A basic tenet of management…

A basic tenet of management is that effective decisions can really only be made based upon the consideration and evaluation of available alternatives. This is true in life generally, in business, in politics and in governance.

The proposed legislation would cancel the existing program before any alternatives could be defined and evaluated, violating this basic management tenet.

This proposal is inextricably linked to the Government of Ontario's stated aversion to any form of carbon tax. It is more than interesting that the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics was just awarded to two economists for work which is strongly tied to climate change and which suggests that the the taxation of carbon is a very effective way to help mitigate climate change.

The Government of Ontario may possibly be correct in its assertion that there is a better approach to mitigating the effects of climate change than the current Cap and Trade system (although given the arguments of these Nobel Prize winners, this seems unlikely) but without any alternatives being described and evaluated, it is unwise managerially to terminate the existing program. Indeed, management consultants would probably describe a proposal for the termination of such a major program without a properly conducted evaluation of alternatives to be prima facia evidence of managerial incompetence at best and, at worst, to be a gross misrepresentation of the situation to the Legislature.

Certainly, the Legislature is not bound to act in a managerially sound fashion. Nor is it bound to not support proposals which are not managerially sound. But it may not be prudent for a Government, so early in its mandate, to present such a clear example of its preparedness to both violate managerial norms and considered expert opinion on long term consequences for what might well be assumed to be short term partisan advantage.