Evidence of meeting #152 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was provinces.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
You indicated earlier that if nothing happens at the federal level, if nothing changes in the law, then the mandatory $50 a tonne tax will remain in place in perpetuity. Correct?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
That's correct.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
So that's the status quo we're projecting out of this bill. You're right, we can't predict the future. We're all better at predicting the past. All we can do when we pass a bill is just assume that it's the last bill that will be passed because we can't impose projections on bills that have not even been introduced. So if this is the final word and the federal government does impose a $50 a tonne carbon tax on provinces, and that stays in place until 2030, how much would we see carbon emissions reduced by the time that year comes?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
Again, it depends on where this bill applies. In theory, this bill may apply nowhere, or it could apply everywhere, or somewhere in-between.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
But we know that it will create a floor that the provinces will not be able to go under. They will have to impose a $50 a tonne tax, and that tax will have to stay in place as long as this bill exists. So how much would it reduce greenhouse gases by 2030?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
From that perspective, that this bill either directly reduces or has the indirect impact of causing a province to develop or maintain its own system, then the estimate remains 80 to 90 megatonnes, and that's no—
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
That's what a $50 price—
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
If that price remains, then that will be the approximate contribution. That is a very approximate contribution as we go further out into time because, as we go further out into time—again, coming back to the difficulty of predicting the future—technologies may change, individual household behaviours may change. If people improve energy efficiency, switch fuels—
Conservative
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
Okay.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
We have a 221-megatonne reduction required by 2030, of which this new carbon price, you say, will only give us 90 megatonnes in reduced greenhouse gases, so we have a gap of 130 megatonnes in the plan. The government says that it's going to achieve its Paris targets, but you've just laid out mathematically for us how this bill does not do that. It falls short. In fact, it doesn't even come halfway the distance we need to go. So, where do you find the other 131 megatonnes of reductions?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
The government recently issued its first report on the implementation of the pan-Canadian framework, and that report listed a number of additional measures that federal, provincial, and territorial governments are taking. Some of those are summarized very briefly in the impact report that we released last week—for example, the commitment of the government to develop a clean fuel standard that will reduce the carbon intensity of fuel in Canada with the stated goal of achieving 30 megatonnes of reductions by 2030.
We recently amended the coal-fired electricity generation regulations that were introduced by the previous government. We recently amended those to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation, and we projected that those would deliver about 16 megatonnes of reductions by 2030.
We recently passed methane regulations, which are projected to reduce emissions by 20 to 21 megatonnes, and there are other regulations that are in development or have been developed. Then there are also expected reductions from the financial contributions to support energy efficiency, energy switching, and improved grid connections—for example, to enable some of the eastern provinces to have greater reliance on the hydroelectricity that's being generated in Labrador.
So, there is a suite of things that are being undertaken. Some are fairly straightforward to quantify their impact, and some are projected to have reductions, but they are a little harder to be specific about because they are in the nature of creating incentives for behaviour and creating financial support for changed behaviour.
Again, the goal of this legislation is to change behaviour, reduce emissions—
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
—and make a contribution, but not be the sole contributor to attaining the target.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Presuming they all happen and they all reduce emissions as much as you say they will, the measures that you've just mentioned get us 156 megatonnes. You say that we need 221 megatonnes. Where do the remaining almost, let's say, over 60 megatonnes come from?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
The details of the plan and the breakdown of the expected contributions beyond the limited number that I just referred to are described in detail in the most recent publication that we submitted to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, the Seventh National Communication, which describes in detail all the measures.
I can commit to providing a copy of that report to this committee.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
That would be helpful.
Do those measures get us to 221 megatonnes?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
Those quantitatively calculated measures get us close, and then a suite of other measures are being undertaken to address the remaining amount, but on which the government has conservatively chosen not to provide specific numerical predictions.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Would one of those measures perhaps just be to purchase credits?
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment
At the moment, that is legally feasible under the United Nations framework convention and under the Paris agreement, but Canada has not made any commitment or any statement about its intention to do that.
The reason for that is twofold. First of all, the precise rules around what kinds of credits will be created and can be sold have not been clarified, and so before we embark on any kind of initiative of that kind, we would want to know that we are actually purchasing real reductions. Second, however, as the pan-Canadian framework made clear, all the governments that endorsed the pan-Canadian framework agreed that the starting point should be domestic reductions, and not purchasing international reductions.
Again, if your question is whether in theory that could happen, absolutely, in theory it could happen.
