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Economy

Saskatchewan set to defy Trudeau gov’t, stop collecting carbon tax on electric home heat

Published

11 months ago

8 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Premier Scott Moe is ignoring a threat from Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he could serve jail time for failing to impose the tax

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe now says that starting January 1 his province will no longer collect a federally imposed carbon tax on electric heat in addition to natural gas despite a threat from the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he could serve jail time should he defy the feds.

Moe and Saskatchewan Party MLA Jim Lemaigreas made the announcement last Thursday in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“We are going to need to determine who is heating their home with electricity and then estimate the percentage of their power bill that is being used for that heat,” Moe said.

Moe added that his government is working out how to stop collecting the carbon tax on electric home heat. Regardless, anyone using electric heat in the province or natural gas to warm their home will not pay a federal carbon tax.

According to Moe, extending the carbon tax exemption to electric heat makes sense because 15% of people in the province use it to heat their homes. The other 85% use natural gas to heat their homes.

January and February can bring brutally cold temperatures to many parts of the province, and natural gas-fired furnaces are best at handling extreme temperatures. However, many in the province, especially those in the north, use electric heaters to heat their homes.

Moe noted how Saskatchewan owns its natural gas utility SaskEnergy, which by extension means taxpayers own it. He said the move to stop collecting the tax is ideal given the province controls its utilities, which acts as a safeguard from federal overreach.

“Well, we also own the electrical utility, and that’s why our government has decided that SaskPower will also stop collecting the carbon tax on electric heat,” Moe said.

On October 30, Moe first announced that he would stop collecting the carbon tax on home heating starting January 1, 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.

Moe promised that if the exemption was not extended to all other forms of home heating in his province, he would tell SaskEnergy, which is a 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.

The Trudeau Liberal government, however, has refused to rule out jail time for Moe if he refuses to collect the carbon tax on home heating.

On November 3, Liberal Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland avoided  directly answering whether Moe would be criminally charged for refusing to collect Trudeau’s controversial carbon tax for home heating within the province.

Trudeau has said that “Canada is a country of the rule of law, and we expect all Canadians to follow the law,” he said.

“That applies to provinces as much as it applies to individual citizens,” he added.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is also fighting Trudeau’s carbon tax and has vowed to use every tool available to her government to take him on.

Indeed, after Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault brushed off Smith’s invocation of the “Sovereignty Act” as being merely “symbolic,” the Alberta leader warned him that her province will be building new gas-fired power plants regardless of his new “clean energy” rules.

Moe has court rulings to back up his defiance of Trudeau in asserting provincial autonomy

Two recent court rulings dealt a serious blow to the Trudeau government’s environmental activism via legislation by asserting the provinces have autonomy when it comes to how they use and develop their own natural resources.

The most recent was when the Federal Court of Canada on November 16 overturned the Trudeau government’s ban on single-use plastic, calling it “unreasonable and unconstitutional.”

The Federal Court ruled in favor of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan by stating that Trudeau’s government had overstepped its authority by classifying plastic as “toxic” as well as banning all single-use plastic items, like straws, bags, and eating utensils.

The second victory for Alberta and Saskatchewan concerns a Supreme Court ruling that stated that Trudeau’s law, C-69, dubbed the “no more pipelines” bill, is “mostly unconstitutional.” The decision returned authority over the pipelines to provincial governments, meaning oil and gas projects headed up by the provinces should be allowed to proceed without federal intrusion.

A draft version of the federal government’s new Clean Energy Regulations (CERs) introduced by Guilbeault projects billions in higher costs associated with a so-called “green” power transition, especially in the resource-rich provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, which use natural gas and coal to fuel power plants.

Business executives in Alberta’s energy sector have also sounded the alarm over the Trudeau government’s “green” transition, saying it could lead to unreliability in the power grid.

The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals – in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.

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 (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet members  are involved.

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Economy

Trudeau Government Capping the Canadian Economy (and Energy Industry) Just to Impress International Agencies

Published on November 7, 2024

By

From EnergyNow.ca

By Kasha Piquette

The incoming Trump Presidency has promised  to “unleash American energy” with plans to “free up the vast stores of liquid gold on America’s public land for energy development.”  This week, the Trudeau government unveiled the draft details of its plans for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the Canadian oil and gas sector. These proposed regulations would cap all greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 35 percent below levels in 2019 with the lofty goal of achieving a 40-45 percent reduction by 2030.

It is a plan that the province of Alberta and others contend would be a cap on production and cause elevated prices for consumer goods across Canada, cost up to 150,000 jobs and reduce national GDP by up to C$1 trillion ($720 billion).

These proposals would make Canada the only oil and natural gas-producing country to attempt an emissions cap on such a scale. The regulations propose to force upstream oil and gas operations to reduce emissions to 35 percent less than they were in 2019 by 2030 to 2032. Notably, while hydrocarbon production increased from 2019 to 2022, Canadian emissions from the sector declined by seven percent.

Perhaps significantly, and much to the apparent annoyance of Alberta’s Premier, the Federal announcement was made slightly ahead of the UN COP29 Climate Summit in Azerbaijan. Per the Paris Agreement, each country submits its climate ambitions to UN as National Determined Contributions (NDCs).  However, the federal government has also passed the Net Zero Accountability Act, which, by December 1st, 2024, could require even more aggressive reduction targets for 2035. Does this mean that the federal government may be positioning itself to announce even more ambitious emission targets – all to be announced at that conference?

It is unclear whether, how and in what form, the emissions cap will come into effect. With the next federal election slated for late October 2025 and polls that show the current Liberal-NDP coalition government to be far behind the opposition Conservatives, the federal carbon tax and the proposed emission cap have an uncertain future.

