NEW YORK — Carbon pricing is working for Canada, and it could work just as well elsewhere if it didn’t get such a bad rap, Catherine McKenna, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, said Wednesday during an event hosted by the World Bank at Climate Week NYC. ”I think carbon pricing honestly, it has got a bad name,” she said, explaining that the method needs of a bit of a public relations campaign to stop people from thinking of it as a tax for the sake of a tax.
In Canada, the national and provincial governments have worked with industry, local governments, and indigenous peoples to make sure the nation’s carbon pricing path is well understood, according to McKenna. “I have to go and explain it to Canadians that have no idea,” she said. “When you say it’s pricing what you don’t want, pollution, and fostering what you do want, moving in a more sustainable direction, and using the markets to do that, I think people really start to get it more.”
The four largest provinces in Canada – British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec – all already have either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system in place. While the remaining six provinces are not entirely sold on the idea, McKenna said she believes they’ll come around: “Right now we’re having a, let me say a robust conversation in Canada. There are differences of views, but the good news is 80 percent of Canadians live in a jurisdiction [that has carbon pricing] so it’s just figuring out how do you get [to a national plan]. We have two different systems … I think we’re going to get there.”
McKenna said she is confident ultimately Canada will be able to develop a national plan; convince the remaining provinces that it’s a good, or at least acceptable, plan; and find a way to include the existing carbon tax and cap and trade systems. “We are just going to truck forward, and we will be announcing our pan-Canadian plan in the fall,” she said.
“It’s just actually communicating to, in my case to Canadians, that this actually makes sense. That it isn’t a tax for the sake of a tax. That this is actually going to position us properly, [for a nation plan],” she said.
