Starting April 1st, you are going to find an extra charge on the end of your bill from both SaskPower and SaskEnergy. Despite a lawsuit filed against the Federal Government on what many believe to be an unconstitutional act, the pricing is still set to come in shortly.

"We wanted to ensure that we were transparent when it comes to how the carbon tax is applied to both SaskEnergy and SaskPower," says Minister Responsible for SaskTel and SaskEnergy Dustin Duncan. "April bills will show a distinct charge for the carbon tax both for SaskEnergy and SaskPower, and that money that will be held by SaskPower, and we'll hold that until the end of the court case."

As for what exactly your bill will look like when the calendar is turned over, even with rate reductions to the SaskEnergy bill, the carbon tax has already come into affect in a way for both crown corporations. Since the tax is being applied in other provinces, SaskPower and SaskEnergy have had to pay more for the fuel they use to power the province.

"We just wanted to ensure that people know that even though we've already announced a holding of the rate for SaskPower this year, you're actually going to see what would equate to about a 2.7% rate increase and SaskEnergy is actually going through the process of seeing a rate reduction and yet that will be wiped out by applying the carbon tax."

With the federal Liberal government slowly losing traction from the resignations of three government officials, the last of which being President of the Treasury Board Dr. Jane Philpott, the possibility of a carbon tax not lasting very long seems more and more viable. Because of this, many Canadians are probably wondering if and how you will get that money back.

"If we ultimately have to remit it to the federal government, meaning we're unsuccessful or the remittance state comes, we will remit that under the federal law. If we are successful in court, it's our intention that SaskPower would essentially hold those dollars in trust that they collect through SaskPower, and we would rebate that back to the people that pay it."

With how much money is spent on power and energy, not only is this tax that's coming next month going to show a significant change in what comes to the bill of every person in Saskatchewan but it's also going to end up costing SaskPower heavily as a corporation.

"It could add up pretty significantly. Initially on an individual bill I think we're saying for the average customer it could only be a couple bucks a month on your power bill and maybe nine on your natural gas for the rest of this year, but for SaskPower as a company the first year alone will be about $52,000,000, and we're forecasting that will total between now and 2022 over half a billion dollars. So SaskPower, big company, right? But not the ability to absorb half a billion dollars in cost and that's why it's getting flowed through to the customer."

The province's lawsuit against the federal government began on February 14th of this year, and is still before the courts at this time.