主讲人： Steve Paikin (主持人), Chris Ragan (麦吉尔大学教授)

1. 导言：碳定价的曲折之路

Steve Paikin: Here is an odd grouping: Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, former NDP premiers Bob Rae and Mike Harcourt, former Quebec Liberal Premier and Federal Tory leader Jean Charest, former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin. What do they all have in common? Well, they were all part of the now-defunct Ecofiscal Commission, which advocated for a carbon price in Canada. Chris Ragan was the chair of that commission. He's also an associate professor and founding director of McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. He joins us now on the line from Gimli, Manitoba, to look back on the long and strange journey of carbon pricing in this country and, I guess we should say, where it all went wrong. Hello Chris Ragan. Welcome back to The Agenda. How are you?

Chris Ragan: I'm just fine. Thank you for having me, Steve. And before I say anything more, congratulations on a fabulous 19 years. This is a terrific show and it wouldn't be the same without you.

Steve Paikin: Well, kind of you to say, but we're going to talk carbon pricing now. So, let's move on.

Steve Paikin: 这里有一个奇特的组合：前改革党领袖普雷斯顿·曼宁（Preston Manning）、前新民主党省长鲍勃·雷（Bob Rae）和迈克·哈考特（Mike Harcourt）、前魁北克自由党省长及联邦保守党领袖让·查雷斯特（Jean Charest），以及前自由党总理保罗·马丁（Paul Martin）。他们有什么共同点？他们都曾是现已解散的“生态财政委员会”（Ecofiscal Commission）的成员，该委员会倡导在加拿大实行碳定价。克里斯·里根（Chris Ragan）曾是该委员会的主席，他也是麦吉尔大学马克斯·贝尔公共政策学院的副教授和创始主任。我们现在从马尼托巴省的吉姆利连线他，回顾加拿大碳定价政策漫长而奇特的历程，或许也该探讨一下，这一切究竟错在了哪里。你好，克里斯·里根，欢迎回到《议程》节目。你好吗？

Chris Ragan: 我很好，谢谢你邀请我，史蒂夫。在说更多之前，恭喜你这精彩的 19 年。这是一个很棒的节目，没有你就不一样了。

Steve Paikin: 谢谢你的美言，但我们现在要谈的是碳定价。所以，我们继续吧。

2. “政策抑郁期”：碳定价的早期挫折

Steve Paikin: Before you helped create the Ecofiscal Commission in 2014, you went through not a policy discussion phase, but what you called a "policy depression" phase. What was that all about?

Chris Ragan: Well, I was lucky enough to have this great job of visiting economist at the Department of Finance in Ottawa. It's called the Clifford Clark Visiting Economist, and I was there in 2009 and half of 2010. One of the things that I was involved in when I was there was evaluating the emerging climate policy plan that the federal government was then working on. The federal government was working on a national cap-and-trade system, and it was being developed mostly within Environment Canada. So at Finance Canada, I was put in charge of making contact with Environment Canada, finding out what the plan was, and evaluating it. And one of the things we learned, and it was a really important thing, is that the national cap-and-trade system that was being developed at the time was based on fairly heroic principles, I will say. And for several reasons, we thought that this was going to be a plan that would be effective at reducing emissions, but it would actually be much more costly than it needed to be. So through a series of meetings, this plan ended up being scuttled.

And at the time I thought, okay, this is good. My naive belief was, "Great, this high-cost policy has now been terminated before it was even implemented, and now we can actually design a much better carbon pricing system." Well, that was my naive belief. What the government actually did was they started by doing nothing, and then they started thinking about sector-by-sector regulations, which would be even higher cost. And that's when I went through what I like to call my "policy depression" phase. And what that looked like was me staring out of my 20th-floor window asking, "What do you have to do to get good carbon policy or climate policy around here?" And that's when I kind of thought, well, this has become a political football. And the key objection to climate policy appeared to be the belief that this would be bad for the economy. And so my idea was, if you had a group of economists who were sort of unimpeachable, policy-savvy economists that were pitching a policy that would be good for the environment and, if you did it right, good for the economy, then hopefully people like Jim Flaherty and John Baird and Stephen Harper wouldn't be able to object. And that was what turned into, ultimately, a few years later, the Ecofiscal Commission.

