The business case for carbon pricing By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Dec. 17, 2018

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2018 (1566 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The people who run Canada’s businesses support carbon pricing. The provincial governments that oppose it are running low on fuel. The way the wind is blowing currently, carbon pricing is coming soon to a gas station near you.

Carbon pricing gained important business support in October when the Business Council of Canada, representing 150 chief executives of the largest companies, endorsed the federal government’s plan.

This week, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, representing 200,000 companies across the country, supported the proposed national carbon pricing scheme and urged governments to quit using it as a political bargaining chip.

This week, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, representing 200,000 companies across the country, supported the proposed national carbon pricing scheme and urged governments to quit using it as a political bargaining chip.

The business lobby groups have heard the objections to the federal scheme from the Conservative governments of Saskatchewan and Ontario, echoed by the federal Conservative party. They were clearly not impressed.

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Those two provincial governments want to argue in court that Ottawa has no authority to impose such a scheme. Ontario, having scrapped the previous government’s cap-and-trade scheme (a form of carbon pricing), announced a plan to subsidize selected corporate pollution reduction efforts instead of putting a price on carbon. The business community’s verdict is unequivocal: go with carbon pricing.

The Canadian public is of two minds about carbon pricing. People don’t want to pay more for gasoline. Nor do they want to pollute the air, melt the polar ice caps and bequeath an uninhabitable planet to their grandchildren.

The Angus Reid polling organization found in November that national support for carbon pricing, which had fallen to 44 per cent in July, recovered to 54 per cent after the government announced that the proceeds of the federal carbon tax would be returned to the households that pay it.

The Canadian public is of two minds about carbon pricing. People don’t want to pay more for gasoline. Nor do they want to pollute the air, melt the polar ice caps and bequeath an uninhabitable planet to their grandchildren.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford had been railing against the federal scheme all summer, but public support for the federal program rose in Ontario — as it did in every province except Alberta.

The idea behind the carbon tax is that consumers of carbon products — which means oil, coal, wood, anything that produces carbon dioxide when it burns — will find their own most efficient ways of cutting carbon consumption. Schemes such as Ontario’s put the government in charge of selecting emission reduction methods.

The Saskatchewan appeal court will hear arguments against the federal scheme on Feb. 13 and 14. The Saskatchewan government contends that the federal tax is unconstitutional because it will apply unequally in different provinces, depending on federal assessment of the local emission reduction plans.

Canadian business leaders, who are in the same boat with the rest of us and have studied the matter closely, have concluded that Canada should take that risk and be part of the solution, not keep adding to the problem.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and his lawyers, however, have to talk their way around Section 91 of the Canadian Constitution, which gives Parliament power over “the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation.”

The greatest weakness of the federal scheme is international inertia.

Canadians might submit to a carbon tax, clean up their country’s emissions and still bequeath a dying planet to their grandchildren because U.S. President Donald Trump loves coal and Russian President Vladimir Putin cares nothing about the planet.

Canadian business leaders, who are in the same boat with the rest of us and have studied the matter closely, have concluded that Canada should take that risk and be part of the solution, not keep adding to the problem.

Premiers Ford and Moe are left claiming to know what’s good for the economy better than the business leaders who are the economy. Ottawa may well feel free to ignore them.