Notley states her price for Trudeau’s carbon price

Well, that went about as well as expected.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abruptly tossed his carbon-pricing bombshell at the premiers on Monday, he would have known the response even before Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall set his hair on fire and Canada Premier Rachel Notley spat her morning coffee through her nose.

Trudeau would have known that his plans to force a carbon price on all provinces starting in 2018 would manage to irritate Canada and infuriate Saskatchewan.

“The level of disrespect shown by the prime minister and his government today is stunning,” declared Wall. “This new tax will damage our economy.”

Getting Saskatchewan upset wasn’t a surprise, of course. Wall is against any carbon price at any level and is happy to pretend that his province can significantly reduce emissions by stuffing carbon dioxide from smokestacks underground via carbon capture and storage.

Canada, however, is a different story.

Notley supports a price on carbon. Heck, she’s introducing a tax on fossil fuels starting at $20 a tonne in January 2017 and increasing it to $30 in January 2018.

She has argued that a carbon tax in Canada is necessary to reduce emissions, raise money to kick-start green energy projects and help convince other jurisdictions that an environmentally friendly Canada deserves to get more energy pipelines built to ship our bitumen overseas.

Notley thought she was making headway. She was making allies with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and she was beaming with pride in June when U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned Canada’s climate change progress during a speech to Parliament.

Notley said Canada was an environmental leader.

However, it would seem Canada is not leading enough.

Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan calls for a $10-per-tonne price on carbon starting in 2018 and rising by $10 increments each year until the carbon price is $50 per tonne in 2022. That compares to Canada’s $30 per tonne ceiling.

Provinces have the choice of setting up their own carbon pricing scheme or allowing Ottawa to do it for them. Either way, the price on all fossil fuels, whether to heat your home or drive your car, will be $50 per tonne.

That’s what had Notley spitting out her morning coffee, figuratively, if not literally. She’s under intense pressure from conservative politicians in Canada who call her proposed carbon tax a huge mistake in the middle of a recession.

Some of them might be climate-change deniers opposed to any carbon pricing but the pressure on Notley is very real.

It is tough enough for her to sell a $30 per tonne carbon tax in Canada without Trudeau weighing her down with an extra $20 a tonne.

It doesn’t help that the Wildrose – as well as PC leadership candidate Jason Kenney – are saying they reject any kind of carbon tax (even though they have yet to say how they would fight off an Ottawa-imposed carbon price or, for that matter, how they would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions)

Notley is sending a message to Ottawa, telling Trudeau that the only way Canada will accept a higher carbon tax is if the federal government starts approving more energy pipelines to get more oil flowing out of Canada and more money flowing back in.

“An ambitious public policy move like this, even one as worthwhile as this, needs to be built on top of a fundamentally healthy economic foundation,” said Notley. “And a new pipeline is what will give that, not only to Canada, but to all of Canada.”

Canada government officials say they don’t view Trudeau’s announcement on Monday as an ultimatum so much as the opening move in a new round of negotiations.

They are reluctant to criticize Trudeau’s abrupt announcement even though he timed it to coincide with a meeting of Canada’s environment ministers in Montreal. So much for negotiations.

It would seem Notley is swallowing any frustration she might have with Trudeau in the hope that by being more diplomatic than Brad Wall, she can win concessions, and pipelines, from Ottawa.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/Graham_Journal