Canada supports carbon pricing
Documents obtained from PCO outline country’s global strategy
Canada supports putting a price on carbon emissions as part of a global climate change strategy, say newly released records prepared at the highest levels of the federal government.
Documents obtained from the Privy Council Office and Environment Canada show that, despite the fact the Conservatives have repeatedly criticized the idea of a carbon tax and the NDP’s backing for such a scheme, the federal government has supported a different form of carbon pricing.
The Privy Council Office is the central department in the government that supports the prime minister’s office. The PCO documents, obtained under access-to-information, highlight calls from the World Bank for “putting a price on carbon for developed countries” and say “Canada could support other countries implementing this proposal.”
They also say: “Canada supports the development of new marketbased mechanisms that expand the scale and scope of carbon markets.”
The notes were prepared for the November 2011 G20 summit attended by Harper, one month before Canada announced plans to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement with legally binding carbon-reduction targets. The PCO records also said that Canada wanted to expand markets that require polluters to pay and allow other companies to profit from deploying technologies or other methods to reduce emissions in the atmosphere.
The records from Environment Canada say that ‘well-designed environmental policy’ can support jobs and growth while avoiding ‘serious’ and ‘significant’ impacts.
The records from Environment Canada say that “well-designed environmental policy” can support jobs and growth while avoiding “serious” and “significant” impacts to health, safety and the economy. The records noted Canada, as the only country to fail in its Kyoto commitments, was facing mounting international pressure to demonstrate its own concrete actions to address climate change.
Harper’s office referred questions about both sets of records to Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who said through a spokeswoman that the government does not support a carbon tax. The spokeswoman repeated a message the government has put out in the past: that an NDP climate change proposal from the last election to raise billions of dollars by auctioning off pollution permits as part of a market-based carbon pricing scheme was a tax on gas, groceries, electricity and everything else.
All major federal political parties in Canada supported different forms of carbon pricing — either through a direct tax or a market-based system — in the 2008 federal election, but the Conservatives later decided to favour binding regulations in each industrial sector instead, because of the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation creating a carbon market.
Several provinces, including Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, have introduced or are implementing different forms of carbon pricing or direct taxes on greenhouse gas pollution.