Energy
Trudeau’s climate chief threatens Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe for refusing to collect carbon tax
From LifeSiteNews
Moe, however, has refused to be intimidated by Guilbeault’s threats, telling media this week that the carbon tax “is driving inflation and we still are paying a good chunk in other areas and the position from the government of Saskatchewan’s perspective hasn’t changed nor will it change. It should be removed on all products for all.”
Trudeau’s Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has threatened to take “measures” against the premier of Saskatchewan for refusing to collect the federal carbon tax on home heating in his province.
On March 4, Guilbeault condemned Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s decision not to collect the carbon tax on home heating in the western province. Moe’s decision came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government gave a carbon tax exemption on home heating oil, a break that almost exclusively benefits the Liberal voting Atlantic provinces.
“If Premier Scott Moe decides that he wants to start breaking laws and not respecting federal laws, then measures will have to be taken,” Guilbeault told reporters Monday.
“We can’t let that happen. What if somebody tomorrow decides that they don’t want to respect other federal laws, criminal laws? What would happen then if a prime minister, a premier of a province, would want to do that?” he questioned, apparently forgetting his own criminal history.
“It’s irresponsible and it’s frankly immoral on his part,” Guilbeault continued. “We can have disagreements about things like climate change, but to be so reckless is unspeakable, really.”
Beginning January 1, Saskatchewan stopped collecting the carbon tax on electric and natural gas home heating, a move which has already been shown to have lowered the province’s inflation rate.
Moe made the announcement in October after Trudeau suspended his carbon tax on home heating oil, which is almost exclusively used in Atlantic Canada to heat homes, and not in his province.
“I cannot accept the federal government giving an affordability break to people in one part of Canada but not here,” Moe said in a video posted on X at the time.
Moe promised that if the Trudeau government did not provide the exemption provided to Atlantic Canada to the rest of the nation, he would tell SaskEnergy, the province’s Crown corporation that provides energy to all residents, to stop collecting the carbon tax on natural gas. This, Moe said, would effectively provide “Saskatchewan residents with the very same exemption that the federal government has given heating oil in Atlantic Canada.”
Moe’s government has gone as far as introducing legislation to back the scrapping of the federal carbon tax on natural gas. The legislation will shield all executives at SaskEnergy from being jailed or fined by the federal government if they stop collecting the tax.
Despite the popularity and seeming fairness of Moe’s decision, Trudeau’s Liberal government has refused to rule out jail time for Moe if he refuses to collect the carbon tax on home heating.
Moe, however, has refused to be intimidated by Guilbeault’s threats, telling media this week that the carbon tax “is driving inflation and we still are paying a good chunk in other areas and the position from the government of Saskatchewan’s perspective hasn’t changed nor will it change. It should be removed on all products for all.”
Additionally, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre pointed out that while Guilbeault challenges Moe for breaking the law by refusing to collect the carbon tax, Guilbeault himself has a history of breaking the law.
“Guilbeault calls out Saskatchewan’s lawlessness for refusing to collect his carbon tax,” Poilievre posted on X with a photo of Guilbeault being arrested in 2001.
Guilbeault calls out Saskatchewan's lawlessness for refusing to collect his carbon tax. pic.twitter.com/p3PnwyHzWr
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) March 6, 2024
While a current member of the Trudeau government cabinet, Guilbeault has a history of taking extreme action in the name of the climate.
In 1997, he joined Greenpeace and served for a time as a director and then campaign manager of its Quebec chapter for about 10 years.
He was arrested many times for environmental protests, the most famous arrest coming after an incident in 2001 when he climbed Toronto’s CN Tower with British activist Chris Holden. The pair hung a banner saying “Canada and Bush — Climate Killers.”
Greenpeace is a group that advocates for population control in addition to calling for an end to all oil and gas use.
Last month, Guilbeault was publicly ridiculed after he said the federal government would no longer fund any road construction projects and instead funnel the savings to “climate change” projects that promote walking instead of driving.
However, Guilbeault’s push for “climate change” regulations are consistent with those of Trudeau. Since taking office in 2015, Trudeau has continued to push a radical environmental agenda like the agendas being pushed the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.”
The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.
The reality of Trudeau’s push for so-called renewable energy showed itself just over a month ago after Alberta’s power grid faced near certain collapse due to a failure of wind and solar power. Many called out the Trudeau government’s green energy agenda that is attempting to phase out carbon-based power in favor of “renewables” as the reason for the near failure.
