RE: ERO # 013-3738 Bill 4,…

RE: ERO # 013-3738 Bill 4, Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, 2018

Cap and Trade Branch
77 Wellesley Street West
10th Floor, Ferguson Block
Toronto ON M7A 2T5
Canada

To the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks,

According to your Ministry's website, your mandate is the following:

"What we do

-use science and research to develop policies, legislation, regulations and standards
-enforce compliance with environmental laws
-work with other governments, Indigenous groups and organizations, industry, stakeholders and the public
-monitor and report to track environmental progress over time
-modernize the environmental approval processes"

Your recent decision to cancel the Cap and Trade act violates all of these principles:

-According to the recently published Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC launched by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the U.N, we have a limited window to take drastic action to prevent irrevocable climate change that will impact all of us on this earth. Your ministry may be committed to using science to make evidence based decisions, but the Conservative party that you represent makes decisions based on ideology that will hinder your ministry from fulfilling its mandate.

-Enforcing compliance with environmental laws is very easy if you repeal them all and allow industry to continue polluting the planet without penalty.

-Premier Doug Ford has spent the first hundred days fighting the federal liberals on Cap and Trade rather than working with them. It is clear the conservative government has no interest in working with other governments on environmental issues. Moreover, your continued failure to describe an alternative plan to take action against climate change demonstrates you have no respect for consulting Ontarians about the most important issue of our time.

-Monitor and report on environmental progress - scientists across the globe who have spent their entire careers studying the environment and climate have come together to say we are not making progress.

-The conservative government's repeal of Cap and Trade demonstrates you will not support this ministry in modernizing anything to do with environmental approval processes.

Based on increasing wildfires, flooding and other severe weather patterns, we cannot afford to continue being complacent on climate change. And repealing the only plan we have in place to take serious action without a legitimate alternative is incredibly reckless.