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Economy

Saskatchewan set to defy Trudeau gov’t, stop collecting carbon tax on electric home heat

Published

2 years ago

8 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Premier Scott Moe is ignoring a threat from Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he could serve jail time for failing to impose the tax

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe now says that starting January 1 his province will no longer collect a federally imposed carbon tax on electric heat in addition to natural gas despite a threat from the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he could serve jail time should he defy the feds.

Moe and Saskatchewan Party MLA Jim Lemaigreas made the announcement last Thursday in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter).

“We are going to need to determine who is heating their home with electricity and then estimate the percentage of their power bill that is being used for that heat,” Moe said.

Moe added that his government is working out how to stop collecting the carbon tax on electric home heat. Regardless, anyone using electric heat in the province or natural gas to warm their home will not pay a federal carbon tax.

According to Moe, extending the carbon tax exemption to electric heat makes sense because 15% of people in the province use it to heat their homes. The other 85% use natural gas to heat their homes.

January and February can bring brutally cold temperatures to many parts of the province, and natural gas-fired furnaces are best at handling extreme temperatures. However, many in the province, especially those in the north, use electric heaters to heat their homes.

Moe noted how Saskatchewan owns its natural gas utility SaskEnergy, which by extension means taxpayers own it. He said the move to stop collecting the tax is ideal given the province controls its utilities, which acts as a safeguard from federal overreach.

“Well, we also own the electrical utility, and that’s why our government has decided that SaskPower will also stop collecting the carbon tax on electric heat,” Moe said.

On October 30, Moe first announced that he would stop collecting the carbon tax on home heating starting January 1, after Trudeau suspended his carbon tax on home heating oil, which is almost exclusively used in Atlantic Canada to heat homes, and not in his province.

Moe promised that if the exemption was not extended to all other forms of home heating in his province, he would tell SaskEnergy, which is a Crown corporation that provides energy to all residents, to stop collecting the carbon tax on natural gas. This, Moe said, would effectively provide “Saskatchewan residents with the very same exemption that the federal government has given heating oil in Atlantic Canada.”

Moe’s government has gone as far as introducing legislation to back the scrapping of the federal carbon tax on natural gas. The legislation will shield all executives at SaskEnergy from being jailed or fined by the federal government if they stop collecting the tax.

The Trudeau Liberal government, however, has refused to rule out jail time for Moe if he refuses to collect the carbon tax on home heating.

On November 3, Liberal Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland avoided  directly answering whether Moe would be criminally charged for refusing to collect Trudeau’s controversial carbon tax for home heating within the province.

Trudeau has said that “Canada is a country of the rule of law, and we expect all Canadians to follow the law,” he said.

“That applies to provinces as much as it applies to individual citizens,” he added.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is also fighting Trudeau’s carbon tax and has vowed to use every tool available to her government to take him on.

Indeed, after Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault brushed off Smith’s invocation of the “Sovereignty Act” as being merely “symbolic,” the Alberta leader warned him that her province will be building new gas-fired power plants regardless of his new “clean energy” rules.

Moe has court rulings to back up his defiance of Trudeau in asserting provincial autonomy

Two recent court rulings dealt a serious blow to the Trudeau government’s environmental activism via legislation by asserting the provinces have autonomy when it comes to how they use and develop their own natural resources.

The most recent was when the Federal Court of Canada on November 16 overturned the Trudeau government’s ban on single-use plastic, calling it “unreasonable and unconstitutional.”

The Federal Court ruled in favor of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan by stating that Trudeau’s government had overstepped its authority by classifying plastic as “toxic” as well as banning all single-use plastic items, like straws, bags, and eating utensils.

The second victory for Alberta and Saskatchewan concerns a Supreme Court ruling that stated that Trudeau’s law, C-69, dubbed the “no more pipelines” bill, is “mostly unconstitutional.” The decision returned authority over the pipelines to provincial governments, meaning oil and gas projects headed up by the provinces should be allowed to proceed without federal intrusion.

A draft version of the federal government’s new Clean Energy Regulations (CERs) introduced by Guilbeault projects billions in higher costs associated with a so-called “green” power transition, especially in the resource-rich provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, which use natural gas and coal to fuel power plants.

Business executives in Alberta’s energy sector have also sounded the alarm over the Trudeau government’s “green” transition, saying it could lead to unreliability in the power grid.

The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals – in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.

