GOLDSTEIN: Does Guilbeault read his reports before releasing them?

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Does federal Surroundings Minister Steven Guilbeault know what’s in his personal plan to cut back Canada’s greenhouse fuel emissions?

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He’s denying a Toronto Solar column by Kris Sims, B.C. Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, that his authorities is planning a brand new surtax on pickup vehicles.

“This so-called price on vehicles doesn’t exist,” Guilbeault stated, insisting it was merely a suggestion contained in a March 21 report by the federal authorities’s “internet zero advisory board,” not authorities coverage, and the Trudeau authorities has no intention of implementing it.

“It’s worry mongering, plain and easy.”

To start with, Sims didn’t say the tax exists. She stated the federal government plans to implement it.

Second, the advice isn’t simply contained within the advisory board’s report, as if this was a totally separate doc that has nothing to do with the Trudeau authorities’s plans to cut back emissions.

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It’s included, phrase for phrase — certainly the complete 28-page internet zero report is included as “Annex 3” (that means an addition to a doc) — in Guilbeault’s report on Canada’s “2030 Emissions Reductions Plan” that the Minister himself launched March 29.

Because the advisory board’s suggestions have been launched March 21 and Guilbeault’s report was launched March 29 and included the advisory board’s report, it’s apparent this was a coordinated motion.

The online zero advisory board was appointed by then-environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson final 12 months, described as professional advisors to the Trudeau authorities.

In “welcoming” their report on March 21, Guilbeault stated their recommendation “shall be mirrored in Canada’s 2030 Emissions Discount Plan to be offered on the finish of the month.”

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Guilbeault wrote within the foreword to that 271-page plan from his personal ministry launched March 29 that:

“On behalf of the Authorities of Canada, I’m excited to current Canada’s first Emissions Discount Plan below the Canadian Internet-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The plan lays out the following steps as we ramp up our combat towards local weather change and produce sustainable, lasting financial prosperity to Canada.”

On web page 192 the report cites the online zero board’s recommendation to:

“Broaden Canada’s present Inexperienced Levy (Excise Tax) for Gasoline Inefficient Automobiles to incorporate extra ICE (Inside Combustion Engine) car varieties, similar to pickup vehicles. A sliding scale for the implementation of this Inexperienced Levy ought to be developed based mostly on the emissions produced from totally different automobiles.”

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Guilbeault now says the Trudeau authorities has no intention of implementing this new tax on pickup vehicles. Good to know.

However it raises the query of what different suggestions has the federal government rejected in what Guilbeault described because the Trudeau authorities’s 2030 plan to cut back emissions?

It says, for instance, that Canada’s oil and fuel sector should minimize greenhouse fuel emissions by 42% by 2030.

Is that this nonetheless the Trudeau authorities’s plan, or is there a brand new goal we don’t but learn about?

The “inexperienced levy” the Trudeau authorities refers to in its personal plan to cut back Canada’s emissions by 2030 is nothing new.

It was launched by the Harper authorities in 2007 and places an additional cost on patrons buying automobiles the federal government says are gasoline inefficient, starting from $1,000 to $4,000.

It was completely affordable for Sims to jot down the Trudeau authorities was planning a brand new tax on pickup vehicles, based mostly on a suggestion of its hand-picked consultants, included in a 271-page report by Guilbeault from his personal ministry, on the federal government’s plan to fulfill its 2030 emission targets.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com