For months now, the Saskatchewan government has been threatening the federal government essentially, “I’ll see you in court,” with regards to the federal imposed carbon tax. On April 25, they followed through.
Legal papers were served on that day as Saskatchewan sent its constitutional reference case to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal to challenge the federal government’s ability to impose a carbon tax on the province. Premier Scott Moe, Environment Minister Dustin Duncan and Justice Minister Don Morgan spoke to reporters in Regina about the move.
In a release, the Saskatchewan government said it is asking the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal to answer a clear question on the constitutionality of the legislation the federal government has introduced to impose the carbon tax. The question is: “The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act was introduced into Parliament on March 28, 2018 as Part 5 of Bill C-74. If enacted, will this Act be unconstitutional in whole or in part?”
“We do not believe the federal government has the constitutional right to impose the Trudeau carbon tax on Saskatchewan, against the wishes of the government and people of Saskatchewan,” Moe said. “We have a made-in-Saskatchewan plan to reduce emissions and fight climate change, and that plan does not include a job-killing carbon tax on Saskatchewan families.”
Duncan noted that on the regulatory side, Saskatchewan has had consultations with over 100 organizations over the last two months. “We’re going to continue to develop our performance standards. We’re going to continue to develop our resiliency measurements and targets. That work doesn’t end. What we’ve indicated to the federal government is we have a plan that will see reductions in our emissions.
“If this is really about emissions, the federal government hasn’t been able to demonstrate, to this date … they haven’t indicated what a carbon tax will actually do in terms of reducing emissions,” Duncan said. “If this is really about emissions, then Saskatchewan is putting forward a very credible plan that will achieve the same, or more, emissions reductions. I think the federal government needs to answer, is this about emissions reductions, or is this about a tax?”
He noted that a carbon tax policy has not reduced emissions in Canada or anywhere else around the world.
“We must also remember the cost to the economy, if we were to stand by idylly and allow this cost to be on the economic growth of the province of Saskatchewan,” Moe said.
“Essentially, the challenge is we are an export-based economy here in Saskatchewan, and it puts us at a severe disadvantage in the industries that we have,” Moe said.
He alluded to the EVRAZ steel mill in Regina, which uses an electric arc furnace instead of a blast furnace, the result of which is 1/5 of the emissions to a comparable blast furnace. If companies like that leave Saskatchewan as a result of these carbon policies, that steel would still be made, but with a blast furnace at five times the emissions in a jurisdiction without a carbon tax.
“Regina, and Saskatchewan, I would put forward, would lose those jobs and the world will have a higher emissions profile.
“This is the wrong conversation we continue to have about taxing our industries that are sustainable when you compare them to other areas of the world,” Moe said.
Asked about as comparison to British Columbia’s legal fight regarding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which also reference’s that province’s jurisdiction, Moe said the only similarity is the constitution.
“In the case of Kinder Morgan, pipelines, rail lines and ports have always been under the federal government’s jurisdiction, and they continue to be. Some of the most unifying construction projects in our nation have been those types of infrastructure projects that allow us, as an exporting nation, to have access to 150-plus countries each year.
“The question we need to answer as a nation is: Is it British Columbia’s coast or is it Canada’s coast? I would say it’s Canada’s coast,” Moe said.
Morgan said the government’s constitutional lawyers believe the federal carbon tax legislation can be successfully challenged because it imposes a carbon tax on some provinces but not others based on how each province has chosen to exercise its own legislative jurisdiction.
“This runs contrary to the principle of federalism, which is one of the bedrocks of our constitutional division of powers, because it fails to respect the sovereignty and autonomy of the provinces with respect to matters under their jurisdiction,” Morgan said. “Simply put, we do not believe the federal government has the right to impose a tax on one province but not others just because they don’t like our climate change plan.”
The Government of Sasaktchewan asserts that under the constitution, each level of government is sovereign within its own legislative realm. Provinces are not subsidiaries of the federal government. Provincial governments have the authority to set policy in areas of provincial jurisdiction, and the federal government does not have the right to override that provincial authority.
The Government of Saskatchewan released Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy in December 2017. The strategy includes the development of sector-specific output-based performance standards on large emitting facilities; increasing efficiencies in buildings by adopting the 2015 National Building Code; creating a freight strategy to improve delivery times, reducing fuel and increasing efficiency; and developing a climate resiliency model to help ensure communities are able to adapt and mitigate against the effects of climate change.
“Our made-in-Saskatchewan climate change strategy is broader and bolder than a carbon tax,” Environment Minister Dustin Duncan said. “Our plan to reduce emissions from the electricity sector by 40 per cent and methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 per cent by 2030 shows we are serious about tackling climate change. Our Saskatchewan story also includes our agriculture industry that sequesters nearly 12 million tonnes of CO2 annually and carbon capture at Boundary Dam 3 that has prevented two million tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering our atmosphere. Saskatchewan is the solution, not the problem.”