Steve Paikin: 在 2014 年您协助创立生态财政委员会之前，您经历的不是一个政策讨论阶段，而是您所称的“政策抑郁期”。那究竟是怎么回事？

Chris Ragan: 嗯，我很幸运曾在渥太华的财政部担任客座经济学家，这个职位被称为“克利福德·克拉克客座经济学家”，我在那里工作了 2009 年和 2010 年上半年。我当时参与的一项工作是评估联邦政府正在制定的气候政策计划。当时联邦政府正在推行一个全国性的“限额与交易”体系（Cap-and-Trade：一种市场化的减排机制，政府设定排放总量上限，企业可在市场上交易排放配额），主要由加拿大环境部负责制定。所以在财政部，我负责与环境部联系，了解计划内容并进行评估。我们了解到一件非常重要的事情，那就是当时正在制定的这个全国性限额与交易体系，其基础是一些相当“英勇”的原则。出于几个原因，我们认为这个计划虽然能有效减少排放，但其成本会远超必要水平。因此，经过一系列会议，这个计划最终被取消了。

当时我想，这很好。我天真地相信：“太棒了，这个高成本的政策在实施前就被终止了，现在我们可以设计一个更好的碳定价体系了。”然而，那是我天真的想法。政府的实际做法是，先是无所作为，然后开始考虑分行业制定法规，而这将导致更高的成本。就在那时，我进入了我所说的“政策抑郁期”。那段日子的情景就是，我凝视着我 20 楼办公室窗外的景色，自问：“到底要怎么做才能在这里推行好的碳政策或气候政策？”那时我开始意识到，这已经变成了一个政治皮球。而反对气候政策的关键理由似乎是认为这会对经济不利。于是我的想法是，如果能有一群无可指摘、精通政策的经济学家，提出一个既对环境有利，如果操作得当，也对经济有利的政策，那么希望像吉姆·弗莱厄蒂（Jim Flaherty）、约翰·贝尔德（John Baird）和斯蒂芬·哈珀（Stephen Harper）这样的人就无法反对了。这最终在几年后，促成了生态财政委员会的诞生。

3. 生态财政委员会的成立与希望

Steve Paikin: Well, in fact, in 2014, that commission did get created and a year later, Justin Trudeau won the prime ministership, promising to bring in a price on carbon. And I wonder whether you felt like taking a victory lap at that time.

Chris Ragan: Well, we didn't want to take a victory lap in 2015 because it took a few years, but we were involved behind the scenes in discussing with the new Liberal government about what their policy might look like. We were also involved, I mean, we were talking to any government around the country who wanted to talk about climate policy. We certainly spoke to the Ontario government of Kathleen Wynne at the time. We were speaking to the Alberta government of Rachel Notley. We're speaking to other governments as well. And the policies that got implemented in Alberta and then subsequently by the federal government, we thought were pretty good policies. They were basically three parts to their climate policies. Number one, there was a carbon price on about 80% or a little bit above 80% of emissions in the jurisdiction. There was a rebate system that made sure that that carbon pricing wasn't going to actually drive people into poverty. It wasn't going to reduce their purchasing power. And the third part, which was the much less appreciated part, but maybe even more important, was that there was an industrial carbon pricing part. The Alberta policy looked like that. The federal policy that got implemented by the Trudeau government looked like that. And so by the time the federal policy was introduced in 2019, I suppose we kind of felt like things were looking good.

Steve Paikin: Any champagne corks popped?

Chris Ragan: I can't remember. I do like champagne periodically, but I don't remember whether we drank on that particular day.

Steve Paikin: 事实上，在 2014 年，那个委员会确实成立了。一年后，贾斯汀·特鲁多（Justin Trudeau）赢得了总理职位，并承诺引入碳定价。我很好奇，当时您是否感觉可以庆祝胜利了？

Chris Ragan: 嗯，我们在 2015 年并不想庆祝胜利，因为这还需要几年时间。但我们在幕后参与了与新上任的自由党政府的讨论，探讨他们的政策可能会是什么样子。我们还与全国各地任何愿意谈论气候政策的政府进行了交流。我们当然与当时的安大略省省长凯瑟琳·韦恩（Kathleen Wynne）的政府谈过，也与阿尔伯塔省省长雷切尔·诺特利（Rachel Notley）的政府谈过，还有其他政府。我们认为，在阿尔伯塔省以及后来由联邦政府实施的政策都相当不错。这些气候政策基本上包含三个部分：第一，对该司法管辖区内约 80%或稍多的排放物征收碳价格；第二，有一个退税制度，确保碳定价不会让人们陷入贫困，也不会降低他们的购买力；第三，也是一个不太受重视但可能更重要的部分，就是针对工业的碳定价。阿尔伯塔省的政策是这样，特鲁多政府实施的联邦政策也是这样。所以，到 2019 年联邦政策出台时，我想我们感觉情况看起来还不错。

