Features Energy Management
Experts gather to discuss B.C.’s carbon tax

British Columbia’s carbon tax has long been the focus of heated debate, states a recent press release from Simon Fraser University (SFU). On September 20, a panel of international experts on environmental and tax policy converged on SFU’s Vancouver campus to discuss its future. 

Many of the experts involved in the discussion, which was open to the public, were in Vancouver to participate at the 13th annual Global Conference on Environmental Taxation from September 20-22.

SFU’s Nancy Olewiler, director of the School of Public Policy, served as moderator for the panel. She headed a list of experts that includes James Mack, Stewart Elgie, Nicholas Rivers and Mikael Skou Anderson. Mack is the executive director of the British Columbia Climate Action Secretariat. Elgie serves as chair of Sustainable Prosperity (an Ottawa-based think tank). Rivers holds the Canada Research Chair in Climate and Energy Policy at SFU, while Denmark-based Anderson is from the European Environment Agency.

The panel was co-hosted by Carbon Talks (a coalition of a few SFU schools with a goal to advance Canadian global competitiveness by shifting to a low-carbon economy) and Sustainable Prosperity. In June, Sustainable Prosperity released a report that stated the average British Columbian’s consumption of fuel has dropped 15.1 per cent since 2008, while the rest of Canada’s per capita sales have increased by 1.3 per cent over the same period.