The prospect of a billion-dollar bill isn't dampening the Ontario government's enthusiasm for the federal Liberals' controversial carbon tax plan, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday.
McGuinty, who initially opposed a carbon tax, said Liberal Leader Stephane Dion's "green shift" plan is a good idea, even though it could slap a hefty bill on emissions from Ontario's four coal-fired generation plants.
"We'll take a close look at the consequences of that, but we expect that we will benefit from putting in place new sources of energy," McGuinty said.
"It's one more reason why we need to eliminate coal-fired generation."
Dion's carbon-tax plan would initially peg the price of greenhouse gas emissions at $10 a tonne, rising to $40 a tonne in four years.
That would add a $1.1-billion tax on Ontario's four coal-fired plants, the province's largest industrial polluters, which produced about 28 million tonnes of emissions last year.
McGuinty failed to live up to a 2003 election promise to close the plants, shutting only the Lakeview station in west Toronto in 2005. The remaining four plants are slated to close by 2014. More...
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