This is no delayed April Fools joke — today a group of classical economists came out with a report saying it’s time for Canada’s provinces to put a price on carbon pollution, and if we do, our own pocketbooks will thank us.
The report, The Way Forward: A Practical Approach to Reducing Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions, shows that Canada’s economy will be stronger by the year 2020 if all provinces put a price on carbon pollution.
It comes from Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, a group of mainstream economists and banker-types who’ve been charged with crafting policies that will help federal and provincial governments create good jobs, build thriving economies, and ensure we’ve got a healthy planet to sustain it all.
Members of the commission include men and women who’ve held or currently hold titles such as special advisor to the governor of the Bank of Canada, senior vice president and chief economists at TD Bank and the Conference Board of Canada, deputy finance ministers in provincial and federal governments, and they’re overseen by an advisory board comprised of high-profile folks such as Jean Charest, Paul Martin, and Preston Manning.
There’s a very broad and diverse pool of knowledge in that group, but their main message to the leaders of today is for them to be just that: the leaders of today’s energy needs, not yesterday’s.
That’s a message we can fully get behind, and recent polling shows it’s what the majority of Canadians want from our leaders, too.
The authors of the report are encouraging today’s premiers and federal politicians to have the courage to take the responsible, practical measures we need to curb climate change and create thriving 21st century economies.
How do we do that in a responsible, cost-effective way? Their report says the answer is a carbon pricing system, led by the provinces, which could end up being revenue-neutral (AKA taxpayers have the same balance in their bank account as they’d have if a carbon pollution price weren’t in place), along with ramped-up programs that help reduce carbon pollution over time, like expanded renewable energy initiatives, improved home insulation and heating, and others.
Another big kicker from the report: It’s time for the provinces to own this issue. Its authors say we can’t wait any longer on the federal government to act. Rest assured, the feds have a role to play (namely by establishing legally-binding targets for provinces to meet) but the report states that today we need our premiers to recognize their moral responsibility, legal authority, and economic duty to get the ball rolling on carbon pricing across Canada.