Removing the Industrial Carbon Tax: The minister’s and critic’s speeches.

 

REGINA – There was a lot of discussion about Saskatchewan no longer collecting the industrial carbon tax, known as the Output-Based Performance System (OPBS) in the Legislature on March 27. The previous day Premier Scott Moe posted a video on social media making the announcement, followed up by a press conference the morning of March 27.

Here are the speeches from Minister of Crown Investments Jeremy Harrison, and a response from NDP SaskPower critic Aleana Young. Harrison spoke of the lengthy battle against the carbon tax, while Young pointed out how its demise will leave a hole in the budget of $431 million, putting Saskatchewan into deficit, not surplus. Later in the day, Young posted a video discussing the topic on X, which is embedded below: 

Jeremy Harrison:  Well thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Today I am proud to announce to the House that Saskatchewan is now the very first carbon-tax-free province in the entire country.

April the 1st will be carbon tax freedom day here in Saskatchewan, Mr. Speaker. Our fight, and even more specifically, our Premier’s fight against this punitive and useless tax has been consistent, has been relentless, and has been principled.

From day one we have stood in opposition to this tax. In fact we stood completely alone, Mr. Speaker. We were subject to vicious criticism from the federal Liberal government, from the Saskatchewan NDP. We were accused of fighting a pointless crusade by the members opposite and told we should just do what Justin Trudeau told us to do, Mr. Speaker.

Well as it turns out we were right. This was not a pointless crusade but a principled fight this government took on to protect Saskatchewan families and industries. And our stakeholders are weighing in, Mr. Speaker. I’ll hopefully have some time at the end to go through some of the quotes. The Premier referenced one from the IVP, international vice-president of IBEW for example, Mr. Russ Shewchuk, who applauded Premier . . . quoting, “Premier Scott Moe’s leadership in announcing that Saskatchewan is carbon tax free.”

There were many, many others from the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Speaker, from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, from The Mosaic Company, from EVRAZ — who are going to save millions of dollars and have hundreds of employees’ jobs more stable because of it — from the Saskatchewan Realtors Association, and a number more.

We have been admitted to be right by all the players now at the federal level on the consumer carbon tax, with even the opposition across the way now adopting our position in the last couple of weeks. But there is one more element of this insidious federal tax that needs to be eliminated as well, namely the industrial carbon price — the hidden, the shadow carbon tax that Canadians continue to pay.

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And I want to be very clear about why the output-based performance standard was enacted in the first place. And you’ll hear something different from the members opposite, but this is the fact, Mr. Speaker. This was directly imposed on the province of Saskatchewan by the Liberal-NDP coalition government. The choice was whether they took the money and spent it in other parts of the country or whether that money stayed here at home such that it could be used for the Saskatchewan public.

We, I think, very responsibly chose to keep it here while making crystal clear we absolutely did not support the policy, including taking that fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada for which we were viciously criticized by those across the way.

The OBPS was designed to align with federal emissions standards and carbon pricing. But make no mistake — we have been clear since day one — the Liberal carbon tax, whether on industry or consumers, was never an environmental policy. It was always a taxation policy.

We are currently in the midst of a federal election now where the two major federal party leaders have announced their plans to remove the consumer carbon tax, and good on them. One of those parties, the Liberals, believes so strongly in their carbon tax they actually fought us in court to keep it — the aforementioned Supreme Court fight.

They’ve now caved because Canadians know what we were first to say — and the Premier was first to say — that this was a bad tax that would have enormously detrimental implications for taxpayers and our economy, and we were right.

The two leading parties now need to go further and remove the industrial carbon tax, the shadow carbon tax, remove the carbon tax from everything for everyone. The Liberal leader insists Canada requires an industrial carbon tax in order to have trade with other countries. This is utter nonsense. We are a trade-exposed, export-based economy. We compete every day with countries that have no carbon tax. Our largest trading partner has no carbon tax. Removing the industrial carbon tax would increase our ability to compete in trade, not reduce it. Just ask EVRAZ.

