Trudeau takes carbon pricing debate to the global stage at COP26
GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
will push the world to negotiate a minimum price on pollution at the COP26
climate talks in Glasgow today.
Trudeau will start his second and final day at the annual
climate negotiations by co-hosting a carbon pricing event where he will
showcase Canada's carbon price as one of the most ambitious in the world.
He started the first day with a speech calling on the rest
of the world to follow Canada's lead and negotiate a global minimum carbon
price.
He compares the idea to the 15-per-cent minimum corporate
tax more than 130 countries have now signed on to implement in a bid to stop
big multinational corporations from avoiding taxes by funneling their profits
through low-tax countries.
Carbon pricing has been a political minefield in Canada,
with opposing conservative provincial premiers taking the fight against one all
the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the program.
The Conservative Party nationally, long an opponent of the
policy as a "tax on everything," is now itself engaged in an internal
debate about the merits.
Leader Erin O'Toole promised to implement a version of a
carbon price in the recent election with a rewards-card like system.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Monday that he
thinks this COP meeting could be the one which sparks the start of a real
negotiation toward a global price on carbon.
He said there is a level of interest in the idea that he has
never seen before.
"So is it a done deal?" he asked. "Absolutely
not. Could Glasgow be the moment that we actually start working on developing
something like that? I think it has the potential to do that."
Canada's carbon price started in 2019 at $20 a tonne and is set
to rise to $170 a tonne by 2030. The current price of $40 a tonne adds about
8.8 cents a litre to gasoline, or about $3.50 more every time you fill you car
with 40 litres of gasoline.
But rebate cheques are included with tax returns to make the
program revenue neutral. The idea is that a carbon price shouldn't leave
families with less money, but provide an incentive to find ways to cut down on
fossil fuel use by making it cost more.
It also applies to natural gas, propane, jet fuel, and any
other liquid fuel, based on the weight of greenhouse gas emissions produced
when that fuel is burned.
Canada's national price only applies in provinces which
don't have an equivalent provincial policy in place -- Alberta, Saskatchewan,
Ontario and New Brunswick.
A separate policy for big industrial emitters uses the same
price but is only charged on a portion of total emissions produced, rather than
on the fuels those emitters buy to operate their machinery.
The Citizens Climate Lobby says there 64 carbon pricing
policies in place around the world, including a direct price on carbon
emissions, and cap-and-trade type systems.
More than two dozen are national policies, and the rest are
subnational including state or provincial governments in the U.S. and Canada,
and cities like Tokyo.
The United States and Australia are the only two fully
developed economies without some form of carbon pricing.
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