An amendment to reduce Bill C-234’s sunset clause by five years was tabled in the Senate yesterday evening.
This would align it with the deadline on the Liberal government’s heating oil carbon price exemption, said Senator Yuen Pau Woo, who tabled the amendment.
Bill C-234 proposes exempting fuels for grain drying from the price on carbon. It was recently amended to remove fuels for barn and greenhouse heating from the proposed exemptions.
Senator Woo’s amendment, if passed, would reduce the bill’s sunset clause to three years from eight.
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“In my view, Bill C-234 is not good public policy,” said Woo. “This is why I oppose it as much as I oppose the Liberal government’s exemption for home heating oil.”
“Unfortunately, we have no ability to debate the home heating oil exemption,” he added.
Senator David Wells, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, spoke in opposition to the amendment. He said that while in committee debates in the House of Commons, MPs had agreed to reduce the sunset clause from 10 years to eight.
“There was no debate at committee on that in the other place, and they all agreed that eight years was fair,” Wells said. “Now we’re hearing from Senator Woo that not 10 years, not eight years, but three years is fair.”
Debate adjourned before the amendment could go to a vote.
Meanwhile, Senators agreed to send earlier complaints of bullying to the Senate’s ethics committee for further examination. This relates to a question of privilege raised in late November by Senator Raymonde Saint-Germain, which alleged some Conservative senators attempted to intimidate colleagues into giving way on the bill.
—Geralyn Wichers is associate digital editor of AGCanada.com. She writes from southeastern Manitoba.
