Bill 4, the Cap and Trade…

Bill 4, the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, is incredibly shortsighted and a misplaced move by the Ontario Government.

The climate impact of carbon is undeniable, and unless the Ontario Government is looking to deny climate change, it is clear that something must be done. While there may be political discussions about what it is that must be done, the only plan we have to mitigate it cannot be scrapped without a robust counter plan in its place. In the absence of an alternative, the Cap and Trade program represents the best policy put forward to date.

Cap and Trade aims to do something quite difficult - put a price on Carbon so that the products people buy represent the true cost of the product in terms of the damage it causes. People have to pay for water because someone needs to pay for the pumping, filteration, and distribution of water. People have to pay for sewage because someone has to treat the sewage before it is dumped into the environment. Carbon emissions are equivalent to sewage that we release into our atmosphere- it needs to be treated, captured, or limited, and that comes with a cost that the Cap and Trade would address. The big problem is the concentrated nature of benefits (of not paying for pollution - the companies win) and the distributed nature of harm (in terms of the pollution, diseases, destruction of environment - that the people lose out on), and so can only be solved by true, focused leadership. By stepping away from Cap and Trade, the Ontario government is not living up to their roles as leaders.