Steve Paikin: 开香槟庆祝了吗？

Chris Ragan: 我不记得了。我确实偶尔喜欢喝香槟，但我不记得那天我们是否喝了。

4. 2015 年的回顾：公众对碳定价的态度

Steve Paikin: Gotcha. Well, we did have you on this program in April of 2015, so this is more than a decade ago, and we did talk about all of this stuff. So, let's go down memory lane and take a little snippet of you back then and then we shall come back and chat again. Sheldon, if you would.

Chris Ragan (2015): Chris, how do you talk to the person who wrote that letter to the Globe and Mail and convince them this is not just another tax by a different name?

Well, I think it's a great question and it's a great challenge. I don't think we have to convince people of one thing, is that most people actually want to make progress on this issue. That's exactly what your survey suggested. But I don't think they have a clear view forward. They're not quite sure how to do this. And I think there ends up being a lot of finger-pointing. We have to understand that we are all in this together as consumers and as producers. We are all living in a way that produces pollution and we should just think about those costs.

Steve Paikin: I guess the first obvious question is, have you had laser surgery since then? No. But I stopped wearing my glasses during COVID and I think maybe my eyes are getting better. So, okay, very good. Second question is, if you could zip back to 2015 and talk to that Chris Ragan of a decade ago and give him a single piece of advice that would be worth knowing a decade later, what would you tell him?

Steve Paikin: 好的。我们在 2015 年 4 月，也就是十多年前，确实邀请您上过这个节目，当时我们就谈论了所有这些事情。所以，让我们一起回顾一下，看看当时您的一小段采访，然后再回来继续聊。Sheldon，麻烦你了。

Chris Ragan (2015): 克里斯，你如何与给《环球邮报》写信的那个人交谈，并说服他们这不仅仅是换了个名字的另一种税？

嗯，我认为这是一个很好的问题，也是一个巨大的挑战。有一件事我们不必去说服人们，那就是大多数人实际上都希望在这个问题上取得进展。这正是你们的调查所显示的。但我认为他们没有一个清晰的前进方向，他们不太确定该怎么做。而且我认为最终会有很多相互指责。我们必须明白，作为消费者和生产者，我们都在一条船上。我们都以一种产生污染的方式生活，我们应该思考这些成本。

Steve Paikin: 我想第一个显而易见的问题是，从那以后你做过激光手术吗？

Chris Ragan: 没有。但我在 COVID 期间停止戴眼镜了，我想也许我的视力正在变好。

Steve Paikin: 好的，非常好。第二个问题是，如果你能回到 2015 年，与十年前的那个克里斯·里根对话，并给他一条在十年后仍然有价值的建议，你会告诉他什么？

5. 碳定价为何沦为政治足球？

Chris Ragan: Well, it's interesting that that clip, I don't disagree with anything that I just said in that clip. I think the problem was in some sense elsewhere. I mean, I think it is still true that most Canadians care about climate change and most Canadians want their governments to do something on climate change. Now, I think in the very recent months, other things have presented themselves as big issues. So I think Canada's access to global markets and our challenges on our prosperity is taking the top couple of issues in priorities, and climate change is a little bit lower down. But when it comes to climate, I think Canadians still care about it, but what happened is I think that the carbon price became a serious political football. And I didn't think it had to. And we can talk about why it did become a political football.

Steve Paikin: Do that if you would. Pick up the story there. Why do you think that happened?

Chris Ragan: So I think when the carbon price... remember that the provinces acted first. I mean, BC had a carbon price pre-2008. Alberta had one by 2015. Ontario had it briefly, and then that was repealed by the Doug Ford government. Quebec has a cap-and-trade system that is still in place that nobody talks about. It is a political non-issue in my home province. But I think what happened federally is that I would say three things came together. Number one was that there was a political opposition. You remember the Maclean's cover story called "The Resistance," which was small 'c' or large 'C' conservative political opponents to carbon pricing. Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, Scott Moe, there was a bunch of them. And in fact, Pierre Poilievre was a very, very effective opponent. He's a very effective communicator. And so that resistance developed a voice, and they were very effective at doing so.

