As the Ontario Court of Appeal today begins hearing a constitutional challenge by the Ontario government to the federal Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, the CCLI’s Dr Janis Sarra published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail outlining why businesses want certainty on carbon pricing – not constitutional challenges.

Dr Sarra writes: “Valuable tax dollars are being expended in this litigation at a time when it is clear that unless effective carbon pricing is in place, investors will move their capital elsewhere and Canadian businesses will suffer.”

“Supreme Court of Canada decisions have been clear for years that the federal government’s power is to be used to address issues of national concern”, Dr Sarra added. “The Supreme Court has previously held that where a matter has achieved a ‘degree of singleness, distinctiveness and indivisibility’ of federal concern that distinguishes it from solely provincial matters or issues that provinces alone cannot address, federal action is constitutional. What could be more clearly of concern to us nationally than the need to mitigate the increasingly devastating consequences of climate change?”

Dr Janis Sarra is Presidential Distinguished Professor and Professor of Law, Peter A Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. Read the full op-ed in The Globe and Mail here.