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OTTAWA — Environment Canada told Catherine McKenna early in her mandate as minister that a price on carbon would have to go as high as $300 per tonne in 2050 for Canada to meet its climate targets, a secret briefing document shows.

The document obtained by the National Post, signed off on by the department’s deputy minister, outlined carbon pricing options for the nascent Liberal government in November 2015. The Conservative party obtained the document with an access-to-information request.

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To achieve 30-per-cent reductions from 2005 emissions levels by 2030 — the target set by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and maintained by the Trudeau Liberals — a price of $100 per tonne would need to be in place by 2020.

Based on external modelling, the price would then have to go up to between $200 and $300 per tonne by 2050, government experts suggested.

The numbers are based on a carbon pricing plan beginning in 2015, and assume a carbon-tax-only policy, absent new regulations. Any delays in implementation, the briefing note says, “significantly increase required price.” The seven pages immediately following those numbers are redacted.