Other business interests have voiced concerns about Canada’s increasingly discordant, incoherent climate policies and regulations, which have caused the Canadian oil and gas sector to be at a competitive disadvantage in the global energy market.  Clearly, Alberta considers that the Federal government has, once again, overstepped its constitutional bounds with the proposed emissions cap and, along with its victorious Supreme Court challenge against the Impact Assessment Act, has vowed to launch more court challenges.  Alberta and other Provinces have contended that, with regional exemptions, the federal carbon tax is being applied unfairly as a patchwork of standards with Alberta, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia, and the opposition Conservative party, mounting a growing chorus against the Liberal government’s broader price on carbon. By contrast, the proposed regulations for an emissions cap have been aimed specifically at one industry sector – one that is largely concentrated in western Canada.

Meanwhile, Canadian oil production, aided by the new export capacity of the TransMountain Pipeline completed this year, has grown to a record 5.1 million barrels per day making Canada the prime (60%) source of US crude oil imports in 2023.  Meanwhile, the industry has been engaged in considerations for the potential development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to trap greenhouse gasses underground. However, this untested technology would cost billions, needs to be proven on a larger scale and requires industry cooperation combined with all levels of government support.

The Federal announcement, and the hostile reaction from Alberta and possibly other oil-producing provinces, mean that once again, Canadian investment in the oil and gas sector will be confronted with ever more uncertainty as they encounter time-consuming court challenges.  These competing political agendas ensure that major Canadian investment decisions will, once again, be deferred while other international jurisdictions race to develop their hydrocarbon export capabilities, investments that are unencumbered by any emissions caps.

Canadians need to consider carefully how these policies and debates are affecting our energy security and standard of living as Canada. In addition to carbon pricing, Canada has already promulgated regulations for EV mandates in the transportation sector, policies that have required tens of billions in subsidies. It has also introduced the complex clean fuel standard and the proposed national clean electrical standards. These policies are affecting not just Canada’s productivity, GDP and exports. By attacking the Western provinces, Ottawa is unnecessarily creating regional tensions and a less politically stable federation. We need to think about how co-operative federalism can be re-established in ways that account for the basic needs of all Canadians – and not just accommodate arbitrary targets for emissions designed to impress international agencies.

Kasha Piquette is an Alberta-based strategic energy advisor and a former Deputy Minister of Alberta Environment and Protected Areas.

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Economy

Ottawa’s new ‘climate disclosures’ another investment killer

Published on November 3, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

The Trudeau government has demonstrated consistently that its policies—including higher capital gains taxes and a hostile regulatory environment—are entirely at odds with what investors want to see. Corporate head offices are fleeing Canada and business investment has declined  significantly since the Trudeau Liberals came to power.

According to the Trudeau government’s emissions reduction plan, “putting a price on pollution is widely recognized as the most efficient means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Fair enough, but a reasonable person might wonder why the same politicians who insist a price mechanism (i.e. carbon tax) is the most efficient policy recently announced relatively inefficient measures such “sustainable investment guidelines” and “mandatory climate disclosures” for large private companies.

The government claims that imposing mandatory climate disclosures will “attract more private capital into Canada’s largest corporations and ensure Canadian businesses can continue to effectively compete as the world races towards net-zero.” That is nonsense. How would politicians Ottawa know better than business owners about how their businesses should attract capital? If making climate disclosures were a good way to help businesses attract capital, the businesses that want to attract capital would make such disclosures voluntarily. There would be no need for a government mandate.

The government has not yet launched the regulatory process for the climate disclosures, so we don’t know exactly how onerous it will be, but one thing is for sure—the disclosures will be expensive and unnecessary, imposing useless costs onto businesses and investors without any measurable benefit, further discouraging investment in Canada. Again, if the disclosures were useful and worthwhile to investors, businesses seeking to attract investment would make them voluntarily.

Even the government’s own announcement casts doubt that increasing business investment is the likely outcome of mandatory climate disclosures. While the government says it’s “sending a clear signal to corporate boards and shareholders, at home and around the world, that Canada is their trusted partner for putting private capital to work in the race to net-zero,” most investors are not looking to put private capital to work to combat climate change. Most investors want to put their capital to work to earn a good financial return, after adjusting for the risk of the investment.

This latest announcement should come as no surprise. The Trudeau government has demonstrated consistently that its policies—including higher capital gains taxes and a hostile regulatory environment—are entirely at odds with what investors want to see. Corporate head offices are fleeing Canada and business investment has declined significantly since the Trudeau Liberals came to power. Capital per worker in Canada is declining due to weak business investment since 2015, and new capital per-Canadian worker in 2024 is barely half of what it is in the United States.

It’s also fair to ask, in the face of these onerous polices—where are the environmental benefits? The government says its climate disclosures are needed for Canada to progress to net-zero emissions and “uphold the Paris climate target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” but its net-zero targets are neither feasible nor realistic and the economics literature does not support the 1.5 degrees target.

Finally, when announcing the new climate disclosures, Trudeau Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said they are an important stepping stone to a cleaner economy, which is a “major economic opportunity.” Yet even the Canada Energy Regulator (a federal agency) projects net-zero policies would reduce real GDP per capita, increase inflation of consumer prices and reduce residential space (in other words, reduce living standards).

A major economic opportunity that will increase business investment? Surely not—mandatory climate disclosures will only further reduce our standard of living and impose useless costs onto business and investors, with the sure effect of reducing investment.

Author:

Matthew Lau
Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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