UPDATE ON THE CANADIAN LANDSCAPE -CLIMATE CHANGE

摘要

The change in federal government last fall from Steven Harper's Conservative Government to Justin Trudeau's Liberal Government appears to make the outlook for regulation of climate change in Canada more optimistic. Mr Trudeau, the new Canadian Prime Minister, made commitments at the Paris COP 21 "to establish a "Pan-Canadian framework for combatting climate change", that accommodates different provincial strategies and that "set a truly national target that the federal government and the provinces can work together to achieve" and "ensure that the provinces and territories have targeted federal funding and the flexibility to design their own carbon pricing policies". The current federal government proposal is a minimum price on carbon of at least $15 a tonne either through a federal legislation or provincial carbon tax or cap and trade plan. On 3 March 2015, Prime Minister Trudeau and the provincial and territorial premiers announced, after a First Ministers' meeting on climate change and the environment, that they were working toward a national climate change plan that included a carbon trading mechanism. No specifics of how it would work were provided. A working group has been struck to determine which of the mechanisms would be most effective and appropriate for each of the jurisdictions.