The Alberta government has applied for a judicial review of the federal government’s heating oil exception from the carbon tax initiated last fall.
Premier Danielle Smith announced the province made the court filing Tuesday morning saying the exemption for heating oil predominantly benefits those in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, going against the Liberal government’s insistence the tax was applied equally across the country.
“We are asking the court to declare the exemption both unconstitutional and unlawful, we hope that this will force Ottawa to recognize the burden the carbon tax places on Canadians and eliminate the carbon tax all altogether,” Smith says. “The impacts on Albertans will only get worse as the costs continue to increase.”
Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Mickey Amery echoes many of the Premier’s comments, adding the federal government has stopped creating a minimum standard for carbon pricing for the country under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act by making special exemptions for certain parts of Canada.
“When the federal government announced the heating exemption for heating oil and not for other areas of the area that predominantly use different types of heating to heat their homes, the idea is they created a distinct class of beneficiaries who are exempt from the carbon tax,” Amery says. “Here in Alberta we use natural gas, but that does not fall within the exemptions and predominantly a number of other provinces use it as well.”
Amery says the reason the province announced the filing a year after the exemption was implemented is because it took some time to put together the legal arguments, with the work being handled in-house by members of the Justice Department. He says the legal case will focus on two key deficiencies, the first being it is unlawful and it is unconstitutional because it creates a division in the country.
“We just want to make it clear Alberta is not being treated fairly in this. You have heard the stats from the premier, less than one per cent [of people] in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba actually use home heating oil and that creates a disproportionate advantage for people in eastern Canada.”
Leader of the Alberta NDP, Naheed Nenshi says the federal government dropped the ball when it came to the heating oil exemption but Smith’s decision to take this to court is just tying the issue up for years on what he says is “yet another unwinnable court case.”
“I don’t know why [the federal government] thought that was a good idea. They absolutely undermined the consumer carbon tax in a very big way,” Nenshi says in a statement. “But again, instead of making a deal with the federal government, instead of talking about an exemption for natural gas or even more rebate money going to people in Alberta who want to get off home heating oil, the UCP government just chooses to fight.”
Nenshi says the Supreme Court has ruled that the carbon tax is constitutional and at this point, the premier is not looking to win but rather looking to fight.
Alberta’s Attorney General says they are expecting the legal challenge to take around a 12 months and feels the team has put together a strong case.
Premier Smith says she has reached out to re-elected premiers in B.C. and Saskatchewan, to join the judicial challenge.
