By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen, June 28, 2018
Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath wants to know what it’s going to cost to scrap the province’s cap-and-trade plan, and she has asked the Financial Accountability Office to find out. It’s a good question, but Horwath won’t like the answer. Getting rid of cap and trade is going to save Ontarians billions of dollars, even if the new PC government has to fully compensate corporations for future emissions permits that will become worthless once cap and trade is gone.
Horwath compares the cost of getting out of cap and trade to the $1 billion hit Ontarians took when former premier Dalton McGuinty decided to relocate a couple of gas plants just prior to the 2011 election. She is partly right. Both are big bills we have to pay due to poor Liberal policy decisions.
Both the costs and the benefits of Ontario’s version of cap and trade are well known, and it’s not a happy equation. The bottom line is fairly large cost, fairly small environmental benefit.
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/randall-denley-doug-ford-makes-the-right-call-in-ditching-ontarios-cap-and-trade-system/wcm/0324af11-d3c5-44cd-a2a7-22149d1149db?video_autoplay=true