Tom Mulcair: Trudeau talks a good game on climate change, but falls short on results

In his column for CTVNews.ca, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks a good game when it comes to climate change, but his government has consistently failed to achieve the results Canada has promised.

Atlantic premiers have started to push back against the planned increase in the federal carbon tax that will hit their region particularly hard.  As the parliamentary budget officer (PBO) has pointed out, that tax will be costly to Canadian families. 

Trudeau, along with his environment and natural resources ministers, has been claiming that the rebates to families will compensate for the tax. The PBO has proven otherwise. 

There are different public policy tools that exist to try to deal with carbon pollution. 

The approach can be regulatory, with statutory limits and fines for non-compliant companies, for example. But that requires enforcement, an area where Canada has constantly fallen short.

It can also take the form of a cap-and-trade system that will actually guarantee a result. You impose a ceiling on overall emissions and gradually lower the ceiling. This compels polluters to either lower their emissions or be forced to purchase credits from other more successful operations. 

As for a carbon tax, yes, it could eventually reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) output by discouraging consumption of fossil fuels as they become more expensive. But what we are in fact seeing is that Canadian families who often live in large rural areas, with no public transit, are simply using an increasingly large part of their tight budgets to be able to still get around. 

That’s where the plea of the Atlantic premiers has to be heard. It’s too easy to dismiss them as rubes who don’t get it. They do.