When the government developed its commitment to pan-Canadian carbon pollution pricing in late 2016, three jurisdictions already had carbon pricing and Ontario had already announced its intention to join the Quebec-California cap-and-trade system, so we had the four provinces with the bulk of Canadian population already implementing or committed to carbon pricing.
The government decided not to impose a single carbon pricing system on Canada that would have required replacing the four existing systems, and instead decided to move in a stepwise fashion, where the first step was to articulate a commitment to ensure that there was a reasonably consistent approach to carbon pricing across Canada that respected two things: first, the existing systems, and second, the flexibility and jurisdiction of the remaining provinces and territories to develop their own systems, provided those systems aligned with a core set of criteria. In that way, the government's goal was to ensure that carbon pricing applied throughout Canada so that a price signal was sent to a broad range of activities, to ensure coherence and as much efficiency as possible, and to send a signal to other countries and businesses planning to invest in Canada that Canada was committed to carbon pricing.
The final element was a commitment to the system that is codified in this bill, which is a federal system that could be used in jurisdictions that choose not to develop a system that aligns. The government has elected to implement carbon pricing throughout Canada but in a way that allows jurisdictions both the flexibility to design their own system and, even if they choose the federal system or have it imposed on them, the flexibility to use the carbon pricing revenue as they see fit.
Given all of those policy choices, then, we come to the difficult question of what the precise impact will be on a household in a given jurisdiction. The simple answer is “It depends”, and it depends on a number of factors, some of which are articulated in that broad framework document that we published in late 2016, and some of which are articulated in the details of the backstop legislation, but some of which have not yet been decided and will not be decided until the end of this year. Ministers McKenna and Morneau have asked provincial and territorial premiers to submit information about their systems and their plans by September 1 of this year, so it won't be until then that we have all the details in place.