Ontario to Join Quebec in Cap-and-Trade Program

Much like in the United States, bold climate action is undertaken primarily by provinces as opposed to the federal government which has yet to forge a national strategy.

"Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on Monday signed a historic deal [onApril 13] to join Quebec’s cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions," write Jane Taber and Adrian Morrow in The Globe and Mail. "Many of the details in Ontario’s cap-and-trade system still have to be worked out over the next six months, but it is likely to look similar to the joint system run by Quebec and California."

"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges humankind has ever faced. This is about preserving a world for our children and our grandchildren,” Ms. Wynne told reporters after meeting [Quebec Premier Philippe] Couillard in his office near the National Assembly.

Wynne emphatically makes her point in the accompanying video at a press conference.

In a separate piece, Morrow explains how cap-and-trade works and how it differs from a carbon tax:

It’s a system where the government caps the total amount of carbon emissions allowed. The government then issues permits to companies, specifying exactly how much carbon that company can burn. If a company wants to burn more than its share of carbon, it must buy extra permits from other companies that have burned less.

Recently we noted that businesses in Vermont were pushing the state to enact the nation's first carbon tax, but it's increasingly looking as if cap-and-trade may be the preferred carbon pricing system, and that Canada is where progress is being made.

Once Ontario’s system is operating, 62 per cent of Canada’s population and more than half its economy will be under the same carbon market. Including [British Columbia] B.C., which uses a carbon tax instead, some three quarters of Canadians will be covered by provincial-level carbon pricing.

While the federal government is moving forward with some climate-change measures – such as new regulations to make trucks more fuel efficient, and a plan to phase out coal-fired power generation – Ottawa has adamantly refused to support carbon pricing.

“We are very clear we don’t want … what is effectively a tax on carbon which would increase the cost for consumers and on taxpayers – the cost of electricity, of gasoline, of groceries,” Finance Minister Joe Oliver [see Canadian Ministry] told reporters Monday in response to Ontario and Quebec’s deal.

“This is a bold move from the province of Ontario — and the challenge we face demands further action from other states and provinces around the world,” [Gov. Jerry] Brown said. “There’s a human cost to the billions of tons of carbon spewing into our atmosphere, and there must be a price on it."