Manitoba demands feds cough up promised $67M

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This article was published 26/10/2018 (2289 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires is accusing Ottawa of failing to make fighting climate change a top priority in Manitoba, after the Free Press reported the feds may withhold a promised $67 million to the province for carbon retrofits.

The two levels of government have continually locked horns on the climate change file, but matters came to a head on Oct. 3, when Premier Brian Pallister said the province would abandon plans to collect a $25-a-tonne levy on carbon beginning Dec. 1.

Now, the future of $67 million in project funding — Manitoba’s share of the federal Low Carbon Economy Fund — is in doubt.

Squires said when Manitoba endorsed Ottawa’s Pan-Canadian Framework in February, a precondition for receiving the funding, the two governments had agreed to disagree over carbon pricing.

“Nothing has changed since then,” she said Friday.

On Tuesday, the federal government announced it would impose a $20-a-tonne carbon levy in Manitoba, beginning in April. The tax would increase to $50 per tonne by 2022.

Squires said she learned about the decision when the rest of the public did.

She said Friday there has been no contact between her office and that of her federal counterpart, Catherine McKenna, since Manitoba decided to abandon its carbon tax plan earlier this month. Squires said she could not say whether the premier’s office has been in negotiations with Ottawa on carbon pricing.

“We would rather be fighting climate change than fighting Ottawa on taxes,” the Manitoba minister told reporters, while accusing the federal Liberals of “talking out of both sides of their mouth” on the issue.

Squires said the two levels of government had agreed to a joint list of funding priorities for the $67 million, including electrification of transportation, diverting organic waste from landfills, and displacing propane as a heating source in the northern town of Churchill.

“We have reason to believe that Ottawa is threatening to pull very, very significant projects away from Manitoba,” she said.

Manitoba Opposition Leader Wab Kinew said it is time for both sides to “notch down the rhetoric.”

The NDP said it would be a rash move for the feds to withdraw the green projects funding. At the same time, Pallister should try to negotiate a new deal with Ottawa that includes a price on carbon, Kinew said.

“There’s still an opportunity to have a deal,” the NDP leader said. “Let’s make a deal. Let’s have the premier get back to the negotiating table.

“Let’s have the federal government maybe provide reassurances that this money is still on the table, and let’s do right by the environment here in Manitoba.”

Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand couldn’t resist taking a shot at Pallister over the potential federal withdrawal of the carbon retrofit funding.

He noted Friday the $67-million figure is exactly the amount the federation was to receive in a 50-year compensation agreement with Manitoba Hydro that was nixed by the premier earlier this year.

“Karma can be inconvenient,” Chartrand said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca