NDP proposes national cap-and-trade system to fight climate change

Thomas Mulcair backs countrywide carbon-pricing scheme, but expert warns that getting the provinces on the same page could be “extremely difficult.”

Thestar.com
Sept. 27, 2015
By Ben Spurr

After “years of Liberal and Conservative failures on the environment,” Thomas Mulcair is promising that a government under the New Democrats would ensure that Canada becomes “the global leader in the fight against climate change.”

At a rally in Toronto to announce the party’s plan to create a national cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the NDP leader delivered a scathing critique of Canada’s environmental record under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

“Mr. Harper, you have abdicated responsibility on the environment,” Mulcair said, citing the Conservatives’ withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and a legislative overhaul that “crippled” the environmental assessment process. “Mr. Harper, you have failed Canadians and you have failed the world.”

Under the NDP plan, Ottawa would create a nationwide carbon pricing scheme that would place a cap on carbon emissions from select industries. As part of the cap-and-trade system, companies that exceed their limit could purchase credits from other companies that successfully reduce their emissions.

According to the party, the system would create incentives for companies to rein in pollution.

The NDP’s goal would be to lower emissions to 34 per cent below 1990 levels by 2025-2030.

Provinces that already have carbon-pricing plans could opt out of the plan, Mulcair said. British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec already have carbon pricing in place, while Ontario is on its way to joining them.

Douglas Macdonald, a senior lecturer at the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment, said it would be difficult to create a national cap-and-trade system because under the constitution, provinces have jurisdiction over natural resources. There’s little Ottawa could do to force a deal between provinces like Alberta, which relies heavily on fossil fuel industries, and those that do not.

And Macdonald warned that without all the provinces on the same page, there is no way to meet national emissions targets.

“A national program in Canada is, number one, extremely difficult to achieve,” he said. “And number two, it is essential. It has to be done.”

Later Sunday a spokesman for the Conservatives defended the government’s policies, saying the party’s balanced approach has decreased pollution without hurting the economy.

“Under Prime Minister Harper’s leadership, we are the first government in Canadian history to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while protecting the Canadian economy and jobs,” said Stephen Lecce in a statement.

According to Environment Canada, national greenhouse gas emissions were lower in 2013 than they were in 2006, the year the Conservatives took power. However, after a reduction that coincided with the 2008 recession, emissions have since been steadily rising.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has promised to set new national emissions targets but he would leave it to the provinces to figure out how to achieve them. The Liberals would provide funding to create the provincial strategies, including carbon-pricing systems.

Lecce, the Conservative spokesman, warned that both the Liberal and NDP carbon-pricing proposals would “kill jobs, upset our fragile economy and raise the cost of everything, including gas, groceries and electricity.”

In May the Conservative government set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.