OTTAWA—The federal Liberals are prepared to impose a carbon price on Ontario if Doug Ford makes good on his promise to scrap the province’s cap-and-trade system.

The potential for a climate change showdown between the federal government and Canada’s most populous province dominated Ottawa’s reaction to the Ontario election results Friday.

Ford was elected on a promise to scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, slash the price of gasoline for consumers, and fight the federal government’s carbon pricing plan at the Supreme Court.

During question period on Parliament Hill Friday, the Conservative opposition framed Ford’s victory as a repudiation of the federal Liberals’ plan to enforce carbon pricing across the country, beginning in 2019.

“The agenda of high taxes and big government, of carbon taxes on working people, has been rejected by Ontarians. Will the prime minister take that message?” said Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre.

Jonathan Wilkinson, a Vancouver MP and parliamentary secretary to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, accused Conservatives of neglecting established science and failing to have a plan to combat climate change.

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Outside the Commons, he told the Star the government wants to work with the incoming Ford administration on carbon pricing. But if Ford scraps Ontario’s existing system, as promised, Ottawa is prepared to impose one.

“We need to move forward, and the Government of Canada intends to move forward,” Wilkinson said.

In general, under a cap-and-trade system, companies are given a limit or cap that sets in place how much greenhouse gas they can each discharge. If a firm can reduce emissions below its limit it can sell the excess. Another firm that goes over its cap can buy this excess. Over time the cap is reduced to encourage an overall reduction in emissions.

Ford won a commanding majority government Thursday night, taking 76 out of 124 ridings across the province. The New Democrats will form the official opposition, with 40 seats, and after a decade and a half in power the Liberals were reduced to only seven — not enough for official party status at Queen’s Park. Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner won a historic victory for his party, winning Guelph to become the first Green MPP in Ontario.

Ford has promised to scrap Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, created in 2017 and linked with similar systems both in Quebec and California.

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The federal Liberals have mandated that all provinces put in place carbon pricing — either by taxing emissions or through cap-and-trade — by the end of 2018. Jurisdictions that don’t meet federal standards will have Ottawa’s system imposed on them.

But Ford has vowed to fight the federal government to the Supreme Court, arguing Ottawa does not have jurisdiction to put such a system in place. If he does, Canada’s most populous province will join Saskatchewan in legal opposition to the Liberals’ carbon pricing plan — with Alberta potentially to follow, should Jason Kenney be elected.

“Saskatchewan has a new ally in our fight against the Trudeau carbon tax,” Moe wrote on Twitter Thursday night.

Ford’s election will probably cause Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a few headaches, said Shachi Kurl, the executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. But from a purely political point of view, Kurl said, Ford’s administration could actually be a boon for Trudeau and the Liberals.

“(Ford’s victory and the Ontario Liberals’ collapse) takes away the antipathy that Ontarians had been feeling towards the Liberal brand in general, it takes the target off their back,” Kurl said in an interview Friday.

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“And indeed it gives (the Liberals) … a rallying point to say, OK we’ve taken this massive punch on the chin. Now we have a chance to regroup, rebound, catch our breath and sort of fight the good fight in the next round at the federal level.”

Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, reads Thursday’s results a little more pessimistically for the federal Liberals. He believes Ontarians voted not so much for Ford and the Progressive Conservatives, but more as a reaction to and a repudiation of a leftward leaning Liberal party.

“I think that Mr. Ford is really more a symptom than a cause. And it will be interesting to see if the prime minister gets that,” Bricker said.

“When you take a look at the primary reasons people voted for Doug Ford, one of them wasn’t Doug Ford. It was really just a feeling that what had happened in the province of Ontario was that it had gone in a direction, through its government, that people particularly living in the suburbs of the province felt was not really in touch with their lives.”

“The problem for Prime Minister Trudeau is yes, he’s obviously going to have someone (in Ford) that’s less friendly than Kathleen Wynne to deal with, but also the fact that Doug Ford got elected on a mandate … contrary to what the prime minister sees as his mandate from the people of Ontario,” Bricker said.

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