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I say latest federal plan, because the last 20-odd years of utter failure, as Canada blew through a series of similar commitments to reduce its emissions — Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen — have not been for lack of federal plans. We’ve had federal plans coming out our ears: the National Action Plan on Climate Change (1995), Action Plan 2000 (2000), Achieving Our Commitments Together (2002), Project Green (2005), Turning the Corner (2007), Climate Change Action Plan (2010). None of them made a lick of difference.

By contrast, the federal government now projects emissions will fall by 90 MT versus baseline projections by 2022, leaving us only 90 MT off the pace required to hit our 2030 target. That’s actually further off than we were projected to be a year ago, but never mind: at least now there is some movement in the direction of our target. Or at least there is projected to be.

The difference: this plan, unlike previous plans, includes carbon pricing, whether the tradeable emissions credits Ontario and Quebec have put in place, or the carbon taxes preferred by British Columbia and Alberta, building into every transaction a permanent and growing incentive for consumers and businesses to reduce their emissions, by whatever means occur to them.

If we are still projected to fall short of our target, even with carbon pricing, it is because the price has been set so low to start, rising only gradually, from $10 per tonne in 2018 to $50 in 2022. To achieve the targeted reduction in emissions, economists estimate, would require a price of at least $100.

Whether that is achievable, and at what cost, economically and politically, will depend on how it is implemented.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer caused a stir last week by estimating the impact of a $50 carbon tax, in terms of lost output, at about one-half of one per cent of GDP by 2022. But that was based on the assumption that governments would return the revenues to the public as a simple lump-sum payment, rather than the reductions in corporate and personal income tax rates economists recommend. (Lump-sum payments have no effect on incentives to work, save and invest; tax cuts do.) Were the latter route taken, the PBO reckons the economic impact would be negligible.

So if Scheer has a better plan — a plan to get us all the way to our Paris target, while pricing carbon at zero — it will be fascinating to see what it is. At a minimum, one supposes current carbon carbon pricing schemes, federal and provincial, would be dismantled, with all the costs that would entail, not least to businesses that had made investments in the expectation they would continue.

What would replace them? Either Scheer has some completely new approach in mind, never before imagined, or he favours the sorts of schemes, federal and provincial, that were tried before carbon pricing (most of which remain in place): a mix of regulatory edicts to industry — reduce emissions! or else! — and subsidies to conservation and green energy programs.