The federal carbon tax took effect on Monday, and will be applied to four provinces, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. The tax only applies to those provinces as they declined to put carbon pricing into place as per the request of the federal Liberal government.
This condition simply points out the unfairness of this regressive and punitive tax, as the fact is, Saskatchewan has a climate-change plan in place, and this province is being unfairly targetted and penalized with a deeply hurtful tax simply because carbon pricing was not applied.
Saskatchewan is clearly more progressive than the federal Liberals are, as they found other ways that very ably address the concerns of greenhouse gas emissions that does not hurt and cripple the economy, but the Liberals are giving no recognition of this plan and are thus bent on causing hurt to the local economy, particularly to the ag and oil sectors and to all consumers in general.
One of the responses to this punitive tax will be a convoy and rally in protest of the carbon tax on Thursday, April 4, with organizers getting a huge response so far as people are registering to be a part of the day. As of Tuesday morning, there was in the range of 4-500 vehicles registered to be a part of the rally.
For the southeast area, convoys will start up from Estevan, Carnduff and Arcola, and they should be converging on Weyburn by around 8 a.m., and will head up Highway 39 and 6 up to Regina, all with the cooperation of the various municipal police agencies and the RCMP along the way. The convoy will end up at the Queensbury Centre in Regina, where a rally will be held at 2 p.m. with about four or five speakers, including Premier Scott Moe.
There will be a contingent of ministers and MLAs present, and four MPs will be coming in from Ottawa, including Souris-Moose Mountain MP Dr. Robert Kitchen.
The end purpose is to express the anger and frustration Saskatchewan residents, business owners and farmers are feeling for having this added burden of expense to nearly everything made, bought or produced in Saskatchewan, hurting virtually every sector of the economy.
If there was any assurance whatsoever that the funds being gathered would make any actual impact on addressing climate change, then it might find support by residents — but the money will make no difference whatsoever to help the environment, and is nothing but a cash-grab by the Liberal government.
