tank: moe sabotaged 'highly effective' sask. climate plan as partisan ploy
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environment minister dustin duncan releases the province's new made-in-saskatchewan climate change plan, a commitment made in this fall's speech from the throne, at the legislative building in regina. troy fleece / regina leader-post
troy fleece
/
regina leader-post
imagine a climate plan that saves big industrial emitters money and also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. sounds like a fantasy, particularly in the province of saskatchewan.
but the saskatchewan party government, which is regarded as a climate laggard at best and a regime willing to throw fossil fuel onto the climate crisis fire at worst, once had such a “highly effective” plan, at least according to its own website.
in december of 2017, a month prior to scott moe’s election as the party’s new leader and premier, the government introduced “prairie resilience,” which is touted as a “made-in-saskatchewan” climate change strategy.
a “key component” of the plan and certainly the most tangible plank was what’s called the “output-based performance standards” program, a fancy way of saying a price will be placed on industrial carbon emissions. or an industrial carbon tax, if you will.
according to a spiel that remains on the government’s website, though perhaps not for long, industrial carbon pricing was supposed to “reduce industrial emissions while protecting economic competitiveness.”
far from abandoning the program under moe, the government expanded it two years ago to increase emissions reduction thresholds and expand the facilities and emissions covered by the plan.
if the province’s captains of industry found this expanded program onerous, they remained remarkably silent about it. the government says all regulated emitters met their obligations.
further, the program “is expected to save regulated emitters over $1.6 billion for 2019-22 and $14 billion by 2030 compared to the federal carbon pricing backstop,” according to the website blurb. no wonder we heard no complaints.
the same prairie resilience plan describes a net-zero electricity grid by 2050 as “realistic and achievable.” huh.
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so what happened to this sizzling saskatchewan success story? it was sacrificed in late march by moe as part of a partisan political ploy.
as columnist murray mandryk pointed out at the time, saskatchewan held an election in october and had just tabled a budget days before moe announced unexpectedly that he had halted collection of his government’s own industrial carbon tax, allegedly to become the first carbon-tax free province.
that’s false, of course, because the province still collects 15 cents per litre of gas, a tax moe refused to budge on, unlike other provinces that suspended gas taxes during the post-pandemic affordability crisis.
but if the “made-in-saskatchewan” industrial carbon tax was so vile, why was it not mentioned during the election or removed in the budget? provinces are required by federal law to implement a version of industrial carbon pricing, so it’s a pretty serious move that looks like it was made on an impulse.
and the possibility now exists that the federal backstop that was supposedly so much worse and so much more costly than saskatchewan’s plan will be imposed.
moe claimed that he suspended the industrial carbon tax, which renders his government’s climate plan impotent, because it was impeding investment and making life more expensive — exactly the opposite of his government’s own claims.
but the timing is telling. conservative leader pierre poilievre, who would be publicly endorsed by moe, had declined to answer directly about his plans for industrial emissions — until st. patrick’s day a few days after the recent federal election was called.
poilievre revealed he planned to scrap the industrial carbon tax in the wake of prime minister mark carney‘s politically shrewd decision to end the consumer carbon tax.
ten days later, moe proclaimed he would scrap his own much-heralded industrial carbon tax, even though it would leave a $432-million hole in the current budget.
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that cripples the marginally balanced budget that was already straining believability and a serious deficit is now probable. bizarrely, moe insists the budget will somehow still be balanced despite the revenue crater.
whether moe’s goal was to somehow help the conservatives or to concoct a confrontation with the liberals, he recklessly inflicted damage to his own budget and long-term injury to his government’s fiscal credibility for no apparent gain.
phil tank is the digital opinion editor at the saskatoon starphoenix.
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