Green economy

Maybe it was the months of smoke-filled skies or the flash floods following hard on the heels of long droughts. Or maybe it was mountainsides covered in beetle-killed trees or glaciers melting to slivers of ice. Whatever the reason, British Columbia has got the message when it comes to climate change.

There has been plenty of fear mongering that Canada must follow U.S. President Trump’s corporate tax cut agenda or face economic devastation. Yet many of the experts, often those not working for corporate interests, agree on two things: there is no assurance and much skepticism that the broad cuts will lead to significantly greater economic competitiveness for the U.S in the long-term^1,2; and, there are much more effective levers to generate a competitive advantage for the Canadian economy than tax cuts³.

Now that Manitoba has joined Ontario and Saskatchewan in opposition to a carbon tax, what are the realistic political options for the federal government?  Economists overwhelmingly support carbon pricing as the most economically efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emission and combat climate change. But should the federal government now just accept that Canadian conservatives have successfully framed it as a “job-killing tax” whose implementation will “hurt the economy”? Have Doug Ford, Andrew Scheer and other Conservatives been successful in nurturing the suspicion that carbon pricing is just another tax grab by government that will make “ordinary Canadians” worse off? Is the idea now politically dead?

This article originally appeared in the Globe & Mail.

The way Canadian dairy farmers are portrayed in the NAFTA debate might lead you to believe they drive Porsches to the milking barns. Farmers who own quota in our food system, where dairy along with poultry fall under supply management, are often portrayed as a lobby group rather than people we rely on for food security.

This blog post is part of a series of posts that will be focusing on the tax avoidance by Canada’s most wealthy. This series was sparked by findings in the Paradise Papers — the latest leak that revealed the offshore tax haven activities of former Canadian elected officials and political insiders. Tax avoidance is wrong. It robs the Canadian government from paying for and maintaining our health and social programs; ones that work to improve the lives of all Canadians. A government crackdown on offshore tax havens is urgent and necessary.

It’s safe to say that taxes aren’t everyone’s favourite subject. Canadians are usually confronted with the idea during tax season: as we frantically get our financial documents in order, while tempering our slight annoyance with the government for peering into our pockets. But we need to have more comprehensive conversations on how taxes affect our lives on a daily basis; because the fight for a fairer tax system is real and urgent.

The Broadbent Institute's new project, Change the Game, takes a critical look at the history of social democracy in Canada, with the intention of learning from the successes and challenges of the past in order to build the best possible path forward. We invite you to join us in rethinking and renewing social democracy by reading other entries in this series.

In his reflections on the social democratic tradition Andrew Jackson argued that we need to democratize the Canadian economy by increasing social ownership of capital.In the energy sector this means identifying mechanisms such as community ownership and a greater role for the public sector, ensuring that the corporate assets associated with energy production “flow to all citizens”, and are not monopolised by large private or public organisations – in short, energy democracy. Following Jackson, we believe that the expected de-carbonization of energy production can facilitate such a transition.

The federal government heeded the advice of the business dominated Economic Advisory Council and set out a new welcome mat for foreign investors in the recent  Economic Statement . The threshold for review of foreign take-overs of Canadian companies will be raised from $600 Million to $1 Billion (up from just $369 Million in 2015); a new agency, the Invest in Canada Hub, will be set up with a mandate to woo foreign corporations; and reviews of the security implications of foreign take-overs are likely to be limited.

Ontario released its much anticipated climate action plan, and the reviews are in. There are accolades and constructive criticisms.

A particularly scathing criticism came from a Globe and Mail editorial that suggests the government could have “simply brought in a carbon price and stopped there”. The Globe claims that price signals could have done the job and left more up to “individual choice”, while achieving emissions reductions at minimum cost. This is a policy based on a narrow and ultra-orthodox reading of neoclassical economics, and it is good that Ontario did not limit itself to carbon pricing.

It is now often said, with reason, that the environment and the economy are not in conflict. But it is even more true to say that seriously addressing the crisis of global climate change could revive a moribund global economy.

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) released by the International Monetary Fund in April of this year once again forecast very slow growth, and argued that economic stagnation is likely to be self-sustaining. This is due to very low levels of business investment, combined with high levels of household and public debt which constrain household and government spending. 

Recent events have triggered an important discussion on the Left’s approach to climate change policy. The Leap Manifesto is one expression of the desire to transition to a carbon neutral economy while creating a more just and “caring” society.