While I understand the…

While I understand the governments desire to reduce direct costs for the taxpayers of Ontario I believe that cancellation of the cap and trade program for Ontario is a mistake and will lead to higher costs for everyone. We are paying indirectly for increased carbon in our atmosphere and the resulting climate change through natural disasters, once in 100-500 year storms etc and the price just keeps going up as the climate changes more and more, While there could be programs or strategies to deal with climate change these will be insufficient. The core issue is we need to put a price on carbon to accurately reflect the impact on society of emitting carbon. We do this similarly through taxes on cigarettes to help offset the healthcare costs and to discourage consumption. We need to do the same for carbon if we are going to alter people's behaviours. Leaving these costs "hidden" is just going to sentence our children and future generations to direct costs that are going to severely impact their quality of life. The direct cost could be through a carbon tax or a cap and trade system. Given all of the investment made already into the Cap and Trade system and given the strong participating member jurisdictions in North America I think it makes sense to stick with a Cap and Trade system.

To boot there are meaningful jobs and export opportunities that exist for Canadian clean technology. If the real cost of emitting carbon is put in place there are already successful Ontario based businesses that have competing non carbon emitting technologies that would be very competitively priced and could flourish exponentially more, be they lithium ion battery companies, hydrogen fuel cell technologies, water purification companies and many others. The clean tech sector in Canada employs over 50,000 people. It could include even more people with export potential. I don't think these industries need subsidies they just need the true cost of carbon to be factored in for carbon emitting alternatives to set a level playing field.

Our kids and their kids need us to start paying these costs directly right now so they wont have to pay them indirectly in a terrible and costly way going forward. Please reconsider the decision to cancel the cap and trade program in Ontario.