Article content continued

He said Ontario’s emissions targets were ambitious enough that, if the cap-and-trade program hadn’t been linked to California’s, the carbon price in Ontario would have been much higher than is required to meet the federal standard. “It was a deep cap requiring really deep emissions reductions,” he said. “They were relying on lots of imported permits from California and Quebec to meet that cap.”

Beugin said Canada should still look to international carbon markets to meet its own 2030 targets, even though Ontario’s system is now off the table and the federal climate-change plan doesn’t include plans for cap-and-trade.

“We need to crank up our policy to get where we have committed to going,” he said. “And international permit trade is and should be one of the tools that they’re looking at.”

Quebec’s cap-and-trade program is still linked to California’s, but it’s unclear how much that contributes to Canada’s overall emissions reduction estimates. Officials said they don’t have estimates broken down by province.

The new 50- to 60-megatonne estimate assumes that Alberta’s carbon tax will increase over time to align with the federal standard. But that may be a flawed assumption. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has said her province’s carbon price will not increase until Ottawa gets the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built, and opposition leader Jason Kenney has vowed to scrap the carbon tax altogether if he’s elected next spring.

The change suggests Canada is now even further from meeting its targets under the Paris Agreement, which would require emissions to fall to 517 megatonnes by 2030, down from 704 megatonnes in 2016. In a December 2017 submission to the United Nations, Canada estimated that its climate change plan, including carbon pricing, would reduce emissions to 583 megatonnes by 2030, which would still leave the country 66 megatonnes short of its target.

• Email: mforrest@postmedia.com | Twitter: MauraForrest