Ontario government passes legislation to scrap cap and trade
TORONTO — The Ontario government passed legislation Wednesday to cancel the province’s cap-and-trade system, putting the final nail in the coffin of a program Premier Doug Ford has long promised to scrap.
The bill was introduced in July but the final vote was delayed when an environmental group launched legal action against the government, alleging the province had flouted Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights by failing to hold public consultations on the issue.
The government immediately launched consultations, which wrapped mid-October. The results of that exercise have not yet been made public.
The legal action will still move forward, however, on allegations that the government also bypassed mandatory consultations on a regulation related to the cancellation of cap and trade.