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If you believe lawyers from Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick, the federal carbon backstop could be the beginning of the end of Canada as we know it.

“The federation cannot survive the total erosion toward centralism,” said Alan Jacobson, representing Saskatchewan at the province’s Court of Appeal on Wednesday, the first day of a constitutional reference case on Ottawa’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act.

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He warned of a “radical displacement of provincial authority” and a “big brother approach to federalism.”

Joshua Hunter, counsel for Ontario, backed him up. He said the act is so broad that it could affect “everything that we do.”

“If taken to its extremes, there’s great potential to upset the balance of our federation,” he said.

New Brunswick’s lawyer, William Gould, warned of a slippery slope that would end with a “limitless” intrusion into provincial affairs.

“It only begins here,” he said.