Canada’s current climate plan is ineffective and wasteful

Article submitted by The MacDonald Laurier Institute

Alternative approaches will not only reduce emissions more efficiently but will provide socio-economic benefits beyond Green-House Gas mitigation.

OTTAWA, ON (June 27, 2023): The federal government has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and has spent or committed over $113 billion in climate related initiatives. Yet, Canada will still likely miss its 2030 emissions target by 48 percent. The government risks heavily indebting Canadians without meeting its climate goals.

In this new MLI paper – Maximizing value, minimizing emissions: The cost-effective path for Canada’s climate agenda, Senior Fellow Jerome Gessaroli proposes a climate policy based on international collaboration that would be more cost-effective than policies the government has implemented to date.

“A marginal cost analysis of methane abatement projects shows that it is possible for Canada to reduce its GHG emissions in a more cost-effective way by looking further afield to other countries than by focusing only on domestic projects.”

According to Gessaroli, Canada, along with numerous other countries, has yet to tap into the potential benefits of international cooperation. By leveraging comparative advantages such as technologies, lower costs, and mitigation opportunities, countries can join forces to reduce GHG emissions beyond their territorial borders. Recognition and encouragement of emissions reductions resulting from international collaboration, as outlined in Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement, can lead to more effective climate outcomes compared to domestic initiatives.

Of particular significance is Article 6.2, which allows countries to voluntarily collaborate on GHG emissions reduction and receive credit for reductions achieved outside their political boundaries. Canada can leverage Article 6.2 by engaging in cooperative arrangements with foreign countries to share costs or exchange technical capabilities for mitigation benefits. By doing so, Canada can reduce global emissions while receiving credit toward its formal climate targets under the Paris Agreement.

“The projects can lead to further international collaboration and partnerships in other areas,” writes Gessaroli.

“And depending upon the project, local benefits such as job creation, worker training, enhanced water quality, more efficient water usage, and greater agricultural productivity are possible extras over and above the emissions mitigation.”

Regrettably, the federal government appears to show limited interest in utilizing Article 6.2 to meet greenhouse gas emission goals. With a range of abatement technologies across multiple sectors, Canada possesses the means to facilitate substantial GHG emission reductions in other countries, thereby helping to meet our own climate objectives.

The report concludes by urging the federal government to rethink its climate spending priorities and prioritize policies that deliver the greatest GHG abatement outcomes at the lowest cost. By embracing international collaboration and actively pursuing cooperative climate initiatives, Canada can significantly contribute to global emissions reductions while simultaneously reaping socio-economic benefits.

To learn more, read the full paper here:

***

Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow with the Macdonald Laurier Institute. He writes on economic and environmental matters, from a market-based principles perspective. Jerome teaches full-time at the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s School of Business, courses in corporate finance, security analysis, and advanced finance. He was also a visiting lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, teaching into their undergraduate and executive MBA programs.

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is the only non-partisan, independent national public policy think tank in Ottawa focusing on the full range of issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

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Opposition leader Poilievre calling for end of prorogation to deal with Trump’s tariffs

Published on January 21, 2025

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From Conservative Party Communications

The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on the threat of tariffs from the US:

“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country. Our American counterparts say they want to stop the illegal flow of drugs and other criminal activity at our border. The Liberal government admits their weak border is a problem. That is why they announced a multibillion-dollar border plan—a plan they cannot fund because they shut down Parliament, preventing MPs and Senators from authorizing the funds.

“We also need retaliatory tariffs, something that requires urgent Parliamentary consideration.

“Yet, Liberals have shut Parliament in the middle of this crisis. Canada has never been so weak, and things have never been so out of control. Liberals are putting themselves and their leadership politics ahead of the country. Freeland and Carney are fighting for power rather than fighting for Canada.

“Common Sense Conservatives are calling for Trudeau to reopen Parliament now to pass new border controls, agree on trade retaliation and prepare a plan to rescue Canada’s weak economy.

“The Prime Minister has the power to ask the Governor General to cut short prorogation and get our Parliament working.

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Trump, taunts and trade—Canada’s response is a decade out of date

Published on January 21, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

Canadian federal politicians are floundering in their responses to Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a 2016 mindset, still thinking Trump is a temporary aberration who should be disdained and ignored by the global community. But a lot has changed. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s current priorities should spend less time looking at trade statistics and more time understanding the details of the lawfare campaigns against him. Canadian officials who had to look up who Kash Patel is, or who don’t know why Nathan Wade’s girlfriend finds herself in legal jeopardy, will find the next four years bewildering.

Three years ago, Trump was on the ropes. His first term had been derailed by phony accusations of Russian collusion and a Ukrainian quid pro quo. After 2020, the Biden Justice Department and numerous Democrat prosecutors devised implausible legal theories to launch multiple criminal cases against him and people who worked in his administration. In summer 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and leaked to the press rumours of stolen nuclear codes and theft of government secrets. After Trump announced his candidacy in 2022, he was hit by wave after wave of indictments and civil suits strategically filed in deep blue districts. His legal bills soared while his lawyers past and present battled well-funded disbarment campaigns aimed at making it impossible for him to obtain counsel. He was assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and faced life in prison if convicted.

This would have broken many men. But when he was mug-shotted in Georgia on Aug. 24, 2023, his scowl signalled he was not giving in. In the 11 months from that day to his fist pump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump managed to defeat and discredit the lawfare attacks, assemble and lead a highly effective campaign team, knock Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, run a series of near daily (and sometimes twice daily) rallies, win over top business leaders in Silicon Valley, open up a commanding lead in the polls and not only survive an assassination attempt but turn it into an image of triumph. On election day, he won the popular vote and carried the White House and both Houses of Congress.

It’s Trump’s world now, and Canadians should understand two things about it. First, he feels no loyalty to domestic and multilateral institutions that have governed the world for the past half century. Most of them opposed him last time and many were actively weaponized against him. In his mind, and in the thinking of his supporters, he didn’t just defeat the Democrats, he defeated the Republican establishment, most of Washington including the intelligence agencies, the entire corporate media, the courts, woke corporations, the United Nations and its derivatives, universities and academic authorities, and any foreign governments in league with the World Economic Forum. And it isn’t paranoia; they all had some role in trying to bring him down. Gaining credibility with the new Trump team will require showing how you have also fought against at least some of these groups.

Second, Trump has earned the right to govern in his own style, including saying whatever he wants. He’s a negotiator who likes trash-talking, so get used to it and learn to decode his messages.

When Trump first threatened tariffs, he linked it to two demands: stop the fentanyl going into the United States from Canada and meet our NATO spending targets. We should have done both long ago. In response, Trudeau should have launched an immediate national action plan on military readiness, border security and crackdowns on fentanyl labs. His failure to do so invited escalation. Which, luckily, only consisted of taunts about annexation. Rather than getting whiny and defensive, the best response (in addition to dealing with the border and defence issues) would have been to troll back by saying that Canada would fight any attempt to bring our people under the jurisdiction of the corrupt U.S. Department of Justice, and we will never form a union with a country that refuses to require every state to mandate photo I.D. to vote and has so many election problems as a result.

As to Trump’s complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, this is a made-in-Washington problem. The U.S. currently imports $4 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world but only sells $3 trillion back in exports. Trump looks at that and says we’re ripping them off. But that trillion-dollar difference shows up in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts as the capital account balance. The rest of the world buys that much in U.S. financial instruments each year, including treasury bills that keep Washington functioning. The U.S. savings rate is not high enough to cover the federal government deficit and all the other domestic borrowing needs. So the Americans look to other countries to cover the difference. Canada’s persistent trade surplus with the U.S. ($108 billion in 2023) partly funds that need. Money that goes to buying financial instruments can’t be spent on goods and services.

So the other response to the annexation taunts should be to remind Trump that all the tariffs in the world won’t shrink the trade deficit as long as Congress needs to borrow so much money each year. Eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit will disappear, too. And then there will be less money in D.C. to fund lawfare and corruption. Win-win.