EnviroEconomics.ca

The Canada West Foundation just released a nice comprehensive inventory of Canadian provincial and Federal policies on climate mitigation. The document can be found here: Building on Our Strengths: An Inventory of Current Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Climate Change Policies. It is a nice tight survey that provides both the announced targets as well as thematic approaches to implementing the targets.

I like the second paragraph,

The rapidly changing policy environment surrounding climate change initiatives poses a challenge to an up-to-date inventory of climate change efforts. The authors have done their best to include policy developments to the end of 2007. It should also be noted that many government initiatives overlap, both across programs and across jurisdictions. For example, some initiatives that may have an impact upon GHG emissions may be presented in other sections of the report, as they are lodged in other policy areas.

Overlap, uncertainty and a rapidly changing policy environment…all threats to sound policy that will need to be sorted out. This is why the governance issue may be one of the most important elements to address if Canada is to implement cost-effective mitigation.

My Coles Notes summary of the document goes something like this: a single carbon tax in Quebec, lots of talk about trading, a whack of subsidies to renewables and tables and tables of targets. The authors did a great job with what little they had to work with.