Scott Moe talks tariffs, Saskatchewan budget, carbon tax on Evan Bray Show

Saskatchewan’s premier joined The Evan Bray Show on Tuesday for a wide-ranging interview, covering the provincial budget, tariffs and more.

Scott Moe joined Bray during his live broadcast from Canada’s Farm Show in Regina just one day ahead of the provincial budget, which is set to be unveiled on Wednesday. The conversation also touched on Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, the trade relationship with the United States, and the end of the consumer carbon tax.

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Listen to the full interview here, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: How good is it for you to be able to be here and walk around this morning? You can’t walk two steps without someone wanting to chat with you.

MOE: Saskatchewan is the best place on earth. And to come to to an ag show with with my roots, growing up in rural Saskatchewan, it is personally special, but it’s also one of the powerhouses when it comes to discussions around the Canadian economy. And we’ll obviously be talking about that, not just today but over the course of the next number of days, and it will be the discussion at this show. And so it’s wonderful to be home in Saskatchewan, and just even more wonderful to to be at the farm show here in March this year.

We carried live last week the news conference that you did on the tariffs that were being placed on canola by China. I saw very passionate plea from you on behalf of the province for the Canadian government to remove immediately the tariffs on Chinese EVs. Did you get any response from the federal government or any sort of an indication from them?

MOE: My ask is, do something. Do something. Reach out to China. Reach out and open up the discussion at finding a path forward, because the tariffs coming from China – 100 per cent on canola oil (and) canola meal – are the most significant tariffs and the most immediate threat that the Canadian economy is facing today. Yes, we’re having an on-and-off-again discussion with our largest trading partner, the United States of America, but our second largest is China. And these tariffs are real, and they’re coming into effect, and they’re going to cease jobs for a period of time, and there’s tens of thousands of people that work in the canola crush industry in Saskatchewan and across Canada. And so my ask of new Prime Minister Mark Carney is, do something. Reach out to China. We’re reaching out at the at the sub-national level to ensure that they’re aware of the ongoing trade partnership that we’ve had in exporting food products in into China and other places around the world. But we need to do something. It’s too important of a market for our western Canadian ag industry. And here we (have) essentially a Liberal government trading an eastern industry – the EV industry, which is nonexistent in Canada; North America, for that matter – for western Canadian agriculture, and that’s happened too many times.

We have talked on the show a lot about the disarray that we’re in federally right now, and the need, essentially, for an election get a clear mandate, and then we can move forward with all these complicated things. Although you were saying call an election second to the phone call to China. We saw the prime minister, Mark Carney, doing a trip over to Europe. Your thoughts on how this is rolling out? Do you think we’re going to see an election call?

MOE: Well, yeah, I do. I think we’ll see an election call as early as is this weekend. And I hope there’s a phone call that’s made to China prior to that, because there will not be a functioning canola industry at the end of even the time it takes for a campaign, and so that phone call has to be made or the Liberal Party of Canada – alongside and supported by the NDP – are going to wear each of those jobs (lost) throughout the campaign. Mark my words.

I think I really saw the passionate Scott Moe that I’ve gotten to know through the years when you were doing the plea to remove the China tariffs on electric vehicles. The Scott Moe I saw talking about the U.S. tariffs, the response was much more subdued. I was actually shocked at how subdued you were, because you’ve always been a very fierce defender of Saskatchewan. Tell me about the strategy there?

MOE: Well, it is different. In the case of China, they’re an export market, but things get tough from time to time. We’ve dealt with Chinese tariffs (and) non-tariff barriers there before, and we find our way through them, and they’re very transactional. That’s different with the U.S., albeit a little bit different with this particular president. But with all the folks around the president – his appointees, the senate, the congressmen, the governors – those relationships are still strong. U.S. is our largest trading partner. When we get through this conversation and the dust settles, they’re still going to be our largest trading partner. Historically, the U.S. has been our our largest ally on many fronts. When we get through all of this, our relationship is going to change a little bit, but they are likely still going to be our largest ally as we share this continent together. And so yeah, the strategy is different, but that may escalate as we find our way through this conversation, because our trading relationship with the United States of America is our most important trading relationship, not just in Saskatchewan but across the nation.

(Ontario) Premier Doug Ford is a person who is in that position right now to lead the premiers. He’s the chair of the Council of the Federation, right? So he is part of the delegation that’s been going down to the States. I worry that he doesn’t have our interests – the west’s interests – in his mind. Pretty hard to take that Ontario cap off. You just talked yourself about the east-versus-west dilemma we find ourselves in. Do you have confidence that he represents your provincial view in general?