That's one thing. I actually think that many times when those opponents were speaking about carbon pricing, I think they were actually misrepresenting what carbon pricing was about. Almost never did they talk about the rebates. They talked about the carbon tax, but they never talked about the rebates. And I think it's really sort of intellectually unfair to talk about one side and not both sides. So, that was one thing. The second thing that happened, and it helped those opponents, was the inflation that happened starting in 2021, 2022, 2023, which was caused really by supply chain disruptions caused by COVID. It was added to significantly by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And this inflation had almost nothing to do with the carbon price. Countries that had no carbon price went through a very, very similar inflation experience. But it was very easy for those opponents of carbon pricing to say, "Well, hold on. Carbon pricing is about driving up the price of some things. Higher prices means inflation. We're witnessing higher inflation. Therefore, carbon pricing is to blame for the high inflation." That's a very appealing, simple argument, but it's wrong. Empirically, it's been shown that it was much less than one percentage point of the inflation that we saw over that time. Something like 0.15 of one percentage point was due to the carbon price. So it was almost nothing, but not quite nothing.

Chris Ragan: 嗯，有趣的是，我完全同意我在那个片段里所说的一切。我认为问题在某种程度上出在别处。我的意思是，大多数加拿大人仍然关心气候变化，并希望他们的政府为此采取行动，这一点依然是事实。不过，我认为在最近几个月，其他问题变得更加突出。所以我认为，加拿大进入全球市场的能力以及我们在繁荣方面面临的挑战，已经成为优先事项中的头等大事，而气候变化的地位则有所下降。但在气候问题上，我认为加拿大人仍然关心它，但发生的情况是，碳价格变成了一个严重的政治皮球。而我本不认为它必须如此。我们可以谈谈为什么它会变成一个政治皮球。

Steve Paikin: 如果可以的话，请您接着谈。您认为为什么会这样？

Chris Ragan: 我认为，当碳价格……要记住，各省是首先行动的。卑诗省在 2008 年之前就有了碳价格，阿尔伯塔省在 2015 年也有了。安大略省曾短暂实行过，但后来被道格·福特（Doug Ford）政府废除了。魁北克省至今仍有一个没人谈论的限额与交易体系，这在我的家乡省份是一个政治上无关紧要的问题。但我认为，在联邦层面，有三件事汇集在一起。第一，出现了政治反对派。你还记得《麦克林》杂志那篇名为“抵抗运动”的封面故事吗，那是指对碳定价持反对意见的保守派政治家。杰森·肯尼（Jason Kenney）、道格·福特、斯科特·莫（Scott Moe），有一大批人。事实上，皮埃尔·波利耶夫（Pierre Poilievre）是一位非常非常有效的反对者，他是一个非常有效的沟通者。所以那个抵抗运动形成了自己的声音，并且非常有效地做到了这一点。

这是一方面。我实际上认为，很多时候当那些反对者谈论碳定价时，他们实际上在歪曲碳定价的本质。他们几乎从不谈论退税。他们谈论碳税，但从不谈论退税。我认为，只谈一面而不谈两面，在智力上是不公平的。所以，这是一件事。第二件事，这对那些反对者有帮助，那就是从 2021 年开始的通货膨胀，这主要是由 COVID 引起的供应链中断造成的，俄罗斯入侵乌克兰也显著加剧了这一问题。而这次通胀与碳价格几乎毫无关系。没有碳价格的国家也经历了非常非常相似的通胀。但对于那些碳定价的反对者来说，很容易说：“等等，碳定价就是为了提高某些东西的价格。价格上涨意味着通胀。我们正在经历高通胀。因此，碳定价是高通胀的罪魁祸首。”这是一个非常有吸引力、简单的论点，但它是错误的。经验证明，在我们那段时间看到的通胀中，由碳价格引起的部分远不到一个百分点，大约是 0.15 个百分点。所以几乎可以忽略不计，但又并非完全没有。

