At least one Canadian politician took a walk in the snow on February 29, but it wasn’t the prime minister.On the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Pierre Trudeau, Saskatchewan’s Crown Corporations Minister Dustin Duncan stood in front of a sleet covered Parliament building to announce the province wouldn’t be remitting the province’s share of Ottawa’s carbon tax ahead of a March 1 deadline..“I took a walk in the rain and made an important decision about the carbon tax,” Duncan said in a recorded message posted on Twitter (“X”) on Thursday, in an oblique reference to Trudeau Sr.’s famous ‘walk in the snow' declaration on February 29, 1984.“Today, I’m announcing that in addition to not collecting the carbon tax on SaskEnergy bills, the Government of Saskatchewan will not be remitting the federal carbon tax on natural gas Saskatchewan families use to heat their homes,” he stated.“This is a decision that we do not take lightly and we recognize that it may come with consequences.”.Saskatchewan officially stopped collecting the federal carbon tax on home heating effective January 1, in response to the Liberal government’s decision to exempt home heating oil in Atlantic Canada. But it wasn’t clear if it would remit the outstanding funds for the month to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) by the March 1 deadline.It comes as Saskatchewan government officials, including Premier Scott Moe, proclaimed they would be willing to go to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “carbon jail” for withholding the funds..“Our government simply is not going to accept this unfair treatment of Saskatchewan families.”Crown Corporations Minister Dustin Duncan .To underscore the point, the Saskatchewan government on February 21 declared itself the province’s ‘singular’ natural gas distributor in order to indemnify individual SaskEnergy employees from penalty.The Saskatchewan treasury claims the move has saved families $400 thus far in 2024 and shaved nearly a full percentage point off the province’s inflation rate, which stands as one of the lowest in the country.Duncan said Ottawa’s refusal to exempt all home heating, including natural gas, is treating residents as “second-class citizens.”“The carbon tax has always been unaffordable but up until now at least it had been applied fairly. The heating oil exemption for Atlantic Canada changed that,” he said.“Our government simply is not going to accept this unfair treatment of Saskatchewan families.”
