Patrick Brown is Ontario’s premier-in-waiting but also a politician in a hurry.

Not so fast. Haste can make for environmental waste.

With an election 14 months away, and a runaway lead in the polls, Brown keeps running away from serious positions on climate change. And then digging himself in deeper.

Time for an environmental assessment of the Progressive Conservative chief who aspires to be premier.

Campaigning for the PC leadership, Brown pretended global warming could wait. He told Tories what they wanted to hear — downplaying the planetary risks of greenhouse gas emissions to our children while playing up the personal perils of sex education in our schools.

Once safely ensconced as leader, Brown suddenly changed his mind on climate change. Ignoring promises to consult the grassroots, he mowed their lawn by declaring that carbon pricing couldn’t be avoided.

Brown wouldn’t be the first politician to tack one way and then another, bending with the political winds to win a race. Timing counts — which is precisely why his more recent manoeuvres are so troubling.

On March 22, Ontario held its first scheduled auction under a new “cap and trade” program to lower harmful emissions across the continent. The stakes are high, setting the stage for billions of dollars in future revenues under the “polluter pay” principle, bankrolling transit and other energy conservation initiatives down the road.

Brown’s response? On the eve of the auction, he promised to cancel the plan if he becomes premier:

“Yes, I would dismantle cap-and-trade — I would withdraw Ontario from the Western Climate Initiative,” he told stunned reporters.

The WCI is a complicated plan, with its own strengths and weaknesses, about which more later. I’ve never loved cap and trade, but grudgingly recognize that it’s probably the lesser of various evils (or virtues) in pricing and deterring carbon.

But even if I opposed it, I can’t imagine sabotaging it just hours away from an auction, scaring off private corporations that would otherwise put money into public coffers. Or prompting them to pay less.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner also dislikes cap and trade, but was nevertheless dumbfounded by such a dumb declaration by a premier-in-waiting. Despite his preference for another form of carbon pricing (dubbed fee and dividend), Schreiner says Brown’s behaviour proved both reckless and feckless.

“I would never say that I’d cancel a program the day before an auction takes place,” he told me. “That’s just an irresponsible interference in a market.”

The NDP’s Andrea Horwath (who supports the concept, but questions the Liberal government’s ability to execute) also condemned Brown’s awkward timing.

“He wasn’t thinking about any implications that it might have created around the success of the auction, and so that’s worrisome,” she said in an interview. “If it was part of his thought process, then . . . it’s also worrisome because obviously it would mean he’s attempting to have an impact on the success of that auction.”

We won’t know the results of the first auction until next week. Auction receipts in California and Quebec go up and down, as markets are wont to do, so it’s hard to say what impact Brown’s comments had, if any.

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For his part, the PC leader says he now favours a B.C.-style carbon tax with a wrinkle: Brown would tack on other tax cuts so that taxpayers come out ahead, but has offered few details.

The Liberal government opted against a carbon tax for three reasons: it hobbles trade-sensitive companies competing against cross-border rivals in the U.S. who remain untaxed; it doesn’t actually lower emissions if polluters opt to keep paying; and, candidly, it can be unpopular with voters because it’s so visible.

Instead Queen’s Park opted to join Quebec, California, and other jurisdictions in a continental plan to reduce overall emissions (cap and trade), which has three key advantages: trade-sensitive companies can get exemptions; it lowers overall emissions (the “cap”) annually; and it’s largely invisible to voters, which lowers the political temperature while easing global warming.

Back in 2015, Brown told me: “It would not be my plan to bring in a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax.”

But when pressed, he added: “I’m not ruling out cap-and-trade forever.”

Now, it’s never. Perhaps Brown spoke out this month because he’s still feeling the heat from his Tory base on global warming. But why should the rest of the province pay a price for internal party politics?

No plan is perfect, least of all cap and trade. But even those who don’t love it crave the certainty of it, notably the business sector. Polluters want to know what price they will pay so that they plan investments in abatement measures that reduce overall costs.

There’s nothing wrong with the opposition opposing — but sabotaging goes too far. Just ask Brown’s co-oppositionists in the NDP and the Green Party.

It’s no way to run an auction. And it’s the wrong way to show you’re ready to govern.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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