6. 沟通失误与未来展望

Chris Ragan: But the third thing that happened is that in the face of that opposition and the blame, the connection between carbon pricing and affordability and inflation, was that the federal government, I think, did a very poor job in explaining carbon pricing. And it's not an easy thing to explain. They couldn't really explain why carbon pricing was better than alternative approaches. They certainly were unable or unwilling to explain the role of the rebates. So the rebates ended up being very confusing to many people. A lot of people just didn't realize there were rebates. Some people that realized that there were rebates thought that it was kind of crazy because here's the government taxing with one hand and giving a rebate with the other. So that seemed to be incoherent. And I think the federal government just did a terrible job in communicating what this was all about. So those three things came together. And you know, they didn't have to come together, but that's the way the world turned out. Those three things came together, and we ended up with carbon pricing being seen by the Liberal government, and especially the new Liberal government under Mark Carney, as a liability. And so that was his first action as prime minister was to get rid of that retail carbon price.

Steve Paikin: Let me pick up on the third item of your list there, and that is to say, did you have a moment when Justin Trudeau was the prime minister, or did you ever approach the environment minister or any other cabinet ministers in the previous Liberal government and say to them, "You guys are blowing this. We are losing the messaging war. You guys only talk about carbon taxes and not carbon rebates, etc., etc." Did you wave a red flag at their face at any point?

Chris Ragan: So, I had conversations, and I'm sure other people on the Ecofiscal Commission did as well. I had conversations with the minister's office at Environment Canada and with the PMO. And I didn't need to tell them that they were blowing it on a communications basis. I mean, those conversations were typically instigated by them, and they knew that they needed communications help. They were wondering how they could make particular points. And so, you know, I did what I could. And with Ecofiscal, we wrote all kinds of op-eds in all kinds of formats and newspapers or blog sites across the country, making the point not just about rebates and communications, but just talking a lot about carbon pricing and why it makes sense. We did what we could, and it wasn't enough. My wife thinks that we ended the Ecofiscal Commission several years too early. I don't know whether that's right or not. But we planned to go for six years, and we ran for six years, and by the end of 2019, we were done.

Steve Paikin: The federal conservatives obviously were the strongest opposition to this, and you're quite right, Pierre Poilievre was just quite masterful in the way he demonized this plan. But you had a populist conservative leader in Preston Manning on the commission. You had a Red Tory leader in Jean Charest on the commission. Was there any attempt to say to either of them, "Can you please go out there and talk to Poilievre, talk to conservatives, speak in conservative circles and try and get this thing back on the rails?"

Chris Ragan: I loved our advisory board at Ecofiscal, and Preston Manning called it the "transpartisan" advisory board. That was done for a reason. We knew that we would be stepping into a political minefield, and we wanted that sort of cover and representation on our advisory board. They were very good ambassadors for the Ecofiscal Commission. But I don't think in retrospect, and maybe we believed this at the time, that just picking up the phone and having Preston Manning talk to Pierre Poilievre, which may well have happened, would have necessarily changed his position. I think it's now pretty clear why Pierre Poilievre and other conservative leaders opposed this: because they're the opposition, and they saw a policy that was being promoted by the Trudeau Liberal government, and they opposed it. I don't think they wanted to say they don't believe in climate change; that has become almost unacceptable. So, what they did is they complained about the carbon price put forward by the Trudeau government, but they didn't offer an alternative. But that became a very effective political position, especially after that inflation started.

Steve Paikin: Indeed. All right, down to our last minute and I want to ask you one last question, which is given that Mark Carney has zeroed out the consumer aspect of the carbon tax and the industrial tax remains, but that's the only one that remains. Do you believe we can still get to where we need to get to with just that?

Chris Ragan: Well, it's a great question, and I have never heard Mark Carney endorse our current 2030 targets. I don't know whether he does. I think he's going to have a hard time. He has claimed that he would be ramping up the industrial carbon pricing system, and if he did, then it could do more work. But the removal of the retail carbon price is going to leave a significant gap in our policy package, and so it needs to be replaced. So either it needs to be replaced by something else, and he's talked about having the industrial carbon pricing system raise resources that would then be used to provide consumer incentives, but no details on that. So we don't really know what he means by that. So I think he is going to have a very challenging time designing a policy that gets us to our 2030 targets and is a reasonably low-cost approach. I mean, there's a reason why economists advocate carbon pricing. It's not just a randomly chosen way to reduce emissions; it's the lowest-cost way that we know of. So, I think he's going to have a hard time doing that. And I think the truth is that his focus is on other things right now. And I'm not so sure that that's inappropriate, frankly. I mean, as much as I care about climate change, I also care about overall Canadian economic prosperity and our access to global markets and making sure we're carrying out our defense commitments and other things. So back to my earlier point that I think climate has been pushed down a couple of notches in the priorities of Canadians, and also it's been pushed down in the priorities of our governments, and that shouldn't be too surprising. So I think Mark Carney's got a very interesting set of tasks in front of him.

