Western Standard - Smith pressed on whether carbon tax could stall pipeline plan

00:00:00.720 David Winnick, Western Standard.

00:00:02.620 Premier, do you think the carbon tax will make it harder to find a private proponent for the pipeline?

00:00:07.420 Well, everybody, I guess, maybe I should clarify, because people were accustomed to the retail carbon tax.

00:00:15.740 This is not a retail carbon tax.

00:00:17.460 You will not see this on your diesel or gasoline or any of your fill-up bills.

00:00:22.520 You will not see it on your home heating bill.

00:00:24.060 That the federal government got rid of with a lot of pressure from us, other provinces,

00:00:28.080 and of course, the federal conservatives. But this is an industrial price that has

00:00:34.080 been on industrial emissions since 2007. We actually were the first ones to put it in place.

00:00:40.280 It got what we went to court and the court determined that the federal government has

00:00:44.840 the right to set a floor price. That's part of the overlapping jurisdiction that we have.

00:00:49.080 But it does apply to those facilities that are emitting more than 100,000 tons of emissions

00:00:55.220 per year. So just keep in mind, that's where we believe we can make the biggest impact on reducing

00:01:00.780 emissions, and also the biggest impact on adopting new technology. And what we found is that this

00:01:06.760 mechanism where we reward those companies who do best available technology, and we have companies

00:01:12.200 who are lagging behind paying, it has led to an incredible amount of innovation. That's why we've

00:01:17.800 kept it for the past 20 years. So is it going to be too high? Well, I can tell you 170 by 2030 was

00:01:23.880 way too high, which is why we froze it this year. And we'll do some more industry consultation.

00:01:29.760 But the early feedback we've got from the industry is that they believe that this slower

00:01:34.540 ramp up is going to be manageable for the companies that are going to be exposed to it.

Western Standard - May 15, 2026