Today, Canada 2020 will host a public panel event in Ottawa on carbon pricing. It is called ‘How to sell carbon pricing to Canadians’ and we planned it last fall. As it turns out, our timing could not have been better. In the wake of Alberta Minister McQueen’s statement on a possible 40/40 carbon emissions reduction plan for that province, new energy has been injected into the climate debate in this country.
We hope that the conversation is constructive, open, and reasonable: all things currently missing from our dialogue on carbon and climate in Canada. Our intention is to capture and reinforce that energy and enthusiasm to help build towards actual solutions.
Our goal in convening the panel is to open a dialogue that is respectful of all positions, so that we can begin to take steps towards identifying shared interest in the climate debate. This, in turn, could provide the basis for actions that will make the necessary cuts in our emissions.
A good first step would be to support our governments in finding ways to meet our Copenhagen commitments. But we can and should strive for more. Blame for inaction lies at the feet of all federal parties: quite simply, now is the time to move on.
Countries that have progressed in this area in recent years – such as Ireland and Australia – have benefited from a societal consensus that has transcended short-term political thinking. What is preventing Canada from following their lead?
Above and beyond the Alberta climate proposal, there are some indications that now might be the right time for action. A recent report by Sustainable Prosperity has detailed how companies across Canada, including in the oil and gas sector, are making use of shadow carbon pricing in their day to day operations – planning for a day when carbon pricing is introduced. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives has a standing call for a nationally consistent carbon price, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has apparently responded to the Alberta 40/40 proposal with a 20/20 proposal of its own, tacitly acknowledging that more needs to be done.
A more active dialogue is developing around Canada’s future as a large-scale energy exporter – with much of the open, constructive debate happening beyond our borders and not at home where it is most needed. President Barack Obama’s forthright statements on climate change – even if they are not yet matched by action – seem to be leading people to question why our government is avoiding engaging the Canadian public on these issues.
It is worth noting that upon advertising our event, it sold out in a few short hours. Over 450 people are signed up to be part of the conversation. They hail from all walks of professional life: the business community, the NGO sector, academics and public servants. The public is clearly ready.
If any country has the incentive to make progress, Canada does. The Arctic is warming at twice the global average rate. And if any country has the information available to inform that debate, Canada does. The province of British Columbia has had a ‘pure’ carbon tax in place since 2009. This is a revenue-neutral tax: all proceeds are returned in the form of business and personal tax cuts. It has not destroyed the economy as many predicted. In fact some businesses have benefitted significantly: the wood pellet and carbon-neutral bio fuel opportunities may have provided a lifeline to the forest industry. And carbon emissions and fossil fuel usage have gone down absolutely and relative to the Canadian average.
Meanwhile Alberta has a hybrid system of intensity reduction targets coupled with penalties (paid to a green technology fund) for failure to achieve these. Companies also have the opportunity to purchase offsets from others that are meeting their targets. And as of January 1 2013 Quebec also has a cap and trade system in place that links the province with California. With such a wealth of experience, Canada should be teaching courses on carbon pricing, not hiding in the back room.
Through our session on April 17 we are aiming to understand a number of the key dynamics at play in our carbon debate: how is carbon pricing best linked in people’s minds to beneficial economic outcomes? Can intergenerational responsibility (i.e. the fact that people care what happens to their children and grandchildren) translate into climate action? And can we build political momentum across party lines to use all policy tools available to meet our international commitments?
But most of all, our goal is to reignite a positive debate on carbon pricing and, in so doing, begin building towards a plan with which the majority of Canadians identify – and of which they can be proud.
Month: April 2013
Margaret Thatcher, Kathleen Wynne, Alison Redford and the politics of conviction
This week saw the passing of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, one of the most influential politicians of the 20th century and probably the greatest female political leader of modern times. It is a truism that Thatcher led a revolution in the U.K. and beyond, one of the hallmarks of which was the notion that cutting taxes should be a central goal of modern government. Thatcherism, as it came to be called, in conjunction with Reaganism, its brother doctrine in the U.S., held that tax cuts were the cure to most of the economic and social ills that afflicted western democracies in the 1970s and 1980s.
The tax-cutting ideology espoused by Thatcher and Ronald Reagan reverberated far and wide, transforming the political right in some countries, but also having an impact on more moderate, centrist governments. The Chrétien Liberals, we should recall, boasted 13 years ago about bringing in the largest tax cut in Canadian history. This set a trajectory for federal tax reductions of various kinds that continued under both prime ministers Martin and Harper, the latter of whom took this ethos to absurd extremes when he suggested all taxes are bad.
At the federal level in Canada, for 15 years and spanning three different governments, the only acceptable direction for taxes has been down. Any politician who hints at the notion of a federal tax increase faced pillory if not political destruction. The ideological groundwork laid by Thatcher in the 1980s had a big influence on this world view taking root in Canada.
