Chamber endorses carbon tax

OTTAWA — Canada’s largest business group has endorsed a carbon tax as the most efficient way for the country to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report released Thursday, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says there is general consensus in Canada that something needs to be done about climate change, and the debate should not be about if, but how that happens.

Aaron Henry, the chamber’s director of natural resources and environmental policy, said the businesses that make up its membership agree a carbon price is the most efficient way to do it.

“Our members are very much in favour of it,” he said. “They’re happy to do this. We applaud the Canadian government’s direction on this.”

Henry said what chamber members don’t want is more years of political uncertainty that leave businesses unsure what the policies will be next year for getting to those lower-carbon realities.

Nor, he said, do they want layers of environmental regulation on top of carbon pricing that add inefficient requirements to cut emissions that are less flexible than carbon prices.

The federal government’s climatechange action plan includes a national price on carbon, but it also develops clean fuel standards, new energy-efficiency building codes, and a phase-out on the use of coal to generate electricity.