Open Letter on Carbon Pricing READ

Provincial Policy

Oct 31 2019

New Brunswick embraces carbon pricing; it should choose wisely

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Climate and Energy

Last week, in response to the results of the federal election, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced he would look at options for implementing a carbon price in his province. It’s a policy shift that embraces a core principle of the Pan-Canadian Framework: provinces creating their own, tailored approach to pricing carbon. A made-in-New-Brunswick approach […]

Oct 30 2019

Introducing TIER – Alberta’s new approach to pricing industrial GHG emissions

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Climate and Energy

Yesterday, the government of Alberta unveiled the details of its planned Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction Regulation (TIER for short). TIER will put a price on industrial GHG emissions in the province, replacing the previous government’s Carbon Competitiveness Incentive Regulation (CCIR). How does the policy design stack up?  In this blog, I review some of […]

Oct 24 2019

Optimizing Extended Producer Responsibility in Canada

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Livable Cities

Extended Producer Responsibility has big potential (see my last blog). But getting the details right is critical. If programs are designed well, EPR could radically improve how Canada recycles. Done poorly, it could make recycling more complicated and more costly, with few environmental benefits. Where do Canadian EPR programs stand? Here we look at the […]

Oct 23 2019

The Case for Extended Producer Responsibility in Canada

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Livable Cities

Recycling appears to be broken in Canada. In 2016, a dismal 9% of our plastic waste was recycled. More recently, recycling programs have struggled since China—the world’s biggest recycler—stopped buying unprocessed plastics, paper, and metals. Some local recycling programs have ground to a halt as a result, while other programs are stockpiling, burning, and landfilling […]

Jul 24 2019

Reducing environmental risks from mining in British Columbia

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Pollution

Next month marks the five-year anniversary of the Mount Polley mining disaster. On August 4th, 2014, a dam at the mine ruptured, releasing 24 million cubic metres of water and mine tailings into several lakes and rivers in British Columbia’s Interior. We have written before about how putting a price on the risk of mining […]

Jul 17 2019

The worst kind of climate policy is an uncertain one

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Climate and Energy

Smart policy can help Canada reach its GHG emission targets with minimal economic costs. But even if we use the most economically-efficient tools available, there’s a factor that can still increase costs: policy uncertainty. When the direction of future climate policy is unclear—or worse, when policy reversal is a significant risk—the costs of meeting Canada’s […]

© Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission