First, a big shout out to Northern Life and Sudbury.com for live streaming Doug Ford's visit to Greater Sudbury on April 11. This was the only way I could exercise my democratic duty today.
Mr. Ford disappoints. He claimed to be environmentally friendly, but then boasted about dismantling the Ontario carbon pricing policy and bucking the federal carbon backstop. That’s easy to say, but as the old lady in a '70s Wendy’s commercial used to bark, “where’s the beef?”
Indeed, Mr. Ford, where’s your plan to keep our planet livable? Our federal government has a bottom line carbon-pricing policy that kicks into place should provincial and territorial governments not have a plan that at least lowers their emissions to that minimum level.
Ontario has embraced the fastest-growing method of raising the price of carbon worldwide by adopting the cap and trade system. These two types of policies have the same goal: lowered greenhouse gas emissions. Both are used around the world and both have proven success. The model endorsed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby returns the money raised from the ever-increasing cost of carbon to Canadians so that they are not unduly disadvantaged during this worldwide transition to clean energy.
Making fossil fuels unappealing to all of us, individuals and businesses alike, is a must if we are to continue to enjoy this planet. How do we do that? Simple: we keep raising its cost, year after year, until the cheaper energy is our go-to choice. Raising the price of carbon is the logical, pragmatic, economical and efficient way to proceed. Dismantling and bucking is simply irresponsible and lacks total respect for the taxpayers who will have to fork out more and more money to repair the damages left by climate change.
It would have been so easy for Mr. Ford to truly speak up with respect for Ontarians, alive and yet to be born, for an economically viable Ontario by detailing how PCs will improve on what is already being done. To Mr. Ford’s comment that “when people say jump, we (the PCs) say how high,” I say we need every party to keep improving on the previous governments’ efforts to lower emissions. This is going to go on for decades until the cleanup is done. Dismantling will get us nowhere. Bucking the inevitable will only cost us even more as we blow money on repairing climate change damage.
Ontarians need true respect and economic wisdom as we face our biggest challenge yet: climate change.
As a final comment, I want to say the following : abruptly leaving the room before Q&A tonight was no way to help us with our biggest problem.
Carole Lavallee
Chelmsford