be $10 a tonne in 2018 and rising to $50 a tonne by 2022. Wall described it as the mob shaking down the local citizenry in his ever-increasing rhetoric.

His response was the October 2016 White Paper on Climate Change that called for adaptation, innovation and taxation.

“We should be focusing our efforts on innovation and adaptation, not taxation,” Wall said 13 months ago.

So if Monday’s Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy sounds like a repackaging of pretty much everything you’ve heard to date, that’s pretty much what it is.

The overarching position of the Sask. Party government remains: The economy must take priority over the environment. Wall in a tweet Tuesday preferred to describe it as providing flexibility for industry and large emitters while rejecting the carbon tax (which is also pretty much the theme of Sask. Party leadership race).

That there were no environmental groups at Environment Minister Dustin Duncan’s announcement lauded by the invited oil, gas, mining, business and agriculture guests pretty much tells you all you need to know about the government’s ongoing world view of GHG emissions.

This is not to say there’s nothing of value in Duncan’s strategy.

It’s high time we got serious about the effect of climate change in Saskatchewan, which means dealing with both prolonged droughts and major rain events causing flooding. (Although maybe the government could get serious about overland flooding caused by illegal draining as well). And let’s repeat that Wall et al. still have a point that Trudeau’s carbon tax cannot be the sole solution. If Wall has lacked reasonability, so have the federal Liberals in not allowing alternatives.

That said, the only meaningful ways to reduce GHG emissions are by taxing them (which, again, won’t work/does unfairly penalize Saskatchewan), or by seriously monitoring GHG emissions with consequences. Monday’s plan does include a green technology fund (which the Sask. Party government is selling as nothing like a carbon tax). And it does lower the definition of a heavy emitter as 25,000 tonnes of CO2 annually rather than 50,000 tonnes.

But while Duncan’s strategy has the pretence of opting for the latter, it does not go far enough.

As per federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s response Monday, it’s hard to see how this strategy hits anyone’s GHG-lowering standards.

This environmental strategy only went as far as the Wall government felt was acceptable to the oil industry.

Under Wall, oil was king. It was great for the economy, but not so great for the environment.