Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced that Ottawa is preparing to relax carbon-pricing measures to aid industry competitiveness
University of Waterloo professor Jatin Nathwani, Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy for Sustainable Energy and Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) is available to talk on the subject.
“To meet our national obligations – as part of the Paris Treaty – and national aspirational targets, it is absolutely critical that an effective mechanism exists to meet the targets. Given the Federal nature of our government, sufficient flexibility has been introduced to allow different provinces to meet the “floor levels” of pricing but the means to get there are open: cap and trade vs carbon tax."
“Close monitoring would be necessary to ensure broad consistency across jurisdictions and more so to “exemptions” granted to specific sectors or companies. Too many of these can undermine the overall intent of the legislation, but some exemptions may be necessary to deal with province specific issues and challenges. All in all, the legislation is overdue and necessary to allow us to move towards a low carbon economy over time.”
- Jatin Nathwani