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In this new tariff environment, it is our duty to ensure our industries are more competitive. This is why we’re taking action. On April 1st we will be removing the carbon tax from your SaskPower bills. The results will be hundreds of dollars of savings for individuals, for businesses, for households, for companies. This, Mr. Speaker, is leadership. This is something we are very proud of. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

NDP Small Business Shadow Minister Aleana Young on March 27. Legislative Assembly of SaskatchewanAleana Young: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And I’d like to begin by thanking the minister opposite for providing a copy of his remarks in advance. I said it today in question period. This truly is a great day for Saskatchewan, Mr. Speaker.

I will maybe say one thing in recognition of some of your comments, Mr. Speaker. It’s one thing to campaign by wedge. It’s another thing to govern by wedge in this province. And this is something that we in fact agree on in this House, and I think it should be celebrated because it truly is great news for Saskatchewan.

People in this province, they truly hate two things, two unifying things. They hate hypocrisy; they hate that carbon tax, Mr. Speaker. And this carbon tax that we’re talking about removing today, the OBPS, the output-based performance system, is a carbon tax that this government has had in place since, I believe, November 2022. And now we’ve heard, as of April 1st it will be gone. And we hope it’ll be gone for everybody in Saskatchewan, Mr. Speaker, unlike the home heating carbon tax, which I would like to point out still does impact a number of residents here in Saskatchewan, specifically individuals who live in condominiums and those in Lloydminster.

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You know, Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke about removing the carbon tax from SaskPower bills, which is great news. I know as SaskPower critic I’ve gotten a lot of emails to my office, people confused why it says “federal carbon tax” on their SaskPower bills, as anyone who’s paid a power bill would have seen. But we know today and we’ve heard confirmation that the Sask Party’s OBPS, that carbon tax, is going to be taken off power bills after two and a half years, which is great news, Mr. Speaker.

The Leader of the Opposition has been calling for recognition of the economic headwinds that we’ve been facing with the promise of tariffs on Canada. And even today I saw President Trump was up promising even greater tariffs on Canada should we dare talk to the Europeans and look at diversifying our markets or strengthening those relationships. Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan’s economy needs to be firing on all cylinders, so we celebrate this announcement, Mr. Speaker, although it’s been pointed out we do question the timing of it.

The budget itself lists February 19th, 2025 as the date for this Finance minister’s tariff analysis. So I assume, Mr. Speaker, that was the last possible date, to the minister’s credit, that they could’ve done that tariff analysis and still put the budget to bed and gotten it to the printers and out to the people of Saskatchewan.

 

 

So we can assume, Mr. Speaker, that at some point between February 19th, 2025 and yesterday, this decision was made, perhaps as the federal election sands have continued to shift. But this welcome decision was clearly made relatively quickly because it’s not reflected in the budget.

And I think that is a fair question, Mr. Speaker. This government that’s taken in over a billion dollars in OBPS revenue since 2022, and in this year’s budget in black and white on page 83, there’s $431.5 million of OBPS revenue booked. With this very welcome decision, it has undermined the foundation of this government’s budget — nearly a half-billion-dollar deficit, 36 times greater a deficit than that $12 million surplus that was promised just today in this Chamber.

You know, Mr. Speaker, we spoke a little bit about the potential impact on SaskPower. I’d just like to point out for members opposite, in SaskPower’s Q3 [third quarter] 2025 report, it forecasts a net income of $126 million. And that clean electricity grant, it’s forecast at $140 million. So there is going to be some revenue to make up for SaskPower. In the absence of these revenues, it is likely that SaskPower will be running a loss and multiple-year rate increases may be required to restore its financial health.

There’s going to be a significant revenue challenge for this government to address, half a billion dollars in their own budget that they’ll be seeking to move in a few short moments, potentially tens of millions of dollars more for our Crown jewel, for SaskPower.

But for industry workers, families, farms, small businesses, an economy firing on all cylinders — that is the goal. That is something we should agree on in this House as we face the headwinds and the threats of an unstable American government and a rapidly changing economic and geopolitical landscape.

Mr. Speaker, words do matter in this House. Integrity matters. And in politics timing can be everything. Thank you.

 

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