Topp v. Mulcair on cap-and-trade

Brian Topp chats with Rabble readers and challenges Thomas Mulcair’s cap-and-trade plans.

In my view all revenues derived from our plan to reduce carbon emissions should remain within the environmental plan. These funds will be needed to do the job we need to do (transitioning to a much lower-carbon, much more-energy efficient and – not incidentally – a much for productive, competitive and prosperous economy). also, keeping them focused there will ensure public support for green measures. And I don’t think we want the government to become a carbon addict – dependent on revenues derived from carbon emissions which we want to radically decrease.

This last point is why I favoured rejecting the Liberal Party’s “carbon shift” plan in 2008. It is also a point of debate between Tom Mulcair and I. Mr. Mulcair said during the Halifax debate and then again in a recent interview with the Toronto Star, as I understood him, that he did favour diverting revenues from our green plan into general government revenues as an alternative to undoing the damage liberals and conservatives have done to public revenues. I asked him about this during the debate in Quebec City and didn’t make much progress in getting him to explain his reasoning – I disagree with his approach.