Premier Brad Wall says Ottawa's plan to introduce a carbon tax is more like a ``ransom note.''

The federal government has released a carbon pricing backstop, which will be forced upon provinces that don't come up with their own carbon pricing plan by 2018.

The backstop would also be used to supplement systems that do not fully meet the federal government's benchmark.

Wall says Saskatchewan's agriculture and energy-based economy will be hit harder than others by the carbon levy, and he's repeating his threat to take the matter to court.

Part of the federal system will see direct revenues from the carbon tax returned to the province from which they were collected.

In most cases, the levy will be applied early in the supply chain of each fuel used in a backstop jurisdiction and will be payable by the producer or distributor. The final user of a fuel will not generally have any special rights or obligations in respect of the levy, as the user will purchase levy-paid fuel in most cases.

Carbon levy rates will initially be set to $10 per tonne in 2018, increasing by $10 per tonne annually to $50 per tonne in 2022.

Under the federal plan, farmers would receive relief on gasoline and diesel fuel used in certain activities.

Wall has steadfastly opposed the federal government's plan to bring in a 10-dollar-a-tonne carbon price on any jurisdiction that hasn't introduced its own levy as early as next spring.