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The federal government is rejecting Saskatchewan’s request to be exempt from a carbon pricing plan.

“To be clear, we cannot accept your request not to price carbon in Saskatchewan. Among other reasons, it would be patently unfair for one jurisdiction to avoid participating in this important national effort to support clean growth and cut pollution,” wrote Catherine McKenna, minister of environment and climate change, in a letter to Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Dustin Duncan.

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Her correspondence is in response to a letter sent by Duncan at the end of February, in which he formally told the federal government Saskatchewan would not sign on to the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.In doing so, the province rejected $62 million in federal assistance to help aid climate change efforts.

McKenna reasserted the long-stated position that, “We believe your government is best placed to design a carbon pricing approach that works for Saskatchewan,” and pointed out four of five Canadians are living in jurisdictions that already have a price on carbon. Full-time employment numbers dropped in Saskatchewan from February 2017 to February 2018 by one per cent, but went up across Canada (including in B.C. and Alberta).

The federal minister said she will “remain hopeful” the province will change its course before the Sept. 1 deadline to put in place its own plan. If Saskatchewan fails to do so, the federal government has said it will impose a carbon pricing scheme on the province.

The letter also responded to Saskatchewan’s own climate change strategy, dubbed Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy. It does not include an explicit carbon tax and lowers the threshold of what is considered a “heavy emitter” from 50,000 tonnes of emissions to 25,000 tonnes, which is largely the same as a policy the province advanced seven years ago.