“These latest measures fail to recognize provinces have jurisdiction over the development and management of electricity. The federal regulations are duplicative, inefficient, and add to costs.”
The federal government has clarified its clean-energy goal for a net-zero power grid.
Certainly, one leading environmental group declared: “The federal government has committed to achieving zero-emissions electricity by 2035.”
And a law firm that analyses energy matters told followers in August 2023: “Government of Canada releases draft Clean Electricity Regulations aimed at achieving net-zero emissions from Canada’s electricity grid by 2035.”
What Ottawa said in August 2023 was this: “The proposed regulations would set performance standards that would ensure that the sector achieves significant transformation by 2035, so that a robust foundation of clean electricity is available to power the electric technologies (e.g., electric transportation) needed to support Canada’s transition to a net-zero GHG emissions economy by 2050.”
Announcing that 2035 goal was a case of fuzzy wording, according to Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson. He said Ottawa could have been more precise in its language and context around what exactly the 2035 target referred to.
He now says: “2035 was really having a plan as to how you were going to reduce emissions to be able to get to a net-zero economy by 2050… Perhaps we were not as precise with our language as we should have been.”
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault issued an update in February 2024: “All G7 countries, including Canada and the United States, have committed to transitioning to a net-zero electricity grid as a foundational measure to help achieve low-carbon economies by 2050.”
And he now says: “We knew from the get-go, from where we are to where we need to be, we couldn’t get there in 10 years… It was always our intention that we want to see things happening before 2035. But that we wouldn’t be able to get to a decarbonized grid before 2050.”
Whatever they said, meant, clarified, updated, and/or corrected, the new regulations face opposition and a court challenge from Alberta, for one.
Premier Danielle Smith criticized the latest regulations as unconstitutional, arguing they seek to regulate an area of provincial jurisdiction.
“After years of watching the federal government gaslight Canadians about the feasibility of achieving a net-zero power grid by 2030, we are gratified to see Ottawa finally admit that the Government of Alberta’s plan to achieve a carbon-neutral power grid by 2050 is a more responsible, affordable, and realistic target.
“That said, the federal government’s finalized electricity regulations remain entirely unconstitutional as they seek to regulate in an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. They also require generators to meet unreasonable and unattainable federally mandated interim targets beginning in 2035, which will still make electricity unaffordable for Canadian families.
“Alberta will therefore be preparing an immediate court challenge of these electricity regulations.”
Saskatchewan’s government said in a news release that it will simply not comply with the new regulations.
“Our government unequivocally rejects federal intrusion into our exclusive provincial jurisdiction over the electricity system.
“Saskatchewan will prioritize maintaining an affordable and reliable electricity grid to support our regional needs and growth. The federal Clean Electricity Regulations are unconstitutional, unaffordable, unachievable, and Saskatchewan cannot, and will not, comply with them.”
The Business Council of BC slammed the new federal regulations on multiple grounds: constitutionality, jeopardizing the reliability of electricity delivery, higher costs for businesses and households, limiting investment, regional inequities, technological limitations, and risks to greenhouse-gas management.
“These latest measures fail to recognize provinces have jurisdiction over the development and management of electricity. The federal regulations are duplicative, inefficient, and add to costs.”
And: “It is important to recognize that Canada’s combined electricity systems are already 84% non-emitting, and that electricity represents less than 10% of Canada’s total emissions. The sector has made more progress in reducing emissions than any other sector in the country over the past two decades.
“We urge the government to set aside these new regulations and work collaboratively with the electricity sector to develop a more balanced approach that respects provincial roles and will not risk undermining investment and driving up costs. The path to a cleaner energy system requires cooperation, not regulation.”
“Federal analyses find that the Regulations have no impact on electricity rates for the vast majority of Canadians, and in some cases, will even have a slightly positive impact on rates. Independent third-party expert modelling substantiates federal analysis that the Regulations are feasible.
