Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is seeking a deal with Ottawa on a climate-change plan that would replace the federal carbon tax imposed in his province.
Mr. Pallister made his intentions known after a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is holding a three-day cabinet retreat in Winnipeg. Manitoba announced in 2018 that it would not agree to Ottawa’s conditions on a carbon tax, but Mr. Pallister said it is now time to stop playing politics with environmental policy in Canada.
“There is going to be a dialogue between the province and the federal government in respect of our made-in-Manitoba green plan, and that dialogue will include a carbon price of some kind,” Mr. Pallister told reporters on Monday.
Mr. Pallister said that if the Liberal government cannot come to an agreement with Manitoba, it will face bigger problems with provinces that are even further from the federal policy on the environment.
“The Prime Minister and numerous of his colleagues have said they are seeking to build a stronger country. To do that, Manitoba is the bridge, it is the keystone province,” he said. “If you can’t get along with friendly Manitobans, there are a lot of other Canadians you can’t get along with.”
Manitoba abandoned efforts to reach a deal in 2018 after Ottawa refused to sign off on the province’s plan to maintain a $25-a-tonne carbon tax. The federal plan calls for the levy to increase to $50 by 2022.
The federal government has imposed a carbon levy in provinces such as Manitoba, whose governments have opted not to put in place a sufficient price on greenhouse-gas emissions. As part of the federal plan, Ottawa offers most of the money raised through the tax in the form of rebates, which are paid to households through income-tax returns.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who participated in the meeting with Mr. Pallister, said the federal government will continue discussions with Manitoba in the search of a “win-win” deal.
“Canadians from coast to coast to coast recognize the urgency of acting on climate change and recognize that we, as a country, need to have an ambitious plan,” said Ms. Freeland, who is also the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. “We agreed to continue that conversation about the Premier’s approach, about the federal approach, and to seek, as we always do, to find areas of agreement.”
During Monday’s news conference, Mr. Pallister refused to state directly what his new proposal will include. While he said that an escalating price on carbon was not his preference, he left the door open to a revised offer.
“We’d prefer not, that was not in our plan,” Mr. Pallister said. “We believe it should be flat and low like the Prairie horizon.”
In return for a deal on a carbon plan, Mr. Pallister said that Manitoba will be looking for “respect.”
“We deserve to be respected for our green record, we do not deserve to be called climate-change deniers by anybody,” he said. “Political science is fine before elections, now let’s talk about environmental science.”
Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
In 2018, the federal government announced that all provinces would need to implement a carbon-pricing system by April 1, 2019 and those that didn't would fall under a federal carbon tax. But what is carbon pricing anyway?