MOE: Yes, we’re talking almost daily, not only with Doug, but with a number of other premiers across the nation as well. And that’s why I think you saw a fairly aligned response from the provincial level. The actions that were taken across provinces were very, very similar. We need to be careful before we escalate those, because that escalates the conversation and escalates the trade war that we actually want to go the other direction in. We want to de-escalate it and get it back to the free and fair trading environment that that we know makes North American strong. So yeah, in general, I have faith with Doug, but I won’t say that I haven’t taken issue with a few things that he has said and done as well. And at the end of the day, not only is he the chair of our premiers group, the Council of the Federation, but he’s also the premier of Ontario, and so he is going to speak for Ontario, and it’s up for it’s to me and to Danielle (Smith) and to Tim Houston and others, to make sure that we’re being represented with the industries that matter here. And herein lies the great strength of Canada and North America. We are diverse, and that diversity can be a strength if we respect one another. And that’s what we see happening across the 49th Parallel is a little bit of a slipping of that respect.

We heard you lay out the changes that we’re making in Saskatchewan in regard to the tariffs. We know that April 2, the retaliatory tariffs, or whatever they’re calling them, are coming from the States. Will there be another wave – a round two – from a Saskatchewan point of view?

MOE: So nationally, what we’ve talked about is going to $155 billion of counter tariffs, and those have impacts on Canadian families. Not American families, but Canadian families. If you go beyond that 155, that impact becomes substantial. From the provincial perspective, we’re very aware of the resources that we have here, and the impact of restricting – tariffing – those resources, we’re very aware of what that would be. It would be very, very harmful to American families. And so yes, it would have a large impact, but it would create job loss in Saskatchewan, and at the end of the day, when you sit in the chair that I currently sit in, your job is to represent Saskatchewan opportunities, Saskatchewan jobs, and the growth of our province. And so we should be very, very careful in any hypothetical talk or other of escalating this trade war that we have brewing with the United States of America, and everything we do should be working from a point of de-escalating and getting us back to a free and fair trading environment that we had before, and then I believe we will have again. That should be the goal, and our decisions should be heading towards that goal. Far be it for me to quote a former Liberal Prime Minister, but I think, as Jean Chrétien said, that you can’t be smart and angry at the same time. We need to be smart.

I can’t even imagine what it looks like putting a budget together with the amount of uncertainty. Can you give us just a bit of a glimpse as to the challenge that was this year?

MOE: Revenue challenges are going to be just that, across Canada and across North America. But what we can control is the expense side of our budget, and we certainly are coming forward with that, and we’ve made some commitments in the most recent campaign, the Speech from the Throne, and what you’re going to see in this budget is really delivering on those commitments in four specific areas: affordability, healthcare, education – in particular, in K-3 outcomes – and keeping our community safe through providing recovery opportunities. But also, you know, increasing our enforcement, the tools that our police officers have, and increasing the number of police officers as well.

There was a recent announcement that caught me by surprise – and I was a bit shocked at – when it comes to reducing some of the income coming in from education taxes. But I’ve since learned that that’s it kind of is a bit of a wash. Can you explain that?

MOE: Yeah, it’s a reassessment year, and so the assessment value of land, ag, land, residential land, goes up. And what we said is, we have a block of money that’s in there, and if we kept the mill rate the same, the revenue would go up about $100 million. That would come out of Saskatchewan homeowners’ pockets. But what we said is we’re going to lower the mill rate, freeze that education property tax revenue number as a whole number this particular year, so Saskatchewan residents won’t see an increase on the dollars that they’re paying.

But you also won’t see a decrease in what you bring in. Is that correct?

MOE: Correct. It’s not in any way a decrease, and it’s part of the broader education budget.

I was caught off guard a little bit, thinking you guys have got some extra expenses in education this year, but it works out to be a wash.

MOE: What we did is just balance it so it’s a wash.

You have been calling loudly for the carbon tax to be gone. What we saw this week is a bit of a turning of the dial down to zero. Smoke and mirrors, or is this a step in the right direction?

MOE: Smoke and mirrors. I’d be nervous what’s coming next. And I would say it’s a step of of about 12 steps that need to be taken. The industrial carbon tax, the clean electricity regulations, all of the layering that has happened over the last eight years. I think our Liberal and NDP minority administration is coming to the realization that you can, for a period of time, you can ignore reality in the decisions that you make, in the policy decisions that you make, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality, and that’s what’s coming home to roost.

We’ve received lots of feedback from people listening to the show, often wanting to chime in, and when they know you’re coming on, they will inundate us with questions. Ten-dollar-a-day daycare has been a big one. We haven’t signed on to that yet as a province. Will we be?

MOE: Yes. There’s over a year left in the current program. The federal government reached out and put in place a two-week arbitrary deadline. We said we we’re actually reaching out to our daycare operators as well, because our priority is not only $10-a-day daycare, but how do we expand the spaces? And so we’re having those discussions between operators and the federal government, and I would expect that we’d sign on and sign on at the first opportunity that we can, but we need to ensure that we have a deal that works for Saskatchewan, understanding that they’re a little bit different province by province across the nation. But our goal is not only $10, but to expand the number of spaces drastically across the province, and that’s what we’re attempting to negotiate.

Premier Scott Moe, you got some pancakes to flip? Or do you just need to enjoy them?

MOE: With Canada’s Farm Show here, we just wish all the ag producers and everyone involved in the ag industry – which is much broader than when you and I grew up – the very best.