Mr. Speaker, earlier in my comments I mentioned that it is really up to the provinces and their home jurisdictions to determine what they are going to do with the revenue they generate from their price on carbon. When the federal government implements the plan, it is going to return the money to the provinces. The provinces may very well determine that they are going to pay that money back to their constituents. They may determine that they are going to use that money for other initiatives, or they may determine that they are going to invest it in other clean energy jobs that grow the economy.
From the perspective of the federal framework at this stage, it is impossible to know precisely what the net end-to-end economic cost or benefit is going to be. We do not know precisely what the provinces are going to do with that money, and we need to take the benefits into account.
As I mentioned at the end of my remarks, over time, through an iterative approach, we will get an opportunity to see how this is playing out. We will see the quantum of reduction in emissions we get per dollar of tax, or per dollar of price on carbon, and then how consumers are behaving. Best practices will develop from that.
Logically, I would expect that provinces that determine to pay back that money will see a double benefit. Not only will people be paying the tax if they use too much carbon and create too much pollution; they will, on the back end, actually receive money back and realize a better net benefit. There is a double whammy there. They will get a double benefit if the money is returned to their pockets through some other type of tax reduction initiative.