Canada won’t rule out imposing a national carbon price on provinces or territories that refuse to establish their own, Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna said in a weekend interview.
“Every jurisdiction needs to have a price on carbon, and the premiers have all recognized that a price on carbon is part of the solution” to climate change, McKenna told CBC’s The House on Saturday.
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After their meeting in Vancouver last Thursday, First Ministers agreed in principle to introduce a carbon pricing mechanism, but details will take shape over the next six months. “The fact that we’ve been talking about a price on carbon, I think, is a huge advance,” McKenna said. “But I think it’s important that we do this in a thoughtful way, you do need experts to weigh in.”
The six-month process will result in a shared federal-provincial-territorial emissions target, but McKenna put the accent on practical programming. “We need the actions first,” she told The House moderator Chris Hall. “I’ve said this and I keep on repeating it. You can put up a target, but if you don’t have actions to get there, there’s no point—and I want this to be an ambitious target.”
She repeated her previous assertions that the Harper government’s target of a 30% emissions reduction by 2030 “is a floor…not a ceiling.”
During the First Ministers’ meeting, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall put forward his province’s troubled attempt at carbon capture and storage as a carbon reduction initiative, CBC reports.
