TORONTO - Quebec and Ontario will sign an agreement today to curb greenhouse gas emissions ahead of this week's premiers conference on climate change.
Premiers Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard will unveil a cap-and-trade deal to put a price on carbon and let polluters buy credits from companies that cap their greenhouse gas emissions.
Wynne will announce the details at an early morning news conference in Toronto before going to Quebec City to meet with Couillard.
The premiers and territorial leaders will meet in Quebec City on Tuesday for a climate change summit.
The provincial attention on climate change comes as the federal government is pushing the provinces to finalize their emission plans.
Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq sent a letter to the provinces last week asking for updated numbers.
Canada missed a March 31 deadline to submit greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to the United Nations in advance of a global climate change conference in Paris in December.
The federal government has said it will present Canada's targets to the UN well before the summit.
Both premiers said that the development opens doors to new homespun industries creating eco-friendly power.
"We saw this in China," Premier Philippe Couillard told CTV Montreal during a scrum. "They all wanted to meet with our green tech companies. There are lots of good jobs for our citizens."
His Ontario counterpart echoed that sentiment. "It's in the billions of dollars of opportunities," said Premier Wynne. "There's going to be a huge demand for the kinds of technologies we're developing."
Wynne says measures target polluters
Wynne says right now companies are allowed to spew pollutants into the atmosphere for free, but everyone is paying the costs, and she dismisses claims cap-and-trade amounts to a tax grab.
The plan involves government-imposed limits on emissions from companies, and those that want to burn more fossil fuels can buy carbon credits from those that burn less than they are allowed.
Wynne says climate change is already imposing costs on society, damaging crops and increasing insurance claims, and warns the costs of not taking action will only get higher.
And she says cap-and-trade is a market solution, not a regulatory one, and will provide certainty for industry.
A background paper provided by the government says gasoline prices rose two-to-3.5 cents a litre in Quebec when it adopted a cap and trade system.
Environment Minister Glen Murray says the government will consult the public as it develops the details for the cap-and-trade scheme by October.
She says money raised by the cap and trade scheme into growing the economy and fighting emissions, such as funding more public transit projects.
Wynne heads to Quebec City later today to sign a cap-and-trade deal with Premier Philippe Couillard, and they will be joined Tuesday by other premiers and territorial leaders for a climate change summit.
-With files from The Canadian Press
