Andrew Lawton re-caps day one of Ontario’s carbon tax hearing
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Summary
In this episode, Andrew Lutton reviews the first day of the federal government's constitutional challenge to the Ontario government's carbon tax, and the province's defence of its position on the matter. He also discusses the key constitutional question of whether or not the carbon tax can be described as a tax.
Transcript
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We just concluded the first day of the much-awaited carbon tax constitutional
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reference taking place at Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto. The Ontario
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government taking Justin Trudeau's carbon tax to court questioning the
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constitutionality of it and what was interesting is I first said heading into
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this hearing that one of the key questions was going to be only about the
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constitutionality not about the policy implications but what was very
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interesting today as the Ontario government laid out its position and its
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opening arguments for the entirety of the day was that the province spent about
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half of its time actually speaking to some of the policy implications. For
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example the Ontario government laid out its claim that the federal carbon tax
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model doesn't take into consideration that Ontario is taking independent of the
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federal government action to curb climate change. Another example is that
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the government laid out the position that the federal carbon tax essentially
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allows the federal government to nationalize any area imaginable if there's
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an argument to be made that it causes greenhouse gas emissions. For example if
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the federal government has a mandate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions it can
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also regulate everything under provincial jurisdiction contributing to
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greenhouse gas emissions like perhaps whether automobiles could be banned or
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perhaps whether you should be able to ban wood stoves in homes. Now it was
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certainly a slippery slope argument but it spoke to the fundamental reality of
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what happens if the federal government's argument is accepted. Basically the
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Ontario government was saying in its arguments today that the federal
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government cannot be allowed to essentially have carte blanche on something so
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critical because it is not at this time one of the enumerated powers that the
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federal government wields. So that was how we started to see a little bit of a
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preview at what's going to be coming up in the week ahead. Now one key element here
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that I found was very interesting is the question of whether the carbon tax can
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adequately be described as a tax. You know this isn't just a political
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question of whether it's a price on carbon or a tax but actually a key
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constitutional question. You see the greenhouse gas act that allows for this
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carbon pricing doesn't specifically call it a tax. Now this was argued by the
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provincial government to be very critical because it means the parliament has not
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been authorized to levy a tax on this. So the provincial government's position is
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that this is an unconstitutional tax and it doesn't meet the standard of being a
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regulatory charge. Now this is one of these little in the weeds discussions that
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probably makes you very grateful that I'm here and you're not but it is
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an important distinction. Is the federal government collecting revenue that it
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is not constitutionally authorized to? Tomorrow we're going to be hearing from
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the federal government on its position and we'll have a full update then. For