Mark Francis answers your questions on Green Shift.

I would like to respond to the statement above: “And if high emission areas failed to do anything, in order to make the needed reductions, the other regions would have to work even harder, in effect subsidizing the high emission regions. This is why a national system is needed, not a regional one.”

If that is true, and it seems to be, isn’t the idea that Canada’s efforts to curb GHGs can make a measurable difference on worldwide climate change fall apart. China is building coal-fired power plants at the rate of one per week. What is Canada reducing our 2% of worldwide GHGs by 1/3 (our Kyoto target) going to do except handicap our economy against other nations. Shouldn’t we be actively pressuring China, India, Brazil to get involved so we can work together?

@marcel -

Not to mention that the idea of going green hampering our economy is a myth that is increasingly falling apart as more evidence rolls in from those companies and countries that have.

Going green is nothing other than reducing waste. Reducing waste will always be more profitable in the long term, it can just be difficult to do and expensive in the short term. But what was that quote? “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

That aside, sooner or later we will have to wean ourselves from cheap energy anyway. Our only choice is the rate at which we do it. We can do it now, while we have some control over how fast we have to do it, or we can wait .. until we don’t.

Oh, and at everyone talking about how we no longer have cheap energy, don’t confuse cheap energy with cheap oil.

Coal is still incredibly cheap! So is hydro!

Reducing emissions can take man different forms. In Alberta, replacing electric stoves, ovens, and clothes dryers with natural gas ones would reduce emissions. In Ontario and Quebec the opposite would be true.

The carbon tax prices will get passed along to consumers. Even with energy producers subject to regulations keeping prices down, the tax will get passed on at least in part as the regulators will adjust to accommodate the tax. I hope that they don’t pass along the entire tax, but that may happen.

So, it’s likely not appropriate for corporations to have their costs completely offset. Indeed, further upstream they are to the consumer, or, to put it another way, the closer they are to the raw inputs which produce CO2, the more control they have to reduce the effect of tax on their corporate body. For example, a power utility can decide to change their power mix and move away from coal, thus reducing carbon taxation. Consumers don’t have such choices. They can merely struggle to try to reduce a needed commodity: electricity.

Though the nuke plants in Ontario saved us a lot of emissions, we are still paying for them. There’s a deduction paying for them on every hydro bill. It’s old Ontario Hydro’s stranded debt.

[Note: that was a TAX introduced by the Mike Harris PCs, but I digress...]

And now, we are going to build more. I’ll take nuclear over coal, of course.

The corporate tax cut which is part of the tax shift will be, adjusted for population, disproportionately going to Alberta, at a ration of 2:1 compared to the runner up, which is Ontario.

Harper’s carbon trading will also price carbon emissions by commodifying it. Regions with high emissions will end up purchasing carbon offsets from regions with lower emissions.

We know that Alberta is the region with high emissions. Can anyone name a region with low emissions, that is large enough to sell enough offsets to Alberta?

Any guesses?

Time’s up!

The answer: Quebec!

Harper is pushing a plan which will ‘transfer wealth’ from Alberta to Quebec.

Perhaps Harper is hoping that Alberta won’t notice, but that Quebec, with all those votes Harper relishes, will ‘Je me souviens.’

Mark: Let’s note that the intensity-based nature of the Cons’ plan makes that AB-to-QC shift far less certain than it might be otherwise. Indeed, if the oil sands operators are able to develop carbon capture on a large scale, then they’ll be able to boost their own production (and potentially total emissions as well) while simultaneously being handed emissions credits to further inflate their profits at the expense of manufacturing and other industries which can’t reduce emissions as easily.

Not that that should be seen as a feature rather than yet another serious bug. But the best response to the Cons’ indiscriminate shrieks of “NEP!” is to point out that their policies are designed to further overheat Alberta at the expense of the rest of the country rather than offering any balance between regional interests - not to allow Harper to claim he’s helping other regions at Alberta’s expense.

Remember, this plan isn’t set in stone, I wouldn’t be surprised that we end up with a system such as this:

if a province sets up a carbon tax that is as comprehensive, they can keep the tax revenue and return it in tax breaks as they see fit, in exchange the federal government would eliminate the tax breaks and supplements funded by the tax.

Since two provinces already have carbon taxes of some kind, I wouldn’t be surprised if while we end up with the same tax nation wide, that the shift is targeted differently in each province.