Chambers of commerce in 20 communities across Ontario, including Windsor-Essex, London, and Chatham-Kent, want Ontario to hold off on its cap and trade program.
The program, which will limit how much companies can emit greenhouse gases before financial penalties kick in, is expected to come into effect this January 1. The chambers are calling on the province to wait a year.
The legislation could hit local vegetable producers particularly hard, but the impact will not be exclusive to the agri-food industry and is expected to be felt by all consumers.
Windsor Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce holds news conference, December 9, 2016. (Photo by Maureen Revait)
While the average greenhouse grower may pay up to $220,000 a year by 2022, chambers fear the addition of cap and trade will add further charges to natural gas, gas and diesel fuel prices.
Back on December 9, Guido van het Hof of Soave Agricultural Group told reporters he's not sure how much it will cost his company and complained the process is not transparent.
Gerry Mastronardi of T G & G Greenhouses said he had put plans to expand on hold because the bill will make it difficult to compete with growers in other jurisdictions.
Large producers will be exempt from the program.
"We have already lost hundreds of millions of investment to other jurisdictions like Ohio due to high electricity prices," says CEO of the Windsor-Essex Chamber Matt Marchand. "The unintended impact of Ontario's cap and trade may result in the removal of jobs and investment from clean grids like Ontario to much dirtier grids in the U.S. and elsewhere."
Since 2004, electricity prices in Ontario have increased from 4.7 cents a kilowatt hour to 18 cents at peak times.
“We must consider how we as a province can effectively reduce our carbon footprint without significantly reducing our competitiveness. We have all seen companies pull out of Ontario in recent years because the cost to operate here had become too prohibitive. It is time for the government to take a step back and look for a course of action that will help to encourage business – and jobs – to stay in Ontario,” says Gerry Macartney, CEO of the London Chamber of Commerce. “We also need to take into account the carbon tax proposals that the Federal government wants to initiate. Surely we can ill afford another duplicative program that both Ontario and the feds want to deliver.”
Marchand points to indications the majority of U.S. states seem unlikely to participate in cap and trade programs and says his organization has repeatedly asked the province for a sector by sector economic impact analysis to no avail.