Economy
Scott Moe tells Trudeau he will stop collecting carbon tax unless Saskatchewan gets tax break
From LifeSiteNews
‘I cannot accept the Federal Government giving an affordability break to people in one part of Canada, but not here,’ the Saskatchewan premier said in an announcement on Monday.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on notice today by saying his province will stop collecting a federal carbon tax on natural gas used to heat homes come January 1, 2024, unless it gets a similar tax break that Atlantic Canadian provinces just got from the federal government for heating their homes.
“So, the Prime Minister chose to make life more affordable for families in one part of the country while leaving Saskatchewan families out in the cold. How is that fair to families here in our province, where affordability is also an issue, where winters are cold, and where most of us use natural gas to stay warm?” said Moe in a video posted today to X (formerly Twitter).
“I cannot accept the Federal Government giving an affordability break to people in one part of Canada, but not here. So today I am calling on the Federal Government to offer the same carbon tax exemption to Saskatchewan families by extending it to all forms of home heating, not just heating oil.”
Moe said that Trudeau should give Saskatchewan a tax break, as this is only “fair” for “Saskatchewan and Canadian families.”
“Hopefully that exemption will be provided soon,” he said.
Moe then turned up the heat on Trudeau. He said that if Trudeau does not give his province the same break as Atlantic provinces, “effective January 1st, Sask Energy will stop collecting and submitting the carbon tax on natural gas, effectively providing Saskatchewan residents with the very same exemption that the federal government is giving heating oil in Atlantic Canada.”
Moe said that while the federal government may say what he is contemplating doing is “illegal and that you simply cannot choose to collect and pay your taxes,” which he added in “most” cases he would “agree with,” it’s the “federal government that has created two classes of taxpayer, by providing an exemption for heating with an exemption that really only applies in one part of the country and effectively excludes Saskatchewan.”
Moe said that his job as premier is to make sure “Saskatchewan residents are treated fairly and equally with our fellow Canadians in other parts of the country.”
“And that’s what I am doing today,” he added.
Moe said the “real solution” for the entire issue with high heating bills thanks to a carbon tax is for the “federal government to scrap the entire carbon tax on everyone and everything.”
As it currently stands, provinces collect the carbon tax on behalf of the federal government.
Late last week, amid dismal polling numbers that show his government will be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election, Trudeau announced he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canadian provinces for three years.
However, while making the announcement, Trudeau said the goal of the pause was to encourage locals to ditch their home heating oil units for electric heat pumps and said his government would be giving out free pumps to many homeowners.
LifeSiteNews reported earlier this month how Trudeau’s carbon tax is costing Canadians hundreds of dollars annually, as government rebates it gives out are not enough to compensate for high fuel costs.
As it stands now, Canadians who live in a province that does not have their own carbon tax scheme fall under the federal carbon pricing scheme and pay $65 per tonne. The Trudeau government has a goal of $170 per tonne by 2030, however.
This will increase the costs of everything. A recent report revealed that a carbon tax of more than $350 per tonne is needed to reach Trudeau’s net zero goals by 2050.
Moe and Alberta Premier Smith blast Trudeau as ‘danger’ to confederation
Over the weekend, both Moe and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who also opposes the carbon tax, blasted Trudeau as being a danger to the confederation, after his Rural Economic Development Minister Gudie Hutchings said those provinces “need to elect more Liberals in the Prairies so that we can have that conversation as well.”
Smith and Moe said that Hutchings’ comments show the carbon tax has nothing to do with the environment but is all about “politics.”
Saskatchewan is not alone in opposing Trudeau’s carbon tax and “net zero” environmental goals.
Both it and Alberta have repeatedly promised to place the interests of their people above the Trudeau government’s “unconstitutional” demands while consistently reminding the federal government that their infrastructures and economies depend upon oil, gas, and coal.
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.
Economy
‘Gambling With The Grid’: New Data Highlights Achilles’ Heel Of One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Power Sources
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By NICK POPE
New government data shows that wind power generation fell in 2023 despite the addition of new capacity, a fact that energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation demonstrates its inherent flaw.
