‘Flexible regulations’

Other ways to reduce emissions besides carbon tax, says economist

Economist Mark Jaccard is a veteran of the carbon tax wars.

In 2007, he was part of a team advising then-B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell on how to implement a provincial carbon tax, among other climate policies.

Then, instead of going back to the dry docks of academia, he appeared on radio shows defending his policy, speaking to voters and getting a hot blast of the angst the policy conjures up.

By the time Stéphane Dion came to Jaccard for advice in 2008 about the Liberals’ proposed “green shift” carbon tax, Jaccard had already decided the whole idea was political quicksand.

“While the carbon tax might be good policy, it doesn’t appear to be good politics,” Jaccard told Dion, according to his forthcoming book “The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success”, which will be available in February.

Dion told him that “good policy is good politics” before being soundly defeated by Stephen Harper, who made the “job-killing carbon tax” the focal point of his case against Dion and the Liberals in the 2008 federal election.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a carbon tax the key feature of his climate policy, but even the current Liberals, who declared a “climate emergency” in the summer have been vague about how they will continue responding to that emergency.

Jaccard says it doesn’t have to be an ever-increasing carbon tax. In fact, even if there were no carbon tax, a low-carbon fuel standard combined with other regulations, could do the same job.

“If an economist says you have to use a carbon tax, they’re not telling you the truth. And somebody has to point that out,” said Jaccard, in a phone interview with the National Post.

Since more than 60 per cent of Canadian voters cast a ballot in the 2019 election for a party proposing a carbon tax it’s been argued that the policy has been soundly endorsed. But Jaccard isn’t so sure.

For one, the version of the tax that Canadians voted for can’t do the job on its own.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who has been moved to a new portfolio in Trudeau’s revamped cabinet, has said she had no plans to raise the federal carbon tax beyond $50/ tonne, which it is scheduled to reach by 2022.