Bill 4 Comments Bill 4 is…

Bill 4 Comments
Bill 4 is the Ford government’s attempt to join Donald Trump’s climate change denying tribe. Rod Phillips is too sophisticated to endorse such post-truth nonsense, so the bill includes legislated requirements for targets and plans for greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Unfortunately this is clearly just lipstick on a pig, as we have already observed Ford forge alliances with Jason Kenny and Scott Moe to oppose a federal carbon tax.
This suggests that the target established by Bill 4 would not be negotiated between Canada and Ontario as most environmental standards are, but would be arrived at in consultation with the two largest per capita emitters of GHGs, perhaps even allowing for an increase in GHG production!
If we take the minister at his word, that he is indeed looking at reductions of GHGs, he has effectively eliminated the two best methods of securing those reductions, that is, cap and trade and carbon tax. This leaves few options for him except the heavy-handed command and control regulatory model that fell out of favor in the 1990’s after the cap and trade successes that were observed in the US as a result of the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990. Cap and trade allows for businesses to make decisions on whether installation of technology would be cheaper than purchasing credits, while the entire polity operated under a continually smaller cap. This experience resulted in rapid changes in electrical generation technology as it became clear that retrofitting tailpipe scrubber technology was more costly than replacing coal-fired boilers with combined-cycle gas turbines. This has resulted in health and environmental benefits for the public while reducing costs for operators.
The minister is also denied the carbon tax instrument which for ideological reasons has been rejected out of hand. This option is perhaps the most equitable as it places the burden on those who contribute the most to the problem. Doug Ford is trying to bribe those people with a freebie for the next four years. However, in the recently issued October 2018 IPCC report suggests that the eventual cost of a carbon tax could be as high as $5500 per Mt of CO2 by 2030 to cover the climate change damage that would be caused by a 1.5o Celsius increase by 2030. If the Federal government imposes a carbon tax that Doug Ford intends to flout, Ontarians will be in for a huge shock once Ford is defeated or resigns.
What makes this so silly is that Ontario is already so far along the road to mitigating climate change. The problem of GHGs from the transportation sector was being addressed by a slow but deliberate strategy to increase the electrification of this sector. This remains the largest problem in Ontario, but now we have no strategy for further electrification. By favoring the internal combustion engine Doug Ford has increased the risk of respiratory ailments in already congested Southern Ontario, thereby increasing the health care budget and decreasing Ontarian’s quality of life.
My recommendation to Rod Phillips would be the following while he sets his targets:
1. Regulate the energy use in buildings to reduce GHG emissions. This could be modeled on the federal Smart Buildings Initiative.
2. Implement a program to electrify the transportation sector, by establishing how much and by what time. This should include the commuter trains operated by Metrolinx as well as resuming the subsidies for electric vehicles and associated infrastructure.
3. Regulate the cement industry, mining industry and fertilizer industry to ensure they meet the best available technology GHG emission levels in Ontario.
4. Impose mandatory fugitive GHG emission programs at all petrochemical facilities in Ontario.
5. Mandate that all landfill locations be equipped with landfill gas collection systems and combined heat and power combustion systems.
These recommendations may have the effect of reducing some levels of employment as businesses migrate from Ontario, however, one must ask the question what happens now to the 5,000 clean tech companies in Ontario and their 130,000 employees?
Bill 4 strikes me as a cynical ploy to do nothing on the climate change file. The bill gives the minister the ability to change targets at will, consult any crackpot who satisfies Ford’s whims and deny compensation to anyone who has invested resources in the Cap and trade system. This seems like petty politics given the stakes involved. We are already seeing migration on a massive scale from areas that are affected by climate change, flood damage on biblical levels, international tensions over scarce water resources. If we continue to look at this through a parochial, partisan lens, the chickens will soon come to roost.