Article content continued

Trudeau got provincial approval, though, sort of. Manitoba and Saskatchewan won’t sign on, and B.C. Premier Christy Clark is once again doing her imitation of a generation of Quebec politicians, demanding special treatment in return for temporarily agreeing not to make a fuss. Not much was gained in the end, as the country is still covered by the same grab bag of reduction programs that were already there when Trudeau came along, and the global output of emissions won’t change noticeably even if all Canada’s targets are met. But now the Prime Minister can claim to have kept a major promise, and use it to approve some important energy projects in the face of the environmentalist community’s intransigence.

He will also have put a federal stamp of approval on the mammoth waste of money that exists in Canada’s patchwork of provincial plans. There are plenty of ways to raise money by taxing carbon, and just as many ways to fritter it away. B.C., to its credit, adopted the most straightforward approach: a tax of $30 per tonne that is returned to taxpayers via reductions in other taxes. Alberta chose a direct levy like B.C.’s, starting at $20 a tonne but rising to $30 by 2018, but leaves the money with the government to spend on a broad range of activities “to grow and diversify our economy,” as if politicians were good at that.

Ontario’s government, the country’s least popular, chose the worst of both worlds, proposing a cap-and-trade program that lacks predictable revenues while pledging to spend the money on ill-defined feel-good programs. The Ontario plan comes complete with exemptions for favoured industries and a target price that may be too low to be effective but high enough to be painful. Already under fire for a decade of spiralling debt and an array of costly and ineffective green programs, Ontario’s Liberals are perversely claiming the cost of the program will be so low that people will barely notice – an internal report suggested it would cost the average household just $13 a month – while simultaneously professingthat imposing a charge on carbon will inspire Ontarians to be more cautious. At the same time it is adding the carbon charge to hydro bills, the government of Kathleen Wynne is promising new subsidies to cool the anger generated by previous hikes to household power bills.