Bronwyn Eyre is a former Saskatchewan Minister of Energy and Resources for four years. She has also held the portfolios of Justice & Attorney General, Education, Advanced Education, SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SaskWater and Status of Women. She resides in Saskatoon.
Saskatchewan should never have adhered to Harper’s mandate to phase out coal—with its devastating impact on at least 1,000 jobs in our southeast communities
It turns out coal in Saskatchewan isn’t as dead as once thought. This was the “Bienfait Badger” dragline on April 29, 2024. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
“We may not go ahead with the consumer carbon price,” Steven Guilbeault suddenly announced last week, as he endorsed Mark Carney. He admitted that the federal carbon tax, which was set to rise on April 1 by another fifth (to 21 cents per gas litre) is “very unpopular.”
Guilbeault’s comments went largely unreported. (Such an admission doesn’t suit the media narrative that the carbon tax is a Good Thing). Nevertheless, his announcement signalled—not with a bang, but a whimper—the beginning of the great federal stand-down.
Net zero by 2030. 2035. 2050. The UN Paris Accord. The Glasgow Accord. UN “Conference of the Parties” in Dubai. In Baku. Who could ever keep track? Now, with Trump, the endless targets and doomsday scenarios seem to verge on irrelevant.
Guilbeault blames Pierre Poilièvre for “lying to and manipulating Canadians” on the carbon tax. Talk about pot and kettle. Who will ever forget the un-ceasing, un-costed, bait-and-switch climate pitches from Guilbeault and his sidekick Jonathan Wilkinson about the “new green industrial revolution” and the “thousands of jobs” it would “create”?
This destructive duo is now tacitly acknowledging what a sham it’s all been—and what their own departments, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and millions of affordability-challenged Canadians have known for years: that the carbon tax and other irrational federal climate policies are harming our economy in real time.
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Why the sudden unravelling?
“Axe the tax” Poilièvre and plummeting Liberal polls notwithstanding, the real zeitgeist shaker is Donald Trump, Mr. Chaos Theory personified. His Inauguration Day executive orders—signatured with his black Sharpie—changed dynamic after dynamic. Declare an energy emergency in the U.S. Unleash Alaska’s energy potential. Pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Pull out of the World Health Organization. Re-establish two genders. Deconstruct DEI. And on and on.
In Canada, meanwhile, nothing shakes the zeitgeist quite like “51st state” mind games and the spectre of a 25 per cent US tariff. In response, and in just a few short weeks, the federal government has radically altered its immigration and border policy, signalled a massive uptake in NATO spending, and discovered the importance of energy security.
On the climate side:
- Compliance deadlines for the blatantly unconstitutional Clean Electricity Regulations have been extended by over a decade.
- The Clean Fuel Standard (“Carbon Tax #2”) is now “in jeopardy.” (After years of head-in-the-sand denial over the dubious economics of the CFS, Federated Co-op finally cited “regulatory and political uncertainty, potential shifts in low-carbon public policy, and escalating costs” for the cancellation of its Regina canola-crushing facility).
- $100 billion electric vehicle projects, along with federal EV regulations, are now “in doubt”—after Trump announced a re-write of EV mandates to protect America’s auto workers.
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New enslavement?
As provinces blink into the light and throw off some of these federal shackles, they must nevertheless remain vigilant about new enslavement in other areas—particularly under the guise of “cooperation” and “Team Canada” boosterism.
Take the feds’ recent intimation that, to improve federal border security, they want to use already strained provincial jail spaces to hold violent criminals entering Canada. At the same time, they’re proposing a new “incentive:” asking provinces to “shoulder the burden” and accept more asylum seekers, in exchange for cutting in half the number of skilled immigrants whom the provinces actually want. Uhm…so, where’s the incentive?
On the border, Trump’s key bargaining chip, we’ve been assured for months that Canada-produced fentanyl is not a significant security threat—despite the feds’ disastrous decriminalization of “small quantities” of drugs, including fentanyl and cocaine. We’re now learning that the RCMP recently broke up 44 fentanyl labs across the country—including one in B.C., which alone produced 93 million doses. And that’s just one bust!
