The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that the federal government’s carbon tax was constitutional, furthering the Liberals’ climate change mandate.
However, reactions to the decision from stakeholders and policy experts were decidedly mixed. Here’s a sample of what some of them had to say:
“Quite frankly, I don’t think the politics would work for [the Conservative party]. We saw that play out in the recent Conservative policy convention. You can’t form a government in Canada with no support in the major urban areas and outside Alberta and Saskatchewan, those major urban areas strongly support action on climate change. So, they may find a better solution than the carbon tax, but they better be pretty quick about circulating what that is. Doing nothing is not a solution.
- John Manley, Co-Chair, C.D. Howe Institute Fiscal and Tax Working Group; former finance minister and deputy prime minister
“We’re carrying out all these other policies, too, just like the U.S. So, it raises a really significant question that’s not answered by this decision, and that is: How can Canada have an unharmonized carbon policy much different, especially, from our major trading partners, being the United States? … A lot of uncertainty about where carbon policies are going and what costs are being imposed on the Canadian economy are not understood yet, and people are really just looking at targets but [don’t know] how to get there yet.”
- Jack Mintz, president's fellow at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy
“The time to act was 25 years ago. With each year we wait, climate disaster touches more and more people. Climate change increases the instance of floods, heat waves, forest fires and droughts. It endangers and disrupts our food supplies, travel routes and the places we build our homes.”
- Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation via a statement
“We found that because of the rebate portion of the carbon tax, almost 80 per cent of Ontario households would have been better off because of the rebate. Now, the other thing to keep in mind though is that under the old cap and trade program, the notional carbon price if you will, under that program would have been less than what the federal government was charging.”
- Peter Weltman, Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer discussing the findings from an Ontario carbon tax report
“Canada’s Conservatives will repeal Justin Trudeau’s Carbon Tax. We will protect the environment and fight the reality of climate change, but we won't do it by making the poorest pay more… The Supreme Court recognized that policies related to emission reduction touch on federal and provincial jurisdiction. Conservatives prefer a collaborative approach to tackling climate change to make progress while also helping maintain a strong economy.”
- Erin O’Toole, leader of Canada’s Conservatives and the Official Opposition via a statement
“Where we’ve always had the issue is on the direct costs to Saskatchewan families, and that’s why we took this to the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan and all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. We just feel that it is a wrong policy, and we don’t feel it’s a policy that in any measurable way is actually going to have a positive impact on the environment. There are other policies that we’ve been engaging on that will [have an impact], and we think investments in technology in those other areas will serve Canadians well.”
- Scott Moe, Saskatchewan Premier
“The whole functioning of the price on pollution is not to raise revenue for the government, the government keeps none of the revenue. Some of it is rebated back to consumers. But there is another portion of it which actually goes back to a range of different stakeholders including small and medium-sized enterprises to help them to improve their energy efficiency and thereby avoid the price… We need to address climate change, climate change is an existential threat to the future of the human race.”
- Jonathan Wilkinson, environment and climate change minister
Advertisement