UPDATE: Is PM Trudeau pondering carbon fee and dividend and other recent developments?

UPDATE: Is PM Trudeau pondering carbon fee and dividend and other recent developments?

On January 15, 2018, the Canadian government announced more details regarding our national carbon pricing policy in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. Provinces and territories have three choices with their carbon pricing policies: create their own policy; accept the federal backstop program of a revenue-neutral carbon tax  and develop a deal with the federal government on how to recycle the carbon tax revenue; or if they choose to do nothing the federal government will impose the federal carbon pricing  backstop policy on them.

Although the imposed backstop policy will not be finalized until later this year, in an interview with the Canadian press PM Trudeau expressed his preference that there be carbon rebates directly to people in holdout provinces making the Canadian federal backstop carbon pricing program potentially the first carbon fee and dividend system enacted in the world! As well, a federal Finance Department document noted the overall approach will be reviewed in 2022, “to confirm the path forward, including continued increases in stringency in future years” which is something we applaud at Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Comments on the draft legislative proposals to implement the federal carbon pricing system are welcome until February 12, 2018, at carbonpricing-tarificationcarbone@canada.ca

Later in the week, on Thursday, January 18, 2018,  the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the Honourable  Navdeep Bains, announced that the Business Development Bank of Canada will invest $700 million over the next five years to support Canadian cleantech innovation.This investment will certainly help bolster Canada’s cleantech innovation which has recently become a rising star. On January 11, 2018, it was announced that Canada’s global ranking on cleantech innovation jumped from 7th in 2014 to 4th in 2017.

Onward and upward Canada. Despite all these great announcements last week, Canada’s climate targets are woefully inadequate. The politicians need our help. We will all need to work hard to bend the curve to meet those targets and save our climate.

Canadians know carbon pollution is costly. We now also now know that the four provinces with carbon pricing policies, Alberta, BC, Ontario, and Quebec outpaced the rest of the country in economic growth in 2017.

 

Thank you CCL Canada members for creating the political will for a liveable world one riding at a time since 2010. You all have made a huge difference.