Ottawa

Make the polluter pay

Thomas Mulcair tables a cap-and-trade proposal.

Mulcair’s plan goes further than the cap and trade proposal advanced by late NDP leader Jack Layton in the party’s election platform last spring. It would apply the “polluter-pay” principle not just to the 700 largest industrial emitters but to all major sources of greenhouse gases. Mulcair says Canada “can no longer afford to focus only on the worst of the worst.”

The plan and Mulcair’s candidacy have been endorsed by Weaver, lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. “Canada needs a prime minister who recognizes that a healthy economy does not have to come at the expense of a healthy environment,” Weaver said in a written statement Thursday. “In my considered assessment, Thomas Mulcair is ideally suited for the task.”

The backgrounder distributed by the Mulcair campaign yesterday is here.

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