How Canada figured out a carbon tax and gave the money back

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Canada is a leading producer of oil and gas. It’s also one of the few G7 members with a carbon tax. As Minister of Environment and Climate Change in 2015, Catherine McKenna was charged with getting Canadians on board with that policy. One of the most important tactics was calling it “a price on pollution.” Carbon taxes are having a moment after the Paris Climate Finance Summit and Cath joins Akshat this week to talk about the political practicalities of passing a carbon tax. She has advice about who to lean on, handling threats, and why focusing on outcomes above all else is the key to climate policy that works.

Akshat will be traveling to Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Delhi over the next few weeks. Fancy meeting for a drink? Sign up here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week, Carbon Cost Canada.
0:25.9	Last month, nearly 50 heads of state met in Paris to talk about how to bring global finance in line with climate goals.
0:28.8	It's a huge undertaking and the to-do list is long.
0:32.3	A lot of what needs to be done on that list could be made easier if governments had more
0:37.4	money. And right now, after the
0:39.4	pandemic and the economic consequences that have followed, there is not a lot of it. One way to fill
0:45.1	government coffers is through taxes. Taxes are not popular, but they are crucial. And perhaps the
0:51.9	most interesting thing at the meeting was that instead of dividing
0:55.6	rich and poor countries, there was somewhat of a unity on taxes. French President Emmanuel Macron,
1:01.8	the host of the meeting, brought up international taxes on shipping and even financial transactions
1:07.3	multiple times throughout the two-day event. And at the final press conference, Kenyan President William Ruto said,
1:14.6	The discussion about carbon tax is a discussion that is a must have.
1:22.6	And on this one, we do not want the North to pay for the South.
1:28.1	We want all of us to pay.
1:30.9	From an economic standpoint, taxes on emissions are an optimal way of speeding up the transition to clean energy.
1:37.9	But the politics of those taxes aren't a winning cause in any country, let alone globally.
1:47.1	Among G7 members, only three have some form of tax on carbon, the UK, the EU and Canada. And Canada is the case study that I'm going to explore
1:54.0	today. It's worth learning a country's experience to understand whether carbon taxes could ever work
1:59.4	internationally. Last year, I interviewed Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and he's very proud of introducing the tax.
2:05.6	No matter how many times I go around saying, look, you can do it.
2:09.6	I won two re-elections on putting a broad-based price on pollution.
2:13.6	People still think that it's a real challenge.
	...

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