Energy
Federal Government Suddenly Reverses on Critical Minerals – Over Three Years Too Late – MP Greg McLean
From Energy Now
By Calgary MP Greg McLean
Government in Full Reverse
Canada-U.S. Trade Relations is obviously the most pressing issue facing Canadians today.
It’s important to remember how we arrived at this point, but also to question the sincerity of the Liberal Ministers and leadership contenders who are now posing solutions, such as:
- We need to diversify our resource trade
- We need to build pipelines and infrastructure to get our exports to tidewater
- We need to streamline our regulatory burden that stands in the way of development
- We need to halt the escalating carbon tax
- We need to reverse the capital gains tax increase
The Liberals are turning themselves inside out on the policy choices they have made over nine years, and put Canada in a precarious economic position vis-à-vis our trade position.
If you believe what they are saying now, these Liberal Ministers and leadership contenders are saying that Canada needs EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they have delivered over these past nine years.
I can’t comment on whether these NEW Liberal policy positions completely lack sincerity, or whether they are the result of a ‘deathbed conversion’, but nine years of moving in the exact opposite direction to their new words has led Canada to where it is today – and that is nine lost years for Canadians, our prosperity, and our role in a complex world.
Below is another example of a specific morphing of a Liberal policy – to the one I helped put forth – 3 ½ years ago – regarding Canada’s policy on critical minerals.
Minister Late to Critical Mineral Strategy
Here’s a gem of wisdom from December’s Fall Economic Statement:
Canada will work with the United States and other likeminded partners to address the impacts of non-market policies and practices that unduly distort critical mineral prices. This includes ensuring that market participants recognize the value of critical minerals produced responsibly, with due regard for high environmental standards and labour practices.
Then, on January 16th, the following from Canada’s Natural Resource Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson:
During a panel discussion in Washington on Wednesday, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson proposed that enforcing a floor on metals prices could be “one of the centerpieces of the conversations we would then be having at the G7” summit later this year.
Western nations have long warned that China’s dominance in everything from nickel to lithium has let the country’s producers flood the market with supply, thereby keeping prices artificially low for competitors. Wilkinson has touted price floors as a way to combat that market control.
What a great idea!
Here’s the relevant excerpt from June, 2021, from a dissenting report on the Natural Resources Committee, when I served as my party’s critic, in contrast to the government’s critical minerals approach at that time:
Recommendation 4: Coordinate with our allies to establish a dedicated supply stock of critical minerals, possibly through a physical storage and floor pricing mechanism for visibility and pricing purposes.
Excerpt: Canada is too small of a market to undertake this effort on its own, but it can play a key role with its longstanding leadership as the mining jurisdiction of choice in the world. Canada’s pre-eminent role as a financing jurisdiction for international mining is well understood. Although we are at the early stages of losing this historical leadership to Australia, acting quickly to solidify Canada’s leadership will be a strong signal. Australia and Europe have already established critical mineral strategies to offset the dominance of the market that China has exerted. At the very least, Canada’s coordination needs to include the United States, and probably Mexico (through CUSMA), as the ongoing funding of a critical mineral supply may require backstopping developments with a price amelioration mechanism. In essence, a floor price to ensure the protection of critical mineral developments from manipulating price volatility – and which has held back developments, or caused the insolvency of several of these developments, due to non-transparent world market pricing mechanisms. … Establishing a steady supply of these critical minerals will lead to more value-added opportunities, in conjunction with our trade partners.
Conservative Dissenting Recommendations
My question to the Minister: ‘What took you so long?’
This approach was presented three and a half years ago – and the Government chose to ignore it then.
No surprise now, perhaps, as we’ve seen this Minister flip-flop on so many of the nonsense policies he’s put forth or acquiesced in at Cabinet:
- The Clean Electricity Regulations (still opaque)
- Canada’ role in shipping hydrocarbons to the world
- Building energy infrastructure
To say nothing of the various Cabinet decisions he has been a part of that have led to Canada’s current weak negotiating position with our allies. We effectively have not had a Minister of Natural Resources under his tenure.
Nothing topped it off more succinctly than his speech at the World Petroleum Show, held in Calgary in September 2023, when his remarks on behalf of the Government of Canada left industry participants around the world questioning whether the Minister was ‘tone-deaf’ or if, in fact, he knew anything about natural resources.
