By Patrick Burles - @PatrickBurles on Twitter

Economist Jack Mintz discusses climate change policy

Dec 1, 2016 | 1:28 PM

LETHBRIDGE – The government’s role in introducing policies to combat climate change was the topic of discussion Thursday (Dec. 1) at the weekly SACPA (Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs) session.

The speaker was Dr. Jack Mintz, the President’s Fellow of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. He is also on the boards of Imperial Oil Limited, Morneau Shepell and is Vice-President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

He focused on the current policy framework for Alberta, saying he supports the carbon tax instituted by the provincial government, but feels they took it too far.

“I’m actually a great believer that what you should try to do is have a uniform carbon price and let households and businesses figure out what’s the best way to reduce carbon based on that price, and not try to pick winners and losers and what type of activities are appropriate or not,” explained Mintz. “Not try to put in some regulations that could actually have a higher cost associated with them, such as phasing out coal.

“I think the idea of greening electricity up to 30-per cent, in my view, is not necessary,” Mintz continued. “If you have a carbon price, then renewables should be able to come in on a more competitive basis, if there’s value to doing it. If they can’t make it on, lets say now a $50 carbon price, then the question is why subsidize it even more to have renewables?”

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Mintz also took some time to go over a few adjustments he would like to see, suggesting incentives for Albertans to make changes.

“The other thing, which I think Alberta did wrong, is using the money, a significant portion, to spend on green subsidies. There is a large [demographic] grant being paid to family households, up to $90,000, which is pretty large, and in fact it would have been better to do a personal tax cut, it would encourage more risk taking, more work effort, instead of just giving out the equivalent of ‘Ralph bucks’, I call them ‘Rachel bucks’.

“I think that it would have been also better to even consider a corporate tax cut, because the non-emitters, larger companies, are going to be facing higher fuel costs, higher heating costs, electricity costs, and they too are going to be facing some impact and there’s absolutely no relief given to them.”

Having said that, Mintz pointed out that it’s important for Albertans to learn as much as they can about the growing issue.

“It’s always good for people to get as much information as they can, and also hear from different speakers, then they can get perhaps more of a common view… I think that’s very important for the discourse of public policy to hear different views, and then people can make up their minds on what they think is right.”