The provincial government announced an increase to its climate change funding for the 2019 budget, following the introduction of the province’s Prairie Resilience climate change plan in the fall of 2018.
According to Minister of Environment Dustin Duncan, the 61 per cent bump in funding will support the newly minted climate change strategy.
“It’s really paying for the work of the ministry, work of the branch,” said Duncan. “The main part of it is just that during that we have the right people in place in the ministry to work with our stakeholders to ensure that now that Prairie Resilience is out, the regulations and legislation has passed, that the companies know that they are now as a part of the system.”
The increase in funding is being criticized by the opposition for investing in more bureaucracy behind the scenes, rather than implementing more green initiatives in the field. NDP MLA Yens Pedersen said he would like to see even support for additional climate programs.
“There’s lots of things the province could be doing to mitigate climate change that they’re not doing and so from that point of view it’s pretty disappointing,” said Pedersen.
He cited new technology like electric vehicles that could be another beneficial initiative to lower emissions here in Saskatchewan.
“What would have been more exciting to see on climate change would have been some initiatives like say, the federal government just announced yesterday an incentive for electric cars,” said Pedersen. “Another thing that other provinces have done on zero-emissions vehicles is insisting that manufacturers have a certain percentage of their inventories, making the manufacturers actually sell them.”
But ultimately the opposition said the government’s approach to climate change in this budget has been reactive instead of proactive.
“If you dig through each ministry’s budgets and programs there are things within each one that are dealing with either the effects of climate change, more so on that measure than preventing climate change,” said Pedersen.
“It’s just kind of dancing around the edges just tinkering with things, its nothing really big or substantial.”
After some questions about the provincial government’s stance on climate change over the last few years, the government will be committing $5.3 million in total to climate change and adaptation this year, up $2.1 million from the 2018 budget. But there will likely not be any new climate initiatives coming from this funding in 2019.
“It’s really nothing new that has been announced, it’s just putting the dollars in place to make sure we can put in place the actions required because of Prairie Resilience,” said Duncan.
The new funding will be staying within the ministry to bolster the initiatives laid out in the Prairie Resilience plan.
“It’s really just funding the people within the ministry to make sure we can fulfill what is in the plan already and ultimately see the reductions that are associated with the plan,” said Duncan.
The Prairie Resilience climate change plan was introduced in October 2018 and put regulations and legislation in place to encourage industries to reduce their emissions, including methane from the oil and gas industry and emissions from over 40 Saskatchewan industrial facilities.
“There’s going to be working with heavy emitting industries to make sure they’re registered in a plan and we’re monitoring their emissions and as a part of prairie resilience,” said Duncan. “We know it’s about 43 individual facilities but it’s creating the registration around those and then the monitoring of their emissions and ultimately their reductions.”
