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I’ve been away, and I’m a little jet-lagged, but it seems to me that we’ve just seen the first use of the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
By the government of Saskatchewan.
On Monday, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced provincial gas utility SaskEnergy won’t collect or submit the federal carbon tax on natural gas used to heat homes starting on Jan. 1.
How can he do that, you might be asking? Short answer: he really can’t. As University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach has pointed out, Moe’s essentially directing the executives of SaskEnergy to break federal law and possibly land themselves in jail. And Moe doesn’t even have the legal fig leaf that the Alberta Sovereignty Act would give the Alberta premier if she decided to issue a similar order. He’s apparently just ordering some folks to ignore federal law because he says so, or so it seems. (Is this better than giving the order under the authority of the probably unconstitutional sovereignty act? Not really.)
Ironically, the Alberta premier can’t issue a similar order because there’s no Crown corporation responsible for selling natural gas to customers in Alberta. It’s not every day a conservative premier is secretly jealous that she doesn’t have a Crown corporation handy!
(Truly dedicated readers of What Now?!? might recall that when the Alberta Sovereignty Act was first introduced almost a year ago and we were all trying to figure out how or if it might be used, I kept insisting that the only way I could imagine it being invoked was through a Crown corporation. Consider this paragraph a short victory lap!)
Even though Moe beat her to it, Premier Danielle Smith promised in Monday's speech from the throne that there would be plenty of sovereignty act-ion coming soon to Alberta if the federal government doesn’t abandon Operation Let Alberta Freeze in the Dark.
Much as I deplore Moe's and Smith’s willingness to shred the rule of law in their fight against Ottawa, I’m increasingly skeptical that the Trudeau government will be able to maintain its stance on the carbon tax and other measures. Over on X, I opined that the decision to exempt heating oil was the moment the Trudeau government jumped the shark. Now I’m stuck with the image of Justin Trudeau as the Fonz on water skis, desperately trying to seem cool even though his moment has passed. And, to bend the metaphor way out of shape, Moe and Smith are the sharks circling because they smell blood in the water.
More seriously, the Trudeau government has demonstrated that there are limits to its political will to maintain and move forward on its climate policies. Its clumsy effort to hold on to seats in Atlantic Canada has further emboldened Moe and Smith. None of this bodes well for the Canadian federation. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
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