The carbon tax battle isn't over yet
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.31662
Summary
Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan rules that the federal government's carbon tax is constitutional. Andrew Lutton explains why this is a win for the Trudeau government and what to look out for in the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of provinces challenging the carbon tax.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The Saskatchewan government has lost its constitutional appeal of Justin Trudeau's
00:00:14.280
carbon tax. The Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan ruled in a 3-2 decision that no part nor the
00:00:21.100
totality of the federal carbon tax law, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, is in
00:00:27.440
violation of the Constitution. Now what was interesting about this decision is that two
00:00:32.880
judges found that the entirety of the act is in fact in violation of the Constitution and despite
00:00:39.660
the element of this that only one vote was ultimately the swing between this legislation
00:00:45.100
being found unconstitutional versus it being found constitutional, the federal government has been
00:00:50.860
absolutely jubilant saying that this somehow vindicates its position that it has not only a
00:00:56.240
right but some half-baked moral obligation to impose a job-killing carbon tax on Canadians.
00:01:02.580
Take a look at the statement that Environment Minister Catherine McKenna put out. She heralded
00:01:07.460
this as some sort of victory against climate change denial and a victory against the Conservatives and
00:01:12.360
gave this ultimatum to Conservative Premiers. Look I obviously wanted the Court to rule the
00:01:18.060
opposite way. I wanted it to find that in fact the Saskatchewan government's approach was the correct
00:01:22.960
one but as I noted when I covered at Osgoode Hall the Ontario government's challenge of the Greenhouse
00:01:29.140
Gas Pollution Pricing Act that this is going to be a long road before we get a final answer.
00:01:33.980
There still is no decision on Ontario's court reference case. The new Alberta government under
00:01:39.640
Premier Jason Kenney has vowed to fight this in court as well. We know that New Brunswick is waiting
00:01:44.500
to see what happens with the other provinces before pushing for anything on its own and ultimately
00:01:50.000
because there will be at least three different provinces constitutional questions assessed by
00:01:56.000
provincial courts the Supreme Court of Canada will ultimately get the final say on this and that's
00:02:01.180
going to be the one people should be waiting for before claiming any sort of ultimate victory here
00:02:05.840
as Catherine McKenna has done. Now the key in this decision as I've read through it is well first off
00:02:12.300
the court has dismissed the alarmist rhetoric we were hearing from the David Suzuki Foundation and
00:02:17.960
from the Intergenerational Climate Coalition. The court basically found that there's no argument
00:02:23.140
that this is a national emergency and that that should authorize the federal government to behave in
00:02:28.200
this way. What the court did find is that this is a regulatory charge not a tax. That means that the
00:02:34.520
court agreed with what the federal government said that revenue collection was not the primary purpose of
00:02:39.880
this. But there was a line in this that stood out to me as a little bit odd. The court said that the
00:02:45.580
reason it thinks this is not a revenue gathering tool is because provinces have the option to gather
00:02:52.040
the revenue themselves which means the federal government wouldn't have to gather it. Well if you're
00:02:57.060
a taxpayer I don't think you care about which hand is reaching in your pocket as much as you care
00:03:01.300
about the fact that a hand has to be reaching into your pocket. So that's going to be an interesting
00:03:06.280
dynamic as we look at the case moving forward in Ontario and ultimately the case in Alberta.
00:03:12.760
Another aspect is that they found greenhouse gas emissions are narrow enough in focus that the
00:03:17.860
government could designate them an issue of national concern. And where Canadians need to be very on guard
00:03:23.680
about this is where the Ontario and Saskatchewan governments put forward their primary concerns.
00:03:29.400
That if the federal government can regulate greenhouse gas emissions because of climate change
00:03:33.980
then that means they'll be able to regulate everything that causes greenhouse gas emissions
00:03:39.120
from your wood stove to the car that you drive to your home heating temperature. The court said this
00:03:44.780
was a little bit of an exaggeration that this wasn't something that would happen because the federal
00:03:49.960
government will have to limit the scope of future legislation. But the whole point here is that
00:03:55.220
the federal government has now been given the green light at least for the time being to put forward
00:04:00.640
broad sweeping laws even if they may trample on provincial jurisdiction. So while it is the loss of a battle
00:04:06.680
it's not the loss of the war and we'll continue fighting on this for taxpayers. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.