The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet members  are involved.

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Pierre Poilievre – Per Capita, Hardisty, Alberta Is the Most Important Little Town In Canada

Published on July 2, 2025

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From Pierre Poilievre

The tiny town of Hardisty, Alberta (623 people) moves $90 billion in energy a year—that’s more than the GDP of some countries.

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Business

Why it’s time to repeal the oil tanker ban on B.C.’s north coast

Published on July 2, 2025

By

The Port of Prince Rupert on the north coast of British Columbia. Photo courtesy Prince Rupert Port Authority

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

Moratorium does little to improve marine safety while sending the wrong message to energy investors

In 2019, Martha Hall Findlay, then-CEO of the Canada West Foundation, penned a strongly worded op-ed in the Globe and Mail calling the federal ban of oil tankers on B.C.’s northern coast “un-Canadian.”

Six years later, her opinion hasn’t changed.

“It was bad legislation and the government should get rid of it,” said Hall Findlay, now director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

The moratorium, known as Bill C-48, banned vessels carrying more than 12,500 tonnes of oil from accessing northern B.C. ports.

Targeting products from one sector in one area does little to achieve the goal of overall improved marine transport safety, she said.

“There are risks associated with any kind of transportation with any goods, and not all of them are with oil tankers. All that singling out one part of one coast did was prevent more oil and gas from being produced that could be shipped off that coast,” she said.

Hall Findlay is a former Liberal MP who served as Suncor Energy’s chief sustainability officer before taking on her role at the University of Calgary.

She sees an opportunity to remove the tanker moratorium in light of changing attitudes about resource development across Canada and a new federal government that has publicly committed to delivering nation-building energy projects.

“There’s a greater recognition in large portions of the public across the country, not just Alberta and Saskatchewan, that Canada is too dependent on the United States as the only customer for our energy products,” she said.

“There are better alternatives to C-48, such as setting aside what are called Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas, which have been established in areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands.”

The Business Council of British Columbia, which represents more than 200 companies, post-secondary institutions and industry associations, echoes Hall Findlay’s call for the tanker ban to be repealed.

“Comparable shipments face no such restrictions on the East Coast,” said Denise Mullen, the council’s director of environment, sustainability and Indigenous relations.

“This unfair treatment reinforces Canada’s over-reliance on the U.S. market, where Canadian oil is sold at a discount, by restricting access to Asia-Pacific markets.

“This results in billions in lost government revenues and reduced private investment at a time when our economy can least afford it.”

The ban on tanker traffic specifically in northern B.C. doesn’t make sense given Canada already has strong marine safety regulations in place, Mullen said.

Notably, completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion in 2024 also doubled marine spill response capacity on Canada’s West Coast. A $170 million investment added new equipment, personnel and response bases in the Salish Sea.

“The [C-48] moratorium adds little real protection while sending a damaging message to global investors,” she said.

“This undermines the confidence needed for long-term investment in critical trade-enabling infrastructure.”

Indigenous Resource Network executive director John Desjarlais senses there’s an openness to revisiting the issue for Indigenous communities.

“Sentiment has changed and evolved in the past six years,” he said.

“There are still concerns and trust that needs to be built. But there’s also a recognition that in addition to environmental impacts, [there are] consequences of not doing it in terms of an economic impact as well as the cascading socio-economic impacts.”

The ban effectively killed the proposed $16-billion Eagle Spirit project, an Indigenous-led pipeline that would have shipped oil from northern Alberta to a tidewater export terminal at Prince Rupert, B.C.

“When you have Indigenous participants who want to advance these projects, the moratorium needs to be revisited,” Desjarlais said.

He notes that in the six years since the tanker ban went into effect, there are growing partnerships between B.C. First Nations and the energy industry, including the Haisla Nation’s Cedar LNG project and the Nisga’a Nation’s Ksi Lisims LNG project.

This has deepened the trust that projects can mitigate risks while providing economic reconciliation and benefits to communities, Dejarlais said.

“Industry has come leaps and bounds in terms of working with First Nations,” he said.

“They are treating the rights of the communities they work with appropriately in terms of project risk and returns.”

Hall Findlay is cautiously optimistic that the tanker ban will be replaced by more appropriate legislation.

“I’m hoping that we see the revival of a federal government that brings pragmatism to governing the country,” she said.

“Repealing C-48 would be a sign of that happening.”

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