Ontario finally joins ‘axis of eco’
QUEBEC CITY— By joining Quebec in the fight against global warming, Kathleen Wynne is taking a gamble of provincial proportions.
Perhaps the premier will pay a political price at home after Monday’s announcement that Ontario will put a price on carbon emissions over the next year. Eco-skeptics among the opposition Progressive Conservatives will campaign hard against any plan to tax pollution, not so much climate deniers as donothing outliers.
But here in Quebec, Ontario’s long-delayed decision is old news, even if welcome news. Wynne is going boldly, but belatedly, where other governments have gone long ago — not just Quebec, but also California and B.C. Now the premier is making up for lost time by forging what might be called an “axis of eco” with her Quebec counterpart, Philippe Couillard. After seven years of lagging, Ontario is leading from behind. Either way, it takes political will to persuade people, says Couillard, who has been watching Wynne’s progress from a distance.
“It’s fundamentally a question of political leadership,” he muses during an interview in his office adjoining the national assembly. “The signal has to come from the top.”
Couillard has become the country’s climate change evangelist, proselytizing his fellow premiers while hosting them at a summit of provincial leaders in Quebec City Tuesday.
After a joint news conference with Wynne downstairs — where the two parried questions from the press about a carbon pricing system that is familiar to Quebecers but foreign to most Ontarians — Couillard takes a phone call from California Governor Jerry Brown about Ontario’s decision to join their combined “cap-and-trade” plan. “Governor Brown . . . is quite happy,” he reports. “It adds critical mass . . . It has reached the point of no return.”
But getting to this point with Wynne has taken time. Couillard didn’t so much twist her arm as offer a helping hand to his latest convert after both premiers won majority governments.
“As soon as we came to office we had this conversation,” he recalls.
Quebec’s distinct political culture is markedly different from Ontario’s on the environment as on other matters. There is a strong consensus for carbon pricing among the public and politicians from all parties, starting with Couillard’s predecessor as Liberal leader, Jean Charest (himself a former federal Tory), and continuing with the past Parti Québécois government.
Bringing public opinion along in Ontario will take time, he suggests.
“In Ontario’s case it was rather more sudden in terms of announcing it and moving it forward. And this is where political leadership and political courage play a significant role. I recognize those qualities in Madame Wynne.”
The two neighbouring premiers have been simpatico since their earliest encounters.
“It clicked well, personally, it worked well from Day 1,” Couillard says. “She has deep convictions — that’s something I like in people.”
Wynne seems to have adopted some of Couillard’s rhetoric in responding to skeptics. At their news conference Monday, she argued that the cost of inaction — from higher insurance rates to adverse weather patterns — could easily exceed putting a price on pollution.
It is a line borrowed from Couillard, who stepped up to the microphone at a joint news conference in Toronto last November to rebut a reporter’s question, directed to Wynne, about the potential costs to consumers. Couillard chuckles when reminded of his rapid intervention back then. “OK, if we don’t do this, then what do we do for climate change?” he asks rhetorically. “Not acting is much more expensive.”
Echoing many environmentalists, the premiers argue they are learning from the mistakes made by other jurisdictions in the evolution of cap-and-trade — a system of gradually “capping” overall carbon emissions, while allowing the “trading” of those pollution allocations to improve market flexibility.
“We studied the European market, and we saw the pitfalls,” Couillard says. “And we will make our own mistakes, I have no doubt. But we learn from what didn’t work well in Europe.”
That’s why his province signed an agreement with Ontario last November to compare notes on Quebec’s experience with cap-and-trade. But while Couillard is proud of the collaboration with California and Ontario, he is frustrated by the lack of co-operation with Ottawa, noting that their data doesn’t match up. Canada musts get its act together for global negotiations.
“It’s almost past time that we should have a technical conversa- tion (with Ottawa) about methodology, data, how we’re going to define the targets, how is the burden going to be shared across the country,” says Couillard — a Quebec premier complaining about the lack of federal leadership.
In their public appearances, both premiers downplay their differences with Ottawa to avoid more political squabbling. But as their axis of eco gains momentum — extending as far as California and B.C. — Ottawa is being left in the dust. Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn