On Monday the government added a third insult to the rule of law when it rejected Saskatchewan’s plans to fully enter the federal carbon levy scheme with a carbon tax that would have provided a refund to gas purchasers. The Saskatchewan plan would have cushioned consumer fuel from the tax squeeze that is intended to promote fuel efficiency and incentivize better driving habits. It is unquestionably the addition of a loophole. The problem is that New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were already welcomed into the federal plan despite applying precisely analogous fuel rebates at the provincial level.
Saskatchewan, which resisted the carbon levy before the courts, is being held explicitly to a different standard than N.B. and P.E.I. The alleged justification for this is that the Liberal government intends to change the rules for the small Atlantic provinces, and actually enforce a carbon reduction incentive on their drivers, at some point in the future. (Some point not too close to a federal election, probably.) So it’s not really patent unfairness or a double standard. It’s just a standard that is being applied immediately in places that vote Tory, and very slowly in places that vote Liberal.
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