Premier Jason Kenney announced that Alberta’s carbon tax will be abolished at the end of May and that the provincial government is still considering a constitutional challenge against the federal tax.
Fulfilling his campaign promise to repeal the carbon tax, Kenney said at a May 13 news conference that the Carbon Tax Repeal Act will be introduced to the Legislature May 21. When asked about his administration’s plan to challenge the federal carbon tax under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (GGPPA) in court, Kenney said they are deciding how to proceed.
“Bill No. 1 of the new Legislature, which will be introduced [May 21], will be the Carbon Tax Repeal Act, and it will be passed with an effective elimination by May 30," Kenney said. He said the repeal act will immediately relieve Albertans of C $1.4 billion in taxes, and that it has been estimated that it will create at least 6,000 full-time jobs.
Alberta's constitutional challenge of the federal carbon tax is moving more slowly because it is considering the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal’s recent decision and awaiting the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in those provinces' challenges of the federal tax.
Kenney said he was disappointed in the Saskatchewan court's May 3 decision that Canada’s Parliament had legislative authority to enact the federal carbon tax. “We disagree with the narrow ruling by the majority that the federal government has the power to ensure a provincial minimum price on carbon, and will be joining Saskatchewan in their appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada," he said in a May 3 release.
Kenney said Alberta will take both the Saskatchewan and Ontario cases into account in deciding whether to launch its own challenge or simply support those governments' appeals.
“We believe that we’ll have a stronger case than, quite frankly, either of those provinces because we are proposing in our tier system to occupy the regulatory space by imposing a price on industrial CO2 emissions, which would affect about 60 percent of emissions in the Alberta economy. Neither of those two provinces did so," Kenney said. "Our initial reading of the Saskatchewan appeal court decision is that if we occupy that space, it moves the feds out.”