The worm, however, seems to be turning in this country on tax policy, at least at the provincial government level. And it is turning due to the ascent of two new women politicians on the Canadian scene — Premier Alison Redford of Alberta and Kathleen Wynne of Ontario. Together, these premiers may be on the cusp of sparking a minirevolution of their own on the issue of taxes. Both are courageously suggesting that perhaps some taxes will have to be increased. In so doing they are challenging a received wisdom that has gripped this country for two decades.
Wynne is basing her government’s entire agenda on the idea that Ontarians are going to have to pay more in taxes or other charges in order to generate the revenue needed to fix the chronic public transit issues that have afflicted the province — especially the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area — for a generation and that undermine both quality of life and economic productivity. It is a breathtakingly sensible idea that runs headlong into the anti-tax red meat Ontarians have been fed for many years, stuffed down their throats today by both Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
For her part, Redford’s government has committed heresy in Alberta by suggesting that her province’s minimalist carbon tax might have to be more than doubled to have the desired effect on oilsands emission reductions. That Redford has even raised this issue in a province with the most anti-tax political culture in Canada, that prospers or slumps on the fortunes of the oil industry, borders on the heroic.
The nascent tax reform agendas emerging under the Wynne and Redford governments are potentially revolutionary in their longer-term implications if they succeed in sparking a conversation among Canadians about the appropriate role, levels and uses of taxes, and in the process recast two decades of anti-tax political discourse. Wynne and Redford might in fact be putting the first nail in the coffin of the conventional view that any talk of tax increases is political suicide in this country.
Margaret Thatcher famously described herself as a conviction politician, one who would not be dictated to by public or elite opinion. While Kathleen Wynne and Alison Redford — Liberal and Progressive Conservative respectively — reject Thatcherite policy ideology, they too appear to be conviction politicians in their own right. Both women seem to genuinely believe that the specific tax increases they are suggesting are good public policy choices that are needed to improve the quality of life, economic prosperity and environmental sustainability of their provinces, even if they might prove to be less than popular among citizens.
It is worth remembering that the last major act of Thatcher’s government was the introduction of the “community charge,” known euphemistically as the “poll tax,” one of the most controversial policies of her time in office. As premiers Wynne and Redford embark upon their own tax reform agendas they can take some comfort from the fact that even Maggie Thatcher — the inventor of conviction politics and one of the leading proponents of tax cuts during her era — believed in some tax increases.
Announcing the winner of Canada 2020 & uOttawa’s Student Prize Essay contest
In November 2012, Canada 2020’s leadership met with the faculty and staff of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) with the goal of engaging their students in our marquee project The Canada We Want in 2020. We created a prize essay contest, with gracious financial support from the administration of GSPIA, where students were asked to write a short paper on a policy challenge facing the federal government, and what a progressive policy solution would look like.
This is the winning submission, entitled ‘Re-evaluating the Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefit and its Return-to-Work Incentives’
In her paper, second-year student Nicole Agbayani picks up on a number of different strands Canada 2020’s work – from reducing income disparities and polarization, to increasing productivity, as well as our more recent foray into skills training and development.
At present, those who are injured or disabled are at the tail end of an extreme income polarization in this country. What caught our attention, though, was her assertion that in order to remedy this, governments should construct policy not around disability – but rather, ability. It’s a simple idea, but one that – if enacted properly – would be transformative.
Download her paper here.
Canada 2020 would like to thank Nicole Agbayani for her hard work and thoughtful submission to the contest. We would also like to thank the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) for their support of this initiative. In particular, we would like to thank David Zussman, the School’s Director, and Miles Corak, Professor of Economics, for their support and promotion of the contest and our work. Lastly, we would like to thank all of the students who submitted work to the contest.
Questions and comments can be directed to [email protected].
Why would Canadians buy carbon pricing?
Author: Diana Carney
Release Date: April 10, 2013
Pages: 19
This paper provides background for our panel, How to sell carbon pricing to Canadians, that will take place in Ottawa on April 17, 2013. We decided to host this panel, and work in this area, because of our concern over the disintegration of constructive debate about carbon management at a national level in Canada. The current deadlock is not good for our country, our democracy or for our planet.
The purpose of the panel is to open a dialogue that is respectful of all positions, so that we can begin to take steps towards improving the long-term future for all. The paper here serves as a summary of background information on where we are, how we got here, and some options and factors that will influence decisions going forward.
A first step is to reignite enthusiasm for this topic through identifying a refreshed mode of discussion. We can then begin to define a constructive and positive course of action that is based on a common Canadian sense of purpose that enables us truly to lead in this area.
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