Liberals’ rebate screw-up feeds West’s carbon tax hostility

The Saskatchewan Party may have lost in the courts, but it clearly won the carbon tax war in the court of public opinion.

This week, we again saw why this has happened. The federal Liberals have made it so easy.

The absolute worst way to ingratiate yourself to a region already suspicious of you is to impose an unpopular and likely ineffective tax on the biggest economic drivers in the region. But don’t just stop there. Apply it directly at the gas pumps so it directly hits families, but then offer the tempting promise of annual rebates to families to offset that four-cent-a-litre tax on gasoline you imposed eight months ago. Then announce nine days before Christmas that you are cutting those rebates your party has just campaigned on in a federal election.

And there are no Liberal MPS in Saskatchewan and Alberta because ...?

At Monday’s meeting of federal and provincial finance minsters, it was announced that the annual carbon tax rebate for Saskatchewan families would be cut from a projected yearly $903 to a mere $809 annual rebate in 2020.

It was the largest cut for families in provinces where a carbon price was imposed because of their governments’ refusal to comply. In Ontario, the same projected annual rebate for a family fell to $448 from $451. In Manitoba, it is being reduced to $486 from $499. (Alberta did not have previous calculations for projected family rebates because the former Rachel Notley NDP government had supported the carbon tax. It is likely worth noting that the latest annual family rebate projections mean Saskatchewan will still have the second highest annual rebate in the country for a family of four, behind Alberta’s $888.)

The news simply fortified what Premier Scott Moe (and his predecessor Brad Wall) has been warning voters about the carbon tax. So for a skilled politician like Environment Minister Dustin Duncan, who didn’t even have to bother feigning surprise at the federal government’s move, an easier day at the office than Tuesday seldom comes along.

“That wasn’t that long ago, so one of my questions will be ‘What’s changed in the calculation?’ ” said Duncan, expressing the collective disgust of a province. “Merry Christmas from the federal government.”

To make matters worse,

Ottawa didn’t bother to explain why those calculations did change. “If we’re going to add four cents a litre onto fuel and do a corresponding reduction of almost an equivalent amount, then how does this accomplish what the federal government says it’s going to accomplish?” the Saskatchewan environment minister said.

Beyond the cynicism that the rebate reduction is simply a tax grab by a fiscally incompetent federal government, this move buttresses the Sask. Party government’s political narrative: The carbon tax does not work and it’s largely a punitive measure imposed on fossil fuel producing and consuming provinces like this one. And notwithstanding those who continue to argue that carbon pricing is the only demonstrated way to change behaviour so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there remains a legitimate argument well beyond what we are hearing from the Sask. Party that this carbon tax at this level simply won’t accomplish that in a jurisdiction like Saskatchewan.

Switching to an electric car (which, in Saskatchewan, would still run on coal-fired electrical generation scheduled for dismantling) will set you back considerably more than the $800-a-year annual rebate. Actual behavioural change is enormously costly. The Liberals have not been forthright about that. Its rebate scheme was its own politicking and we are not even being told how much the $50-a-tonne carbon tax (by 2022) will have to increase to meet environmental goals.

Sure, many will rightly argue that the Saskatchewan government has demonstrated next to no interest in substantially reducing GHGS and that Moe still struggles to utter the phrase “man-made climate change.” Nor did Moe demonstrated elite political skills by leading the anti-justin Trudeau/carbon tax mob.

But the simple truth is, the federal Liberals have made the Sask. Party government’s job incredibly easy.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-post.