Seven years after Ontario said it would participate in a carbon pricing system with Quebec, British Columbia, and California, Premier Kathleen Wynne says Canada’s largest province is ready to make good on the pledge.
“We need to now make that real in whatever form it takes,” she said earlier this week. “The mechanisms are going to be released in the spring. We are going to move very quickly.”
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Wynne did not indicate whether Ontario would opt for a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, the Globe and Mail reports. But either way, the Premier said, “it will focus on the balance between economic growth and the need to address our very real climate change problem.”
The carbon pricing system will be one part of a government-wide climate strategy now under development by Environment and Climate Change Minister Glen Murray. Ontario has already cut its greenhouse gas emissions 6% below 1990 levels by eliminating coal-fired electricity generation, “but it must do more if it hopes to reach its goal of a 15% reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050,” Morrow writes.
