The newly released details of the Trudeau government’s carbon-pricing policy are typical of its middle-way approach on environment.

The Liberals are set to deliver on their welcome promise of imposing on the provinces a floor price on carbon, but in an effort to make the medicine go down they have offered a number of concessions that undermine the policy’s promise.

Once again, their approach represents a significant improvement over their predecessors, while falling well short of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s stated ambition of making Canada a global leader on climate change.

Ottawa promised last November to introduce a minimum national price for carbon, starting this year at $10 per tonne and moving to $50 by 2022. Provinces that failed to meet or exceed that price, either through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system like the one in Ontario, would have it imposed on them. As we argued at the time, this was a modest measure, but an important, saleable start.

However, the draft proposal revealed this week errs on the side of modesty.

For one, the proposed price is based on intensity – that is, per unit of production – rather than absolute emissions. This sort of policy, now in place in Alberta, is much preferred by industry because it allows them to continue to increase overall emissions without being penalized as long as they emit efficiently. Environmentalists rightly point out that, given the challenge, a carbon price that does little to discourage a rise in overall emissions is just not good enough.

Moreover, the proposal seems to exempt electricity production, ignoring the significant environmental impact. And it troublingly grants a one-year reprieve to non-compliant provinces; though the floor price nominally takes effect this year, Ottawa won’t intervene to impose it until next year.

The government claims these measures are an attempt to preserve our international competitiveness. But given that 80 per cent of Canadians live in jurisdictions that already have a carbon price and therefore would not be significantly affected by the federal policy, the more likely explanation is intergovernmental peacekeeping.

Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have all missed the federal deadline for imposing a carbon price and Saskatchewan, at least, has threatened to fight the federal policy in court. Moreover, depending on the results of upcoming elections in Ontario and Alberta, those provinces may also be willing to pick a fight. The cautious design of the federal policy seems to be an attempt to keep as many provinces in the room as possible.

Trudeau has no doubt changed the conversation on the environment and taken important steps, including by wading into the mess of intergovernmental affairs. But his environmental plan, such as it is, does not seem to match his stated ambition.

The scaled-back carbon-pricing policy, like the government’s decision to delay important regulations on methane emissions, casts doubt on the prime minister’s commitment to meet even his modest target.

The Liberals have also approved several energy projects that are expected to significantly increase emissions in the coming years, neutralizing some of the promised gains.

There are no doubt compelling economic cases to be made for these decisions, but the government seems to pretend the tradeoffs away. Trudeau insists these projects are consistent with our climate targets, but his government refuses to provide a comprehensive accounting or keep any kind of balance sheet. So how can we or he know?

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Indeed, if Trudeau is truly serious about his targets, he ought to explain how it’s possible to meet them without a fundamental shift in Ottawa’s approach to resource development, especially since the experts say it’s not.

The government has promised to make Canada a global leader on climate. Yet its current policy, while a marked improvement over the recent past, will bring us nowhere near even our modest climate goals. Wherever you stand on the urgency of the problem or the trade-offs in question, Trudeau can’t have it both ways. Either we can’t afford to lead or we can’t afford not to.

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