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Here are a few more sound bites from Wall’s scrum …

Wall, on his government next week presenting a white paper on climate change, proposing some of what he has talked about in recent days:

“It will form the foundation of some specific ideas,” he said, adding that “it’s never been like Saskatchewan” to criticize something without proposing an alternative idea. “We’ll build on that a week from now and the weeks to follow that.”

Wall, on those who say farmers affected by a potential carbon tax can just pass the added expense on down the line. Wall noted that farmers would be hit hard by such a tax, on everything from fertilizer to fuel to dealing with competition on a global scale:

“You think the Russian or the Belarusians will ever have a $50 carbon tax? They won’t.”

Wall, on how a high percentage of those who would be impacted by a carbon tax are working in “trade-exposed industries” and rely on global pricing. The federal government has insisted that all money generated from a carbon tax will go right back to the provinces:

“Then what is the point? It sounds like a bureaucratic merry-go-round.”

Wall, on using the “considerable talents” of people in the industry to “find ways to clean up energy consumption,” rather than implementing a new tax or shifting carbon around through cap-and-trade:

“I would argue we’ve been leading the fight … In our province, years ago when the economy was stronger, we chose through SaskPower to make the investment in carbon-mitigation technology.” Wall insisted the billion-dollar Boundary Dam Power Station carbon capture project in Estevan burns coal four times cleaner than natural gas, and 10 times cleaner than other coal plants. “We have been doing that. We’ve led in that, in fact.”