The President of Keystone Agricultural Producers says, despite a couple of still unanswered questions, the organization’s membership is generally supportive of the provincial government’s Made-in-Manitoba plan for greenhouse has reduction.
Last month Premier Brian Pallister unveiled his province’s plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that plan was discussed last week during Keystone Agricultural Producers Fall Advisory Council Meeting.
KAP President Dan Mazier applauds the plan’s exemption for marked fuels but, he notes there are still questions about how taxes will be handled on fuels used for heating buildings and drying grain.
The plan that was released, carbon pricing was just a small component of it. It was part of a broader plan of the sustainable development plan in Manitoba. When just talking about carbon pricing it can be a very divisive issue and KAP, as a membership, definitely decided a year ago that we needed to be at the table and in the room when they were talking about this and we finally have a plan here.
We were asking for broad exemptions and we got three quarters of the way there. We still have this issue of space heating and grain drying but I think generally we’re pleased that we have something to deal with now and I think that was probably one of the biggest sources of frustration over the last year as we adopted this new policy and started to work with it. I think it’s a mixed reaction. The membership, in general, has varying opinions in different ways but we have the plan in front of us and we can start shaping that as we move forward.
~ Dan Mazier, Keystone Agricultural Producers
Mazier acknowledges there is still the common feeling that a tax is a tax is a tax but the federal government has put this on us and our provincial government is trying to figure out what’s the best way for dealing with it while still complying with the federal government and leaving the most money in Manitoba so we can deal with climate change.
