Regulating Carbon Emissions in Canada: Climate Policy Year in Review and Trends, 2013

Dave Sawyer and Philip Gass have developed this piece as a year in review and a look forward to trends emerging for 2014 with regards to climate change mitigation policy in Canada.

The year 2013 was marked by a loss of federal political will in the sector-by-sector greenhouse gas regulatory process. Equivalency processes stalled without the federal direction needed for provinces to develop their positions in relation to federal standards. Meanwhile, provincial policy labs emerged, with the provinces continuing to move forward unilaterally and in partnership in spite of the federal government backing away. Three broad trends have emerged heading into 2014: embracing fragmentation, with opportunities for subnational alignment; designing equivalency to be flexible over the longer term when it is likely to become relevant again; and accommodating provincial policy labs and innovation, continuing to build the bottom-up, province-led approach that has become the norm in Canada.