Wind generation fell by about 2.1% in 2023 relative to 2022 generation, despite the 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity that came online last year, according to data published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That wind power output dropped despite new capacity coming online and the availability of government subsidies highlights its intermittency and the problems wind power could pose for grid reliability, energy sector experts told the DCNF.
The decrease in wind generation is the first drop on record with the EIA since the 1990s; the drop was not evenly distributed across all regions of the U.S., and slower wind speeds last year also contributed to the decline, according to EIA. The Biden administration wants to have the American power sector reach carbon neutrality by 2035, a goal that will require a significant shift away from natural gas- and coal-fired power toward wind, solar and other green sources.
A table depicting the decrease of wind power generation in 2023 relative to 2022. (Screenshot via U.S. Energy Information Administration)
“Relying on wind power to meet your peak electricity demands is gambling with the grid,” Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who specializes in power grid-related analysis, told the DCNF. “Will the wind blow, or won’t it? This should be a moment where policymakers step back and consider the wisdom of heavily subsidizing intermittent generators and punishing reliable coal and gas plants with onerous regulations.”
Between 2016 and 2022, the wind industry received an estimated $18.6 billion worth of subsidies, about 10% of the total amount of subsidies extended to the energy sector by the U.S. government, according to an August 2023 EIA report. Wind power received more assistance from the government than nuclear power, coal or natural gas over the same period of time.
“This isn’t subsidies per kilowatt hour of generation. It’s raw subsidies. If it were per kilowatt hour of generation, the numbers would be even more extreme,” Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “This is a massive amount of money. It’s enough to dramatically alter energy investment decisions for the worse. We’re much more heavily subsidizing the sources that don’t provide a significant portion of our electricity than those that do.”
“Policy that just focuses on installed capacity, rather than the reliability of that capacity, fails to understand the real needs of the electrical grid,” Lambermont added. “This recent disparity illustra
Wind power’s performance was especially lackluster in the upper midwest, but Texas saw more wind generation in 2023 than it did in 2022, according to EIA. Wind generation in the first half of 2023 was about 14% lower than it was through the first six months of 2022, but generation was higher toward the end of 2023 than it was during the same period in 2022.
In 2023, about 60% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from fossil fuels, while 10% came from wind power, according to EIA data. Beyond generous subsidies for preferred green energy sources, the Biden administration has also aggressively regulated fossil fuels and American power plants to advance its broad climate agenda.
Biden’s Climate Bill Boosted An Offshore Wind Giant, But His Economy Brought It To The Brink https://t.co/AF7SPT2FNu
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 3, 2023
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) landmark power plant rules finalized this month will threaten grid reliability if enacted, partially because the regulations are likely to incentivize operators to close plants rather than adopt the costly measures required for compliance, grid experts previously told the DCNF. At the same time that the Biden administration is effectively trying to shift power generation away from fossil fuels, it is also pursuing goals — such as substantially boosting electric vehicle adoption over the next decade and incentivizing construction of energy-intensive computer chip factories — that are driving up projected electricity demand in the future.
“The EIA data proves what we’ve always known about wind power: It is intermittent, unpredictable and unreliable,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the DCNF. “Any power generation source whose output is wholly dependent on equally unpredictable weather conditions should never be presented by power companies and grid managers as safe replacements for abundant, cheap, dispatchable generation fueled with natural gas, coal or nuclear. This is a simple reality that people in charge of our power grids too often forget. Saying that no doubt hurts some people’s feelings, but nature really does not care about our feelings.”
Blackmon also pointed out that, aside from its intermittency, sluggish build-out of the transmission lines and related infrastructure poses a major problem for wind power.
“Wind power is worthless without accompanying transmission, yet the Biden administration continues to pour billions into unreliable wind while ignoring the growing crisis in the transmission sector,” Blackmon told the DCNF.
Another long-term issue that wind power, as well as solar power, faces is the need for a massive expansion in the amount of battery storage available to store and dispatch energy from intermittent sources as market conditions dictate. By some estimates, the U.S. will need about 85 times as much battery storage by 2050 relative to November 2023 in order to fully decarbonize the power grid, according to Alsym Energy, a battery company.
The White House and the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment.
From the Fraser Institute
By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill
Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.
And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.
Why should Albertans care?
First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.
For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.
Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.
Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.
In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.
By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.
Authors:
Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans
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