It seems his move to the position I promoted – three and a half years ago – shows that he’s finally listening and learning (or un-learning his previous narratives, perhaps)– but it’s quite late in the day. Time and our future have been wasted.
Canada’s wealth is based on its success as a trading nation. Canada is blessed with immense resources spread across a vast country. It has succeeded as a small, open economy with an enviable standard of living that has been able to provide what the world needs.
Canada has been stuck in a situation where it cannot complete nation‑building projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway that was completed in 1885, or the Trans Canada Highway that was completed in the 1960s. With the uncertainty of U.S. tariffs looming over our country and province, Canada needs to take bold action to revitalize the productivity and competitiveness of its economy – going east to west and not always relying on north-south trade. There’s no better time than right now to politically de-risk these projects.
A lack of leadership from the federal government has led to the following:
- Inadequate federal funding for trade infrastructure.
- A lack of investment is stifling the infrastructure capacity we need to diversify our exports. This is despite federally commissioned reports like the 2022 report by the National Supply Chain Task Force indicating the investment need will be trillions over the next 50 years.
- Federal red tape, like the Impact Assessment Act.
- Burdensome regulation has added major costs and significant delays to projects, like the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project, a proposed container facility at Vancouver, which spent more than a decade under federal review.
- Opaque funding programs, like the National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF).
- Which offers a pattern of unclear criteria for decisions and lack of response. This program has not funded any provincial highway projects in Alberta, despite the many applications put forward by the Government of Alberta. In fact, we’ve gone nearly 3 years without decisions on some project applications.
- Ineffective policies that limit economic activity.
- Measures that pit environmental and economic objectives in stark opposition to one another instead of seeking innovative win-win solutions hinder Canada’s overall productivity and investment climate. One example is the moratorium on shipping crude through northern B.C. waters, which effectively ended Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal and has limited Alberta’s ability to ship its oil to Asian markets.
In a federal leadership vacuum, Alberta has worked to advance economic corridors across Canada. In April 2023, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba signed an agreement to collaborate on joint infrastructure networks meant to boost trade and economic growth across the Prairies. Alberta also signed a similar economic corridor agreement with the Northwest Territories in July 2024. Additionally, Alberta would like to see an agreement among all 7 western provinces and territories, and eventually the entire country, to collaborate on economic corridors.
Through our collaboration with neighbouring jurisdictions, we will spur the development of economic corridors by reducing regulatory delays and attracting investment. We recognize the importance of working with Indigenous communities on the development of major infrastructure projects, which will be key to our success in these endeavours.
However, provinces and territories cannot do this alone. The federal government must play its part to advance our country’s economic corridors that we need from coast to coast to coast to support our economic future. It is time for immediate action.
Alberta recommends the federal government take the following steps to strengthen Canada’s economic corridors and supply chains by:
- Creating an Economic Corridor Agency to identify and maintain economic corridors across provincial boundaries, with meaningful consultation with both Indigenous groups and industry.
- Increasing federal funding for trade-enabling infrastructure, such as roads, rail, ports, in-land ports, airports and more.
- Streamlining regulations regarding trade-related infrastructure and interprovincial trade, especially within economic corridors. This would include repealing or amending the Impact Assessment Act and other legislation to remove the uncertainty and ensure regulatory provisions are proportionate to the specific risk of the project.
- Adjusting the policy levers that that support productivity and competitiveness. This would include revisiting how the federal government supports airports, especially in the less-populated regions of Canada.
To move forward expeditiously on the items above, I propose the establishment of a federal/provincial/territorial working group. This working group would be tasked with creating a common position on addressing the economic threats facing Canada, and the need for mitigating trade and trade-enabling infrastructure. The group should identify appropriate governance to ensure these items are presented in a timely fashion by relative priority and urgency.
Alberta will continue to be proactive and tackle trade issues within its own jurisdiction. From collaborative memorandums of understanding with the Prairies and the North, to reducing interprovincial trade barriers, to fostering innovative partnerships with Indigenous groups, Alberta is working within its jurisdiction, much like its provincial and territorial colleagues.
We ask the federal government to join us in a new approach to infrastructure development that ensures Canada is productive and competitive for generations to come and generates the wealth that ensures our quality of life is second to none.
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Devin Dreeshen
Devin Dreeshen was sworn in as Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors on October 24, 2022.
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