“To ensure rates are affordable for Canadian families over the coming decade, the federal government is investing $60 billion to support the electricity sector.
“The adoption of efficient electric appliances, vehicles, and heat pumps presents an enormous opportunity for families to save money on their energy bills.
“In the shift to clean electricity, 84% of households are expected to spend less on their monthly energy costs, when accounting for the over $60 billion in federal clean electricity incentives. This could lead to $15 billion in total energy-related savings for Canadians by 2035.”
All subject to clarification, updating, and/or correction—and Alberta’s promised court case.
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“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday that changes are coming to his aggressive immigration policies after complaints from farmers and business owners.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday morning. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Later Thursday, Trump made it clear that businesses need workers.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers – they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. And we’re going to have to do something about that,” the president said.
He added: “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have, maybe, what they’re supposed to have.”
Just how Trump may change his approach to immigration enforcement remains unclear, but he said he wants to help farmers and business owners.
“You go into a farm and you look and people, they’ve been there for 20 or 25 years and they work great and the owner of the farm loves them and you’re supposed to throw them out. You know what happens? They end up hiring the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else,” Trump said.
Trump said changes would be coming soon, but gave little detail on how policies could change.
“So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon – we can’t do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels, we’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
In a later post on Truth Social, Trump said illegal immigration had destroyed American institutions.
“Biden let 21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens flood into the Country from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists. This tsunami of Illegals has destroyed Americans’ Public Schools, Hospitals, Parks, Community Resources, and Living Conditions,” the president wrote. “They have stolen American Jobs, consumed BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in Free Welfare, and turned once idyllic Communities, like Springfield, Ohio, into Third World Nightmares.”
He added that deportations would continue: “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History. Polling shows overwhelming Public Support for getting the Illegals out, and that is exactly what we will do. As Commander-in-Chief, I will always protect and defend the Heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the Most Secure Border in American History. Anyone who assaults or attacks an ICE or Border Agent will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable!”
For years, Canada’s political class sold us on the idea that carbon taxes were clever policy. Not just a tool to cut emissions, but a fair one – tax the polluters, then cycle the money back to regular folks, especially those with thinner wallets.
It wasn’t a perfect system. The focus-group-tested line embraced for years by the Trudeau Liberals made no sense at all: we’re taxing you so we can put more money back in your pocketbooks. What the hell? If you care so much about my taxes being low, just cut them already. Somehow, it took years and years of this line being repeated for its internal contradiction to become evident to all.
Yet, even many strategic conservative minds could see the thinking had internal logic. You could sell it at a town hall. As an editorial team member at an influential news organization when B.C. got its carbon tax in 2008, I bought into the concept too.
And now? That whole model has been thrown overboard, by the very parties had long defended it with a straight face and an arch tone. In both Ottawa and Victoria in 2025, progressive governments facing political survival abandoned the idea of climate policy as a matter of fairness, opting instead for tactical concessions meant to blunt the momentum of their foes.
The result: lower-income Canadians who had grown accustomed to carbon tax rebates as a dependable backstop are waking up to find the support gone. And higher earners? They just got a tidy little gift from the state.
The betrayal is worse in B.C.
This new chart from economist Ken Peacock tells the story. He shared it last week at the B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
What is shows is that scrapping the carbon tax means the poor are poorer. The treasury is emptier.
What about the rich?
Yup, you guessed it: richer.
Scrubbing the B.C. consumer carbon tax leaves the lowest earning 20 percent of households $830 per year poorer, while the top one-fifth gain $959.
“Climate leader” British Columbia’s approach was supposed to be the gold standard: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, accepted by industry, supported by voters, and engineered to send the right price signal without growing the size of government.
That pact broke somewhere along the way.
Instead of returning the money, the provincial government slowly transformed the tax into a $2 billion annual cash cow. And when Mark Carney won the federal election, B.C. Premier David Eby, boxed in by his own pledge, scrapped the tax like a man dropping ballast from a sinking balloon. Gone. No replacement. No protections for those who need them most.
