I particularly object to the…

I particularly object to the timing of this bill. Cancelling participation in the cap and trade program should not be done until the Progressive Conservative have in place a viable alternative plan to reduce Ontario’s greenhouse emissions. At this point, they haven’t given any hint what that new plan will be, only that there will be one.

We can’t have any time lag between the end of the cap and trade and the start of whatever it is the Progressive Conservatives are going to do instead, because in that time, emissions will increase (unless, perhaps, Ontario has a recession). Ontario is already experiencing the effects of climate change now: Increased wildfires, more severe rainfalls and flooding, the spread northward of lime disease and West Nile disease, and lower nutrition density in food. All of these things will only get more frequent and more severe as emissions increase.

While Ontario on its own can’t ensure that Canada meets its Paris Treaty obligations, as Canada’s largest province, without their participation Canada is sure to fail. And while Canada can’t on its own solve the global problem of climate change, if we don’t do our part, how can we expect the larger emitting countries to do theirs? Per capita, Canadians are some of the highest emitters in the world. There’s nothing special about us that allows us to pollute as much as we want while the rest of the world tries to reduce. Other cold, sparsely populated countries don’t produce as many emissions per capita as we do.

Delaying the cancellation of the cap and trade bill until 2020 would bring many other benefits to the province:

* The government can keep its obligation to its partners in Quebec and California and give them appropriate notice of their intent to withdraw, set at 12 months. Doing it faster than that puts them at risk of lawsuits from those governments.

* Businesses can benefit from the carbon credits they purchased in good faith as recently as June of this year. The Ontario government is spared the cost of having to compensate these companies, and the risk of lawsuits should the compensation offered not be deemed sufficient.

* The Ontario government will benefit from cap and trade revenue during that time. If they feel bad about Ontarians paying more for gas, they could return the money to the taxpayer instead of spending it on government programs (that benefit Ontarians).

* The Federal government would not impose a carbon tax on Ontario, and the Ontario government saves the $3 million of legal fees they’ve set aside to fight the Federal government in court to try to stop them from doing that. (I would note that the Federal government was elected with a majority on a clear mandate to bring in national carbon pricing, so given the Ontario government’s current argument that appointed judges should not be overriding the decisions of elected officials, they are being extremely hypocritical in bringing forward this legal action.)

But most important, still, is that they not get rid of the current plan to reduce emissions before having the replacement plan well defined, costed, and ready to implement the moment the other one ends. Because these are the sad facts about climate change (from the New York Times Magazine - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-…):

The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario.

Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum.

Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable.

The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.