The premier’s knee-jerk…

The premier’s knee-jerk decision to scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade system for curbing carbon emissions is appalling. Cap-in-trade is not a ‘carbon tax’, as Ford insists on labelling it, and neither does putting a price on carbon have zero affect on emissions while killing jobs, as he also relentlessly insists. In fact the evidence from around the world is quite the opposite.

Nonetheless, in Bill 4 the premier has chosen to drag Ontario backwards -- no price on pollution, no limits on emission levels, no incentives for energy reducing initiatives, no encouragement for the growing ‘green economy’, while support for fossil fuel companies implicitly continues.

The effects of climate change due to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gasses is all around us, not least in our own country, witness the ever-increasing severity of forest fires in western Canada and northern Ontario, receding glaciers in the Rockies and thawing permafrost in the Arctic. As the manufacturing heartland of Canada, Ontario should be leading on combatting climate change, not impeding all current efforts to do something about it. If according to the premier none of the above approaches make any difference, what better ideas does he have? Does he have any ideas at all?

Ford did not win a mandate to turn Ontario into the country's worst climate offender. We need a robust climate change plan to reduce emissions, help people save energy and create jobs in the burgeoning clean economy. We need a price on pollution that makes polluters pay for their emissions and uses the revenues to encourage ‘green’ solutions. We need legally binding emissions targets in help fulfil Canada’s obligations to the Paris Climate Agreement. What we don’t need is obstruction and repudiation on the bogus basis that dealing with climate change is an attack on ordinary people.