BC Carbon Tax - top rated climate change policy in Canada

Sustainability Prosperity, a not for profit organization providing research, policy proposals, and educational information on environmental pricing reform, has recently published a report on “Eight principles for pricing carbon“. According to the website, these eight principles are:

Comprehensive: across all sources and sizes of emissions with no exemptions
Nation-wide: a federal framework is needed to establish a minimum carbon price across the country.
Simple and readily implemented: avoiding complex rules and exemptions, and with a short lead time to come into effect.
Transparent and accountable: to ensure its integrity, any new policy must be accompanied by a clear analysis of its expected economic and environmental effects, including a clear accounting of amount and use of any revenues raised.
Complemented by other measures such as improving the efficiency of vehicles, homes and appliances, and promoting technology research and development where a price signal alone is insufficient.
Environmentally effective in meeting the jurisdiction’s medium and long-term emissions reduction targets
Ultimately comparable to carbon prices in other countries
Predictable but adaptable to provide investment certainty but respond to changing scientific knowledge, international agreements, or unanticipated emissions reduction responses.

I haven’t read through the report in detail but what’s interesting is that they have applied the eight principles to current policies in Canada. The results? They concluded that BC’s current carbon tax system is the best policy in Canada; you can read the scorecard of policies in Canada here. Well we know there are a lot more work to do to get the carbon system right and operational (tax plus cap and trade), but it’s encouraging to see that BC is ahead in the game!

This is an article on Globe and Mail which includes interviews with Stephanie Cairns, director of carbon pricing for Sustainable Prosperity. Although the current report did not rate BC NDP party’s cap-and-trade system, she commented that:

“There’s very little detail in what they released… [but] our score card would rate this as the weakest policy in Canada.”

Ms. Cairns said the NDP plan, to axe the Liberal carbon tax and replace it with a cap-and-trade system, would apply to only about 32 per cent of emissions in the province.

She said a cap-and-trade system, without a tax, could be effective, but it would have to apply far more widely than the NDP has proposed.

“They need to address the other 68 per cent of emissions,” Ms. Cairns said.

And she said the NDP plan, to get rid of the tax and then develop the details of the cap-and-trade policy later, would be destabilizing to business.

I will report again after reading the eight principles in detail and share some thoughts. If you have read it, what are your thoughts??

LoLee Green

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