46 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
MAY 2018
FEATURE
WHEN PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU
announced in December 2016
the "historic" Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change to meet
the country's 2030 emissions reduction targets, there was a quintessentially Canadian ele-
ment to the varied reactions by the political parties. As the Toronto Star would later note,
for federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, it would
be like "herding cats to get all Provinces and Territories on board."
Under a primary component of the framework, the provinces and territories would
agree to impose a carbon price of, at minimum, $10 a tonne on GHG emissions starting
in 2018, which would rise by that same amount each year until it reached $50 a tonne by
2022. How they met those requirements would be le up to each jurisdiction. "Practical
implementation will be a huge challenge," the Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development said in a December 2017 report that referenced the framework.
For Canadian lawyers practising in the Energy and Climate Change sectors, the in-
troduction of the framework meant that clients would be turning to them for advice on
issues related to the new carbon-pricing landscape. It also meant that lawyers would have
to monitor and help explain the complex political developments that, ultimately, would
have an impact on their advice.
"One of the areas that lawyers who assist clients with carbon-pricing issues, possible
statutory exemptions, risk assessments, commercial transactions and other matters have
to closely follow is what's happening in the political scene both federally and regionally,"
says Selina Lee-Andersen, a partner in the Vancouver office of McCarthy Tétrault LLP
Taxing
Carbon
PHOTO:
SHUTTERSTOCK
Confederation isn't
easy when it comes
to drawing together
Provincial, Territorial
and Federal carbon
tax proposals
BY PAUL MCLAUGHLIN
