After years of zigging and zagging, Ontario is taking the first steps toward putting a price on carbon emissions.

Following the release of a climate change strategy discussion paper on Thursday Environment Minister Glen Murray told reporters his ministry will take the next several months to craft a carbon pricing policy.

Whether that will be a cap-and-trade system or a controversial carbon tax remains to be seen.

“When people . . . immediately think the conversation around carbon pricing is about higher costs, I would argue if you look around the world . . . you will see that it is actually driving higher productivity,” he told reporters.

“A failure to put a price on carbon actually leads us to some real difficulties,” he said referring to dramatic swings in weather conditions experienced across North America.

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Charles Sousa said the government wasn’t planning to include a carbon tax in the upcoming spring budget.

In the paper Murray stressed‎ the importance of tackling climate to reduce greenhouse gases attributed to global warming and told the news conference there is no “greater threat” to mankind than climate change.

“Our children will be the first to never know a normal climate‎,” he said after the discussion paper was released.

Ontario’s greenhouse gas emission targets are: 15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020‎, and then 80 per cent below 1990 level by 2050.

The Progressive Conservatives have made it clear they will vigorously oppose a carbon tax.

“Anywhere they have brought in carbon pricing in the world . . . the price of everything went up,” interim Tory leader Jim Wilson told reporters this week.

“It is another tax that is just going to hurt the economy and kill jobs.”

The Liberal government discussion paper will be posted on the Environmental Registry for 45 days while ‎meetings will be held across the province. Murray said it will take another six months of working with business, the environmental community and other experts to design a carbon pricing policy.

“If this is going to be a net economic benefit and it is not going to download costs onto Ontario families and businesses, it has to have a mechanism that is part of an overall government strategy that increases productivity, which means higher levels of investment in innovation technology,” he said.

Murray, however, has refused to say whether an Ontario carbon tax would be revenue neutral, which critics say is code for it amounting to little more than a tax grab.

The discussion paper also puts forward a cap-and-trade system as another way of putting a price on carbon. Ontario promised a cap-in-trade system in 2009 but nothing has come of it.

Under a cap-and-trade program, a limit on certain types of emissions or pollutions is set and companies are permitted to sell or trade the unused portion of their limits to other companies struggling to comply.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Quebec has a cap-and-trade system, while British Columbia has a carbon tax.

New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns said the Liberals have a track record “of making lots of announcements, then there is a lot of foot dragging and then a new round of announcements and consultations” and then nothing.

Read more about: