Contributed to The Globe and MailJanis Sarra is a professor of law at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia.
The court observed that temperatures in Canada are increasing at double the global average rate, and that recent manifestations of the effects of climate change include major wildfires in Alberta and British Columbia, and major flood events in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Climate change will cost Canada’s economy $5-billion a year by 2020, and up to $43-billion a year by 2050 if no action is taken to mitigate its effects.
The court held that a co-operative national carbon pricing system would be undermined by carbon “leakage” in jurisdictions that do not adopt appropriately stringent carbon pricing measures. Failure of a province to co-operate would undermine actions of other provinces, and would place unfair burdens on other provinces, potentially subverting a co-operative national scheme.
It also leaves ample provincial legislative opportunity for regulation aimed at the causes and effects of GHG emissions within the province.