Perhaps lost in yesterday’s federal budget news dominated by job cuts and military spending is the extent to which the federal government is also abandoning the climate commitments of the previous government.
While there is no doubt that this budget represents “a dramatic abdication of environmental leadership,” will it be enough to quiet the constant criticisms of Carney by petro-province premiers Danielle Smith and Scott Moe?
The federal budget includes the elimination of multiple measures that have long irked both Smith and Moe, who view any federal environmental constraints of the oil and gas industry as evidence of eastern treachery.
Gone is the much reviled emissions cap, what Smith once called a “deranged vendetta against Alberta,” and Moe deemed “an outright attack on Saskatchewan’s energy industry.”
The federal budget also looks to substantially water down the previous government’s greenwashing legislation, designed to prevent oil and gas companies from making undocumented claims to sustainability, but what the Saskatchewan and Alberta governments called a “gag order” and “censorship” against the oil industry.
The budget also extends federal tax incentives for carbon capture and storage, as well as for critical minerals, projects that have been vigorously championed by both premiers.
While these measures are sure to please Moe and Smith, the federal government did not deliver on the Western premiers’ entire wish list. The industrial carbon price and clean electricity regulations remain, however, there does appear to be a willingness to be more conciliatory to oppositional provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan.
On the whole, one would think that, given the vehemence with which both premiers opposed many of these measures, they would be positively elated with their elimination. However, both premiers Smith and Moe have been strangely quiet in their reactions to the federal government’s actions so far—not traits they are known for.
Their caution is entirely tactical. Applauding the prime minister too much would diminish his utility as a catch-all villain that can be blamed for every misfortune that befalls Alberta and Saskatchewan. With the economic turmoil of the Trump presidency battering the Canadian economy, neither premier is likely to abandon their go-to scapegoat in Ottawa too readily.
Indeed, Scott Moe’s only remarks so far in regards to the federal budget was to lament the size of the deficit and the “struggling economy.”
Moreover, to heap too much praise on the federal government might diminish the leverage both premiers will wish to exert in order to water down or eliminate what remains of the federal government’s environmental commitments. Both premiers have used the threat of separatist sentiments fuelled by western alienation over Ottawa’s climate policies to try and extract concessions from the feds. If this budget is seen as evidence that such threats work, they will be loath to abandon them.
Expect both premiers to remain guarded in their praise. The sound and the fury with which they met the introduction of these measures will not be matched in their elimination.
With both our federal and provincial leaders intoxicated by the faint economic prospects of an environmentally unencumbered and unconstrained oil and gas industry, it will fall to those of us in Western Canada who are cognizant of what the realities of climate change will bring to make the case that the dismantling of Canada’s climate commitments is not worthy of any praise.
