To say that I am deeply…

To say that I am deeply disappointed in the government to cancel this program is an understatement. The program was supporting many projects important to our municipalities including transit and energy efficiency in public buildings. With projects cancelled, needed investments will not be occurring and cost savings will not be realized. Further, carbon pollution will not be reduced. It was a win-win program, with polluters having to pay the price for adding carbon to the environment, and taxpayers seeing the benefit of this through increased funding for public services. For a government that claims to be looking to save taxpayers money, the attack on a climate change program that brought billions of dollars to the Ontario economy and supported so many needed public projects -especially transit -is counter intuitive. A Nobel-prize winning economist has stated that carbon taxes are the solution to climate change. Is this government really going to stoop to the level of other government and dismiss the word of experts in the field? Additionally, the government has not factored in any of the costs to Ontarian's for not taking meaningful action on climate change. The costs to business and individuals are rising and will continue to do so. Major storm events seen in Ontario over the past few years (including the latest tornado to tear through Ottawa) will only increase and become more severe if action is not taken against climate change. The cost for these clean-up and recovery efforts is exponentially more than what it takes to mitigate climate change through a carbon tax. I encourage the government to put aside its philosophical differences with the previous government and do what’s best for Ontario is helping us mitigate and adapt to our new climate reality. We have already delayed action by a quarter of a year and while we wait for some new plan it will be a half a year of inaction that we can ill afford to wait for. Climate change is occurring right now. The UN has called for urgent action to reverse the effects of climate change, not more waiting for politicians to create plans that soothe their egos. Please.