Premier designate Doug’s Ford announcement that his cabinet’s first act will be to cancel Ontario’s cap and trade program will help business in the province, says Sault Ste. Marie Chamber of Commerce executive director Rory Ring.

“It will allow businesses to maintain their competition and help reduce the costs of their operations,” he said.

The move is even more critical now with the brewing U.S. trade issue, which could increase user costs, he said.

Ring said that at the very least, scrapping cap and trade will allow businesses to maintain existing profit margins.

“I made a promise to the people that we would take immediate action to scrap the cap and trade carbon tax and bring their gas prices down,” Ford said in a recent press release. “Today, I want to confirm that as a first step to lowering taxes in Ontario, the carbon tax’s days are numbered.”

Scrapping the program was something advocated by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and adapted by the Sault Ste. Marie branch.

Ring said the program results in $25 million exiting the Sault Ste. Marie economy as a result of the costs of power, natural gas and buying carbon credits, among other things.

In addition, the construction industry, such as concrete companies, is a heavy user of power, so scraping the program will help their end budget, Ring said.

“Lots of businesses have a base carbon footprint,” Ring said. “The analytics say that cap and trade is not an effective way to reduce the carbon footprint and the market will move companies to reducing the carbon footprint over time.”

The Ontario government’s own statistics suggest the cap and trade program impacts the average taxpayer by increasing gas costs about 4.3 cents per litre, diesel 5 cents per litre and natural gas bills about $5 per month.

Ford officially takes office on June 29.

He also plans to serve notice of Ontario’s intention to withdraw from a joint agreement with Quebec and California to participate in cap and trade markets. He’s directed officials not to participate in any further auctions for credits.

Ford has also indicated his government will challenge the federal government’s authority to arbitrarily impose a carbon tax on Ontario families.

“Eliminating the carbon tax and cap and trade is the right thing to do and is a key component in our plan to bring your gas prices down by 10 cents per litre,” Ford said in the release.

The chamber of commerce has advocated the province for more innovation funding to develop technology to reduce the carbon footprint.

Cap and trade aims to lower greenhouse gas emissions but putting caps on the amount of pollution companies in certain industries can emit. If they exceed those limits, they must buy allowances at quarterly auctions or from other companies that come in under their limits.

The cap declines about four per cent each year until 2020 – a move made to provide incentives to companies to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Ring said he hopes the new provincial government will also make other changes for which the chamber advocated, including reducing business regulations, ensuring businesses can stay competitive and reviewing the implementation of Bill 148, among others.



