No wonder we have trust issues.
Similarly, on climate policies, we’re far from out of the woods. Both Guilbeault and Carney have hinted that they would replace the carbon tax with “something else…that’s equally effective.” Heaven forbid, the Liberals could also be re-elected.
In other words, we don’t have much time. Provinces should take advantage of the current federal power vacuum, demand the feds stay in their constitutional lane, and try to make up for a decade of destruction.
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Coal: “the great back-up”
Coal is a great place to start—and once again, Trump is poised to be a catalyst.
Beamed into Davos, Switzerland last week, the President said: “Nothing can destroy coal: not the weather, not a bomb. It’s a great back-up.”
Børge Brende, President and CEO, World Economic Forum, Switzerland; Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America; Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum, Switzerland; speaking in Special Address by the President of the United States of America session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 23/1/2025, 17:00 – 17:45 at Congress Centre – Congress Hall. Plenary. Copyright: World Economic Forum / Sandra Blaser
His comments came amid increased talk of the U.S.’ “tapped-out” power grid and need for a lot more juice—especially for future, power-gobbling AI data centres. Here in Canada, of course, the feds’ hamstringing of provincial power generation has set back Canada’s grid growth by at least a decade.
Saskatchewan should never have adhered to then-Prime Minister Harper’s 2015 mandate to phase out coal—with its devastating impact on at least 1,000 jobs in our southeast communities. Under section 92(a) of the Constitution, provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over natural resources and power generation. Consequently, we should have told Harper and PM Trudeau, who further tightened compliance deadlines, that if they wanted to shut down coal, they’d have to come to Saskatchewan and fire every coal worker personally.
It is significant that, last spring, Premier Scott Moe announced that Saskatchewan reserved the right to run coal fleets beyond federal targets to the end of their operational lives. Now, the province has signalled that it will “closely consider” renovating or rejuvenating existing plants.
The community of Estevan, where the Shand and Boundary Dam power stations are located, is said to be “delighted.” That was according to a recent CBC story, which paraphrased their delight, but failed to interview a single member of the community—focusing instead on two anti-coal University of Regina economy professors who didn’t once reference the economy.
I’d like to ask them about the economic impact of the coal phase-out in the southeast, the looming power demands of AI data centers—or the lessons of Germany, which turned off nuclear power after Fukushima, hedged 40 per cent of its natural gas imports on Putin’s Russia, relied largely on wind (despite long, documented “uniquely windless” periods), and had to re-fire up coal.
Such power vulnerability (see also Texas 2021 and Alberta’s grid-strained black-outs) is simply not an option, particularly in our frigid winter climate. As we bridge to potential nuclear power with natural gas (along with some wind and solar), of course we can’t abandon coal, which provides stable, safe, affordable power.
So let’s give ’er.
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Art of the deal
If the last few chaotic weeks of Trump tariff talk have taught us anything, surely it’s that we must move beyond mere jingoism (“Team Canada”) and silly hats (“Canada’s not for sale”) and start to actually analyze the issues facing us—from drugs and the border to the reality of energy dependence and existential importance of our exports.
If we don’t, the “art of the deal” will continue to elude us.
There’s method in Trump’s perceived madness. As the Globe and Mail’s Konrad Yakabuski recently wrote: “[US Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent and [tariff czar, Stephen] Miran have dismissed widespread suggestions that tariffs would raise prices for U.S. consumers. They argue that the U.S. dollar would appreciate after the application of tariffs. That would partly offset their cost by lowering the price of foreign goods in U.S dollars. Further, they suggest foreign trading partners would lower the price of their exports to preserve U.S. market share, leaving U.S consumers no worse off than before.”
So folks, we’re in for a hell of a ride—much of it of our own, ill-prepared making.
—Bronwyn Eyre was Saskatchewan’s former Minister of Energy and of Justice and Attorney General
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