Petroleum analyst Dan McTeague is telling reporters he expects the price of fuel to soar across Canada this year.
Part of the issue in Alberta and Ontario are new carbon taxes those provinces have enacted through a plan to make fossil fuels more costly and thus a less desirable option for consumers.
Closer to home, both Manitoba and Saskatchewan have held out on joining the federal government’s “carbon pricing” plan, even though Ottawa vows to eventually impose a carbon tax on all Canadians.
A carbon tax – yet another way for government to extract dollars from employers and everyday people – is the last thing northern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan needs.
Why? Our regions rely on carbon-intensive resource industries. The goods we buy at the store are shipped here across vast distances in trucks powered by gas. Many of us heat our homes throughout infamously cold winters by filling our furnaces with fossil fuel.
In short, a carbon tax would take a significant economic toll on our residents. And when you consider that northern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan are among the poorest regions in Canada, with the long-term jobs outlook less than promising, this worry is only compounded.
Writing in the Winnipeg Sun, Graham Lane had this to say about a carbon tax’s impact on Manitoba: “Industries like agriculture, forestry, manufacturing and mining will face significant cost increases. Manitoba’s businesses – other than its monopoly Crown corporations – operate in an international marketplace. When the cost of producing canola, lumber or nickel is pushed up by the new carbon tax, our companies will be at a significant competitive disadvantage to suppliers around the world who don’t face a ‘price on carbon.’ Many may be forced to leave or downsize.”
What about the poor, a group to whom all politicians give lip service? Research out of America’s esteemed Stanford University has found that carbon regulations leave their heaviest burden on those who can least afford it.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, mindful of economic competitiveness and his citizens’ cost of living, adamantly opposes carbon pricing as a climate-change strategy.
Across the border, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is no fan of the federal carbon tax plan, but for some reason he’s okay with a yet-to-be-finalized “made-in-Manitoba” carbon tax.
Yet Wall and Pallister’s statements may mean nothing if Ottawa goes through with a mandatory national carbon tax to take effect in 2018.
And then what? Northern Manitobans and northern Saskatchewanians become poorer, their industries less competitive, all while our carbon emissions remain the same because, well, it’s not like we’re up here spending our money on frivolous fossil fuels to burn. We burn what we need to survive, and making fuels more expensive won’t curtail demand.
It is time for our leaders to put politics aside and speak on the very real repercussions a carbon tax would have for our regions. Reducing greenhouse gases may be a noble goal, but most northerners would rightly rank that objective below things such as day-to-day affordability, improved job prospects and less struggle for the poor – especially when a carbon tax causes all of these detriments with no guarantee of lessened emissions.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
