Canada-wide carbon pricing needed to hit emissions targets, Wynne says

Kathleen Wynne said it helped that Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia already have carbon-pricing schemes, or plan to implement them next year.

Thestar.com
March 4, 2016
By Joanna Smith

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says there must be carbon pricing across the country, because Canada is still too far away from meeting its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged from the first ministers meeting in Vancouver this week able to say that all 13 provincial and territorial premiers had agreed to some kind of carbon pricing mechanism as one of the tools in the fight against climate change.

It was the focus of intense discussions around the table, as some premiers, including Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, had come out strongly against the idea.

Wynne said it helped that Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia - who stuck together at the table, provincial sources said - already have carbon-pricing schemes, or plan to implement them next year.

“It doesn’t mean that everybody is going to adopt something that those four provinces are already doing, but it did mean that there was already a compelling argument about 86 per cent of the population already living in a jurisdiction that is going to have or does have (carbon pricing),” Wynne said in an interview Thursday after the meeting wrapped up.

That was also one of the reasons, according to a senior federal government source who was in the room, that Trudeau was willing to agree to language in the Vancouver Declaration that leaves provinces some wiggle room on how to define carbon-pricing mechanisms - so long as the working group being struck to explore the options can show they will be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We don’t want to have a fight over 14 per cent of the economy,” said the federal source.

That fight might come later though, when Trudeau and the premiers gather again in October to figure out whether the carbon-pricing mechanisms proposed by the provinces and territories will be enough.

Wynne, who introduced a cap-and-trade system for Ontario that will come into effect in January 2017, suggested it is one worth having.

“Here’s the thing: we’re not there yet,” Wynne said.

“If there were no gap, if we by having the four provinces doing what they are doing, if we were as a country going to reach our targets that would be one thing, but we’re not. So we need collective action to change that trajectory,” Wynne said.

In the meantime, Wynne said all premiers are looking forward to what kind of infrastructure funding will be included in the March 22 budget, and said premiers were told that while some of it will be for so-called green projects, but suggested there will also be money for more traditional things such as bridges and roads.

Wynne said Ontario is moving toward viewing all its infrastructure investments through the lens of the fight against climate change, but is not there yet.

“We’re not necessarily at the point where we are sophisticated enough to apply it to all of those decisions, but ... I think it is already affecting the kind of decisions we make in terms of transportation and I think also in terms of things like building code, that as the building code is reviewed, as we look at our growth plan, that is all now in the context of: what can we do to reduce our carbon footprint?” said Wynne.