Filling the gas tank, on the other hand, is noticeably cheaper. Of course, if you can’t afford a car that might not be apparent.
Spare a thought for the climate activists who spent 15 years flogging this policy, only to watch it get tossed aside like a stack of briefing notes on a Friday afternoon.
Who could not conclude that the environmental left has been played. For a political movement that prides itself on idealism, it’s a brutal lesson in realpolitik: when power’s on the line, principles are negotiable.
But here’s the thing: maybe the carbon tax model deserved a rethink. Maybe it’s time for a grown-up look at what actually works
With B.C. now reviewing its CleanBC policies, here’s a basic question: what’s working, and what’s not?
A lot of emission reductions in this province didn’t come from government fiat. They were the result of business-led innovation: more efficient technology, cleaner fuels, and capital discipline.
That, plus a hefty dose of offshoring. We’ve pushed our industrial emissions onto other jurisdictions, then shipped the finished goods back without attaching any climate cost. This contradiction particularly helped to fuel the push to dump carbon pricing as a failed solution.
The progressives’ choice was made once the anti-tax arguments could no longer be refuted: to limit losses it would be necessary to deep six an unpopular strand of the overall carbon strategy. This, to save the rest. That’s why policies like the federal emissions cap haven’t also been abandoned.
To give another example, it’s also why British Columbia’s aviation sector is in a flap over the issue of sustainable aviation fuel. Despite years of aspirational policy, low emissions jet fuel blends remain more scarce than a long-haul cabin upgrade. The policy’s designers correctly anticipated that refiners would never be able to meet the imposed demand, and so as an alternative they provided a complex carbon credit trading scheme that will make the cost of flying more expensive. For those with a choice, nearby airport hubs in the United States where these policies do not apply will become an attractive alternative, while remote communities that have no choice in the matter will simply have to eat the cost. (Needless to say, if emissions reduction is your goal this policy isn’t needed anyways, since the decisions that matter in reducing global aviation emissions aren’t made in B.C. and never will be.)
I’m not showing up to bash those who have been genuinely trying to figure things out, and found themselves in a world of policy that is more complicated and unpredictable than they realized. Simply put, the chapter is closing on an era of energy policy naïveté.
The brutally honest action by Eby and Carney to eject carbon taxes for their own political survival could be read as a signal that it’s now okay to have an honest public conversation. Let’s insist on that. For years now, debate has been constrained in part by a particular form of linguistic tyranny, awash in terminology designed to cow the questioner into silence. “So you have an issue with clean policies, do you? What kind of dirty reprobate are you?” “Only a monster doesn’t want their aviation fuel to be sustainable.” Etc. Now is the moment to move on from that, and widen the field of discourse.
Ditching bad policy is also a signal that just maybe a better approach is to start by embracing a robust sense of the possibilities for energy to improve lives and empower all of the solutions needed for tomorrow’s problems. Because that’s the only way the conversation will ever get real.
Slogans, wildly aspirational goal setting and the habit of refusing to acknowledge how the world really works have been getting us nowhere. Petroleum products will continue to obey Yergin’s Law: oil always gets to market. China and India will grow their economies using reliable energy they can afford, having recently approved the construction of the most new coal power plants in a decade amid energy security concerns. Japan, which has practically worn itself out pleading for natural gas from Canada, isn’t waiting for the help of last-finishing nice guys to guarantee energy security: today, they are buying 8% of their LNG imports from the evil Putin regime.
Meanwhile, we’re in the worst of both worlds: our courageous carbon tax policy that was positioned as trailblazing not just for B.C. residents but for the world as a whole – climate leadership! – is gone, the poorest are puzzling over why things feel even more expensive, and nobody knows what comes next.
Ken-Peacock- B.C. Chamber of Commerce annual gathering in Nanaimo.
