To listen to the broadcast go to the CBC Ottawa Morning story archive and select Eco Fees from July 21st.

(Ottawa Citizen July 27, 2010) (Vancouver Sun July 28, 2010)
By Stewart Elgie, Nic Rivers and Nancy Olewiler, Citizen Special

 It's hard to tell which has sunk lower: BP's share price or the prospects for government action on climate change. Despite daily reminders of the growing costs of oil addiction -- from blackened Louisiana shorelines to the rapidly melting Arctic -- climate change seems to have dropped off global leaders' agendas. The recent G20 declaration paid lip service to the issue, the U.S. Congress seems increasingly unlikely to pass a climate bill this year, and Canada's official policy position is to say "after you" to the U.S.

(July 19, 2010) DAVID CRANE

If we are looking for economic stimulus to drive innovation and create new jobs, then launching a transformative shift to a low-carbon economy may be our best hope.

TORONTO—If we are looking for economic stimulus to drive innovation and create new jobs, then launching a transformative shift to a low-carbon economy may be our best hope. While the Harper government consistently portrays the environment and the economy as competing interests, in fact there is a positive, not negative, relationship between the two. Dealing with climate change will give us a different but stronger economy.

(July 10, 2010) MARCUS GEE

Should governments bring in new road tolls, gas taxes or parking fees to pay for transit and reduce congestion in the Toronto region? At first blush, the idea hasn't a snowball's chance on a Toronto sidewalk. No serious politician wants to be caught proposing tolls and taxes in an election year.

In the contest for mayor, only marginal candidates with nothing to lose such as Sarah Thomson have been willing to plump for them. Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi and Rob Ford have firmly ruled them out. George Smitherman at first said he was open to talking about tolls, then brought in a plan to pay for transit expansion without them.

At the provincial level, a Liberal government struggling to sell the HST is hardly likely to hand its Conservative rivals a gift by coming out for new taxes as well.

With Canada having hosted the G8/G20, much needed attention should now be given to a number of challenges facing the Canadian economy in the coming years. The first is our woeful productivity performance, and the second is climate change.

The two will have an impact on our future prosperity, and both are - in ways that are not always well understood - linked.

(July 5, 2010) Canadians, if they’re truly interested in the country’s long-term prosperity and global competitiveness, have to start banging the pots and beating the drums on the issue of carbon pricing.

We have grown too silent, and this has allowed the federal government to bury the issue. But we can’t let that happen, for a number of good reasons that go beyond climate change and the environment.

One relates to innovation and productivity. Putting a price on carbon will force us to use our resources more efficiently and will drive the technology innovations that help get us there, according to a new research paper co-written by Roger Martin and Alison Kemper at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

(July 3, 2010)  In one of the strongest arguments yet for road tolls and other money-raising methods, a coalition of civic leaders argues the GTA faces disastrous congestion and dire economic consequences without immediate action.

In a report to be released Monday, the Toronto City Summit Alliance is adding its voice to the need to get the GTA moving.

Tolls — no longer a dirty word among those seeking to get the GTA moving — and other taxes could raise as much as $1 to $2 billion annually for transit improvements, says the report, obtained exclusively by the Star.

Among its 12 proposed money-makers is one that would see a toll on 400-series highways of 10 to 20 cents per kilometre — adding $15 to $30 to the 150 km round-trip between Toronto and Barrie, for example.

Other proposals include:

June 29, 2010

A policy brief released today links carbon pricing to possible gains in productivity through increases in innovation. The review profiles a growing body of academic research and good evidence (from the EU in particular) to show that careful carbon pricing policy may be a tool to help Canada, in particular, prosper in the long term.

The research review, and related analysis of implications for policy makers, was commissioned by Sustainable Prosperity, a national policy and research network based at the University of Ottawa. It was written by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship.