OTTAWA — Erin Flanagan, federal policy director at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the release of Saskatchewan’s climate plan:
“According to Saskatchewan’s new climate change strategy, the province will target emissions reductions from large industry and will accelerate efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. While this might sound like significant progress from past plans, the strategy released today has too many holes to be a credible— or convincing — approach to combatting climate change.
"Saskatchewan has confirmed it will introduce a form of carbon pricing for large emitters, but has avoided an economy-wide approach necessary to drive further emissions reductions.
“Saskatchewan’s move towards output based allocations could be an important tool to reduce emissions, however concerns remain: the strategy appears to exempt the province’s oil and gas and electricity sectors, does not explicitly state the price at which the program will begin, and doesn’t outline a process to determine sector-specific emissions performance standards. Further detail on these items is essential to understanding the overall effectiveness of this approach.
“Saskatchewan wrongly characterizes the pan-Canadian framework as unilateral in its approach to carbon pricing. In fact, jurisdictions have three modes of compliance with the national benchmark: jurisdictions can implement a carbon tax like in British Columbia, a carbon levy and performance-based emissions system like in Alberta, or a cap-and-trade system like in Ontario and Quebec. Unfortunately, the model proposed by Saskatchewan today falls short of this benchmark.
“Saskatchewan is Canada’s fourth largest emitter in absolute terms, and is the country’s largest emitter on a per-capita basis. We encourage the province to complement today’s strategy by outlining an economy-wide emissions target, and further detailing a plan to cap overall emissions in line with Canada’s commitments under the Paris Agreement.”
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Contact
Erin Flanagan
Program Director, Federal Policy
587-581-1701
Kelly O’Connor
Communications Lead
416-220-8804
Background
Blog: Time for Premier Brad Wall to focus on carbon price implementation: Q&A with University of Ottawa law professor Nathalie Chalifour (May 2017)
Reacts: Pembina reacts to Saskatchewan climate plan (Oct. 2016)
Op-ed: Premier Brad Wall’s dangerous misdirection on climate change: False solutions pose risk to Canadian economy and global progress (October 2016)
Report: Race to the Front (September 2016)
