Farmscape for December 5, 2016

The President of Keystone Agricultural Producers is applauding the Premier's of Manitoba's commitment to ensure a provincial carbon pricing system will not hinder economic recovery.
In September the federal government announced that a carbon pricing system must be in place in all provinces by the end of 2018.
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has stated a carbon tax must not unduly impact any sector of our economy because our economy needs to be rebuilt and that that any impact must be offset by revenues going back into economic activities that build our province or by directly reducing tax.
KAP President Dan Mazier agrees a carbon pricing system must consider the competitive position of farmers.

Clip-Dan Mazier-Keystone Agricultural Producers:
We have no ability to get that tax back out of the system.
We're price takers and it's what ever the market is offering.
Manitoba exports probably 70 percent of their products and, if we're competing against a nation or another place that doesn't have a carbon tax, that is an extra cost that's being borne by our agriculture community that we couldn't compete against so it basically makes us uncompetitive.
That's what a bad system could do.
All indications are, the way the premier is talking, the way the province is talking, is that they don't want to set up something like that.
If they do bring happen to bring us back in through taxation credits or something like that, that's another way of addressing it.
But, keeping in mind that we do really have to find a way of decarbonizing agriculture too which is a little bit longer type of philosophy.
I think the biggest important things is to get the framework and how we're going to price carbon and how we're going to collect the monies for it and who it's going back to right now.
Get that framework set up properly and then we can start working at programming down the road.

Mazier says the Premier's pledge to include agriculture in the discussions and to not use a carbon tax as a tax grab is especially positive.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork