The Climate Change…

The Climate Change cancellation act is a step backwards for the province and, at large, the country. We have made significant strides to shift our economy and our society from an era where we as a country won the Fossil of the Year award 5 consecutive times, to a country of affirmative and effective climate action. We stand to lose all that traction with the ill conceived cancellation of cap and trade.
First, the misunderstanding that the Cap and Trade system is a 'Carbon Tax' has driven public sentiment against the program, this simply is not true. The Cap and Trade system endeavored to create a carbon economy that deterred large emitters from continuing their activities irrespective of the impact to the climate. Cap and Trade also providing funding for innovation in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and technologies, helped fund residential incentive programs and economic benefit for businesses that were able to change the way they operate.

Furthermore, as part of the Environment Bill of Rights, using cap and trade funding ( approximately 1 Billion remains) to wind down the program is a misappropriation of funding. While it is fair to compensate businesses that are stuck with now worthless instruments from the program, the legislation proposed would see a fairly limited reimbursement on those credits, which creates uncertainty for business and allows for the loss of value from cap and trade instruments to be passed on to consumers.

Our climate leadership has inspired other provinces to create sound policy behind climate change mitigation and we are now seeing a regression to using these policies as a bargaining chip. With the latest IPCC report painting a dire situation we can not afford to regress. Ontario needs to lead climate change mitigation, not entice other provinces to back out of it. While safeguarding the cost of living is important to all the people of Ontario it cannot come at the cost of prosperity for future generations.

The future of climate change policy must reflect the global need for decisive action. The success of former legislation resided in the ability to provide economic incentives and penalties that enabled climate action through energy conservation, technological innovation and cost savings opportunities that help drive down the cost of living. Its failures were highlighted in the tendency for businesses to protect profitability by passing on the costs of operating without respect to the environment to their consumers where innovation and conservation could have mitigated the increased cost operating.

Ontario should focus on protecting the Boreal forest, a massive carbon sink, invest in reforestation, continue fiscally responsible energy conservation programs, subsidize transportation technologies that mitigate carbon output from fossil fuel consumption and support innovative infrastructure projects from renewable energy generation to low carbon aggregate use.

Finally, the provincial governments needs to continue public consultation. Enacting climate change policy without aligning it with public concerns will result in a further division of the people of Ontario concerning the effectiveness of climate change mitigation strategies.