Is Wall picking a fight?

The premier’s opposition to the federal cap-and-trade plan, required by global agreements, puts the province in a small minority of Canadians who oppose the policy

By: Bruce Johnstone
October 31, 2016 October 29, 2019
23:35

So, why is premier brad wall so staunchly opposed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan? It’s politics, pure and simple.

Wall has called Trudeau’s proposed $10-per-tonne carbon price a “betrayal” of the prime minister’s promise of a collaborative approach to climate-change policy. Moreover, Wall says Ottawa’s carbon pricing plan will cost every person in the province $1,250 and threatened to take the federal government to court. Wall is even casting himself as a latter-day Peter Lougheed, the Alberta premier who took on Trudeau’s father more than 35 years ago over the National Energy Program (NEP). Wall is demonizing carbon pricing as “NEP 2.0,” which resonates with those of a certain age.

But there are fundamental differences between Ottawa’s battle with Western Canada over the NEP in the 1980s and the federal government’s plan to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to meet our climate-change targets. The NEP was a unilateral, interventionist and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by Ottawa to wrest control over oil and gas pricing and, more important, resources revenue.

The Trudeau government’s announcement in early October that it would impose carbon pricing on the provinces if they fail to come up with their own cap-and-trade policy or carbon tax by 2018 should not have come as a surprise to Wall and the other premiers.

This threat is consistent with the promises the Liberal Party made on the campaign trail and to the international community at the United Nations COP21 climate change talks in Paris in December of last year. The Liberals’ position also is consistent with the Harper government’s stated commitment to reduce Canada’s CO2 emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.

And, unlike the NEP, carbon pricing is not a tax grab because the provinces are free to keep as much or as little of the revenue as they want; the revenue stays within the province and does not flow to Ottawa.

Saskatchewan and the other provinces opposed to carbon pricing (Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador) amount to 7% of the population, while the provinces that have carbon pricing (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec) represent 86% of the population.

By opposing carbon pricing, Wall is allying himself with the climate-change apologists who claim that because Canada is responsible for only 1.6% of global GHG emissions, what we do doesn’t matter.

But, of course, it does matter. As a signatory to COP21, Canada has committed to reduce its GHG emissions as part of an international strategy to limit global temperature rise to less than 2°C by the end of the century.

If an affluent country such as Canada can’t or won’t try to achieve its climate-change targets, why should developing countries?

Why Wall’s opposition? It’s the oldest trick in the Prairie politician’s playbook: when you want to win an election, pick a fight with Ottawa.