The provincial government is disappointed the federal carbon tax rebate will be decreasing almost 100 dollars next year for a family of four in Saskatchewan.

The ministry of Environment says this also comes as the federal government could increase the carbon tax beyond 50 dollars per tonne after 2022 on the federal backstop.

Environment minister Dustin Duncan said he’s also heard about the New Brunswick carbon pricing plan that was recently approved by the federal government that sees a four cent per litre on gas charge, followed up by a three cent fuel tax reduction.

“Good for New Brunswick if that’s the deal that they got, and certainly that’s the direction they wanted to go in New Brunswick and I certainly appreciate that,” Duncan said. “But if that’s the case, then what are we talking about?”

Duncan says the New Brunswick plan has intrigued him, but not persuaded him to pursue a similar plan.

“If it’s something that one province can avail themselves in order to not have the federal carbon tax imposed on them, then we’ll want to look at what our options are,” Duncan said. “I would say we’re not to the point where we seriously contemplated doing it, but we’re certainly watching pretty closely what other provinces are doing.”

Duncan said he just wants to know from the federal minister what has changed over the last year.

“We would have seen campaign literature that went across the province from Liberal candidates just in the last couple of months that would’ve likely identified (…) the rebate that people would’ve received in 2019, again, on a carbon tax that hadn’t even been paid by consumers, which is the interesting part of all of this, they’ve already paid a rebate for 2019, and they didn’t start collecting the carbon tax until April 1st.”

Duncan says there are plans in place to meet with minister Jon Wilkinson in Regina over carbon sequestration and the carbon tax some time in the near future.

(CKRM)