Finance committee  No, the Ecofiscal Commission hasn't done that cost estimate yet, but there are a number of estimates out there. The most high-profile one was done by Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank. His estimate was that the cost of inaction on climate change woul

Finance committee  You're right, but their profits are in the middle of that equation, so they are pretty concerned.

Finance committee  Yes. I'm really concerned about competitiveness. To be honest, I think the world is going to move to a low-carbon economy whether Canada likes it or not. To me, the challenge is, does Canada prepare itself to be competitive in terms of generating wealth and jobs around where that

Finance committee  Yes. Your points about the north, I think, really hit home. I lived in Alaska for years, on the other side of the border in the north. To me, it helps to be looking forward, and if you imagine 20 years from now it's not that hard to imagine what a future low-carbon economy will l

Finance committee  No, but there are a significant number.

Finance committee  It's not due to carbon pricing, is their answer.

Finance committee  I guess I'd start by questioning the issue of whether or not carbon pricing must be revenue neutral. I think governments make choices about how to spend tax monies all the time; that's part of the fundamental reason we elect governments. I'm a co-founder of the Ecofiscal Commiss

Finance committee  Listen, that's a very real concern. I talk with them about that all the time. I can tell you what their answer is, and they know the answer better than I do, so I'll relay what they tell me. The shift in capital for oil and gas is largely driven by global oil prices and the fact

Finance committee  I think the first point is that this is a real cost, and part of Adam Smith's invisible hand is that free markets work when they charge real costs. The reason we have too much pollution in the world is that private markets don't naturally capture those costs and it falls upon gov

Finance committee  The other point, too, is that one thing we know about technology innovation is that, if you had asked someone 20 years ago what it would cost to have a laptop or a smart phone, they would have said thousands and thousands of dollars based on the current technology. Part of what w

Finance committee  Briefly, just to correct what I said, almost all economists agree that a carbon tax is the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I would like to say a couple of things. We've heard from a couple of people this idea that there's a choice between putting a pr

Finance committee  As the father of five-year-old twins, I'm an expert in leakage of all kinds. I'll talk about the carbon kind. What you don't want is what my colleagues alluded to, which is that firms simply move across the border and continue to emit the same emissions they would have emitted i

Finance committee  Part of what this proposed backstop bill does to help deal with the competitiveness issues is...output-based pricing, which is a good idea. Basically, major producing firms and exporters will still have all the incentive to reduce, but the total cost of carbon price to them will

Finance committee  You need enough years to be able to draw any kind of real conclusions, which is why Europe is the best place to do this. It has had carbon taxes going back to the 1990s in five or six countries. I've put two studies in my materials because a picture is worth a thousand words. One

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members, and thanks for inviting me. I'm here today wearing two hats. I'm the chair of the Smart Prosperity Institute at the University of Ottawa, which is one of the major economic environment think tanks and research institutes in the world. We've got