Manitoba signs deal after 14-month standoff

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This article was published 22/02/2018 (2247 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The Manitoba government ended its 14-month standoff over Ottawa’s climate principles Friday, unlocking almost $67 million for carbon retrofits, just a week before a federal deadline.

Provincial Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires stressed Manitoba is sticking to its flat $25 per tonne carbon levy, which will fall short of federal requirements by 2020. The federal requirement gradually rises to $50 from $10 by 2022.

Squires said she endorsed the federal agenda once she was assured the funding wasn’t contingent on meeting that target.

“We were not prepared to see Manitobans lose that money,” she told reporters in a midday conference call.

Squires’ federal counterpart, Catherine McKenna, said in an interview it was “great” to “have a Conservative government who’s stepped up,” but said the Liberals are staying firm on their carbon-tax benchmarks, which are supposed to rise by $10 each year until 2022.

As the Free Press first reported, McKenna imposed a Feb. 28 ultimatum for the province to endorse Ottawa’s principles, or forfeit its share of the $2-billion Low Carbon Economy Fund.

That money, to be used for carbon-reducing projects, is contingent on provinces and territories endorsing the Pan-Canadian Framework on climate change, a document that outlines principles such as the need for carbon pricing.

Squires held off on ratifying the framework until Ottawa clarified doing so wouldn’t hold Manitoba to the $50 levy target.

“Signing onto the Pan-Canadian Framework does not behold us to specific targets; we will be setting those ourselves,” Squires said. “The two are not linked together at all.”

Manitoba and Saskatchewan were the sole holdouts in December 2016, when all other provinces and territories agreed to support the document. It remains unclear why Manitoba held out for 14 months.

“We took the necessary time to do that consultation and are very pleased with our plan and are moving forward with our plan,” Squires said Friday, rejecting a suggestion Ottawa and Manitoba were grandstanding.

She said the province presented its plan to federal officials last December, alongside the thousands of responses they garnered since October and technical modelling.

The government led by Premier Brian Pallister tabled its own climate plan last October, after it sought a legal opinion on whether Ottawa had the power to impose a carbon tax on provinces (which a neutral expert found was within federal rights).

Squires has said the Manitoba plan will ultimately lead to greater reductions in emissions than the escalating federal levy targets will.

“It would be very unfortunate, and frankly counterproductive, for the federal government to come in and penalize us with a price that we are not prepared to go to when we’re already committed to strong action on climate change.”

She said the October plan will lead to legislation “hopefully this spring,” after which the province will dole out the roughly $67 million to businesses and groups that can achieve the most effective outcomes for projects addressing such things as energy efficiency, transit electrification and landfill diversion.

McKenna and Squires have stressed they share a commitment to tackle carbon emissions, and the federal minister said the Pallister government could be a model for other right-leaning provinces.

Last month’s Manning Networking Conference gathered conservative-minded politicians from various parties and provinces. Pallister’s previous chief adviser on climate change, David McLaughlin, was among the presenters at the conference, urging Tories at the federal and Ontario levels to embrace carbon taxes, which he argued were the most efficient way of tackling emissions.

McKenna said the idea goes back to combating acid rain in the 1980s.

“We know that any credible plan must have a price on pollution, and that’s actually a conservative idea; (former Tory prime minister) Brian Mulroney was the first person to recognize you needed to have a price on pollution,” she said.

“You save money and in the process you innovate, so businesses are innovating to find clean solutions, so it’s a win-win,” she said, offering the example of electric buses produced by New Flyer Industries Inc., that is headquartered in Winnipeg.

Manitoba will soon have its own annex to the Pan-Canadian Framework published online; it was not yet publicly available Friday evening.

Saskatchewan is the sole jurisdiction that hasn’t endorsed the framework.

“We do believe in a collaborative approach to climate (change) mitigation,” Squires told reporters, saying emissions in Saskatchewan impact Manitoba, too.

But she wouldn’t say she was asking that province to follow suit.

“I don’t tell other jurisdictions what they ought to do. I’m saying this is what is right for Manitoba.”

McKenna didn’t say whether that province would get an extension because the government has a new leader, but she hinted Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe had already served as environment minister and is up to date on the file.

“I’m always hopeful that provinces will realize we’re already paying the price for climate change, whether it’s droughts or floods or extreme-weather events,” she said.

A Finance Department document uncovered by media last month revealed the federal Liberals are eyeing carbon-price increases that go beyond the 2022 target of $50 per tonne.

Meanwhile, McKenna also took some heat on social media Friday for apparently mistaking Manitoba’s provincial flag.

She posted on Twitter she was “thrilled to have Manitoba join” the framework, but posted a photo of the Red Ensign, whose coat of arms features a harp and maple leaves instead of a bison. Roughly an hour later, the tweet was deleted and McKenna instead posted a Manitoba flag.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca