With Canada's federal election only weeks away, partner and head of Torys' Climate Change practice Tyson Dyck says that climate change policies are currently at the "centre of a national conversation".
"There's uncertainty with every election, but this particular election has really brought a lot of these policies to the fore and ... put them in the centre of a national conversation around what we should be doing on climate," Tyson said in a webinar hosted by ClearBlue Markets, which was later quoted in Carbon Pulse.
Considering the rollback of climate policies in the United Stated by the Trump administration, Tyson says Canada's election could potentially mark an "inflection point", resulting in a different policy framework than where the country has been heading.
Read: Torys Quarterly: Canada's defining moment for energy
Prime Minister Mark Carney's removal of the consumer-facing carbon tax could be an indicator of what's to come, Tyson says. "The fact that they moved the price to zero is really just a reflection of what a minority government can do right now."
Though the Liberal government could not completely retract the carbon tax legislation, Tyson says there was room under the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to "play with the pricing"—and "similar provisions" exist that could enable a minority government to alter emissions charges under the Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS) in the future.
"Just because we might have a minority government a month from now doesn't mean that [industrial carbon] programme is completely safe," Tyson says.
A majority government, on the other hand, could result in a full repeal of climate policies, whether that's due to the Conservative party cutting back on policies or the Liberal party proceeding with a new "signature piece of climate legislation," Tyson says.
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