It has been a bad few weeks for the federal government’s plans for climate action.
A little more than five years ago, there was a strong federal-provincial consensus around climate action. That consensus included a national carbon pricing system, with the federal government providing a back-stop system where provinces didn’t price carbon themselves.
Canada is now confronted with a very different federal-provincial landscape on climate change. Ottawa’s decision to respond to concerns about the impact of the federal carbon pricing system on heating costs for households relying on fuel oil, primarily in Atlantic Canada, has devolved into a wider debate on the role of carbon pricing in Canadian climate policy.
