Alberta's carbon tax on heavy emitters could be next bargaining chip in heated battle with Trudeau – National Post

Nov 15, 2019

A recent article in the National Post looks at Alberta’s proposed changes to the province’s carbon tax on industrial firms, which is currently under review by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna. According to the article, if “Ottawa determines that the proposal falls short of its environmental thresholds it could enforce its own regulatory regime in the province, similar to the highly controversial consumption-based carbon tax that will come into force there in January 2020.”

Author Jesse Snyder reports that, in late October, Alberta Environment Minister Jason Nixon released a proposal for heavy emitters, the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction system or TIER, which included keeping the carbon tax at $30 per tonne, a level set by the former NDP government — but did not commit to raising the price to $50 per tonne by 2022, as laid out by Ottawa. The article states that the “proposal would also revert back to a system in which the emissions profile of a facility is compared against its own past performance, rather than against an industry-wide average” and that observers say this change will give relief to the most emissions-intensive sources.

“This is all about incentives and in terms of establishing strong financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions, the new TIER regime is likely to be less effective,” Osler associate Jessica Kennedy, a regulatory expert in the firm’s Regulatory, Environmental, Aboriginal and Land Group, tells the National Post.

For more information, read Jesse Snyder’s full article “Alberta's carbon tax on heavy emitters could be next bargaining chip in heated battle with Trudeau” online at the National Post.