Chris Ragan: 但第三件事是，面对这种反对和指责，以及碳定价与可负担性和通货膨胀之间的联系，我认为联邦政府在解释碳定价方面做得非常糟糕。这本身就不是一件容易解释的事情。他们没能真正解释清楚为什么碳定价优于其他替代方案。他们当然也无法或不愿解释退税的作用。所以，退税最终让很多人感到困惑。很多人根本就没意识到有退税。一些意识到有退税的人则认为这有点疯狂，因为政府一手征税，另一手又退税，这似乎是自相矛盾的。我认为联邦政府在沟通这件事的本质上做得非常糟糕。所以这三件事凑到了一起。你知道，它们本不必凑到一起，但世界就是这样发展的。这三件事凑到了一起，最终导致碳定价被自由党政府，特别是马克·卡尼（Mark Carney）领导的新一届自由党政府，视为一个负累。所以，他作为总理的第一个行动就是取消了那个零售碳价格。

Steve Paikin: 让我接着您清单上的第三点说。在贾斯汀·特鲁多担任总理期间，您是否曾找到环境部长或前自由党政府的其他内阁部长，对他们说：“你们搞砸了。我们在信息战中正在失败。你们只谈碳税，不谈碳退税等等。”您是否在任何时候向他们发出过警告？

Chris Ragan: 我确实进行过对话，我相信生态财政委员会的其他人也一样。我与环境部的部长办公室和总理办公室（PMO）都进行过对话。我不需要告诉他们他们在沟通上搞砸了，因为那些对话通常是由他们发起的，他们知道自己需要沟通上的帮助，他们想知道如何能更好地阐述某些观点。所以，我尽力而为。通过生态财政委员会，我们在全国各地的各种专栏、报纸和博客网站上发表了各种文章，不仅是关于退税和沟通，也大量地谈论碳定价及其合理性。我们尽力了，但还不够。我妻子认为我们过早地结束了生态财政委员会。我不知道这是否正确，但我们计划运行六年，也确实运行了六年，到 2019 年底，我们的使命就完成了。

Steve Paikin: 联邦保守党显然是这项政策最强烈的反对者，您说得很对，皮埃尔·波利耶夫在妖魔化这个计划方面确实手法高超。但你们委员会有民粹主义保守派领袖普雷斯顿·曼宁，也有“红色保守党”（Red Tory：加拿大一种中间偏右的保守主义思想，强调社会责任）领袖让·查雷斯特。你们是否曾尝试让他们去和波利耶夫或保守派圈子沟通，试图让这件事重回正轨？

Chris Ragan: 我非常喜欢我们在生态财政委员会的顾问委员会，普雷斯顿·曼宁称之为“跨党派”顾问委员会。这样做是有原因的。我们知道我们会踏入一个政治雷区，我们希望顾问委员会能提供这种掩护和代表性。他们是委员会非常好的大使。但我回想起来，并不认为，仅仅是让普雷斯顿·曼宁给皮埃尔·波利耶夫打个电话，就必然能改变他的立场，尽管这很可能发生过。我现在认为，皮埃尔·波利耶夫和其他保守派领袖反对这个政策的原因已经很清楚了：因为他们是反对党，他们看到一个由特鲁多自由党政府推行的政策，所以他们就反对。我不认为他们想说自己不相信气候变化，因为这已经变得几乎不可接受。所以，他们的做法是抱怨特鲁多政府提出的碳价格，但并不提供替代方案。但这成了一个非常有效的政治立场，尤其是在通胀开始之后。

Steve Paikin: 确实。好了，我们只剩最后一分钟了，我想问您最后一个问题。鉴于马克·卡尼已经取消了碳税的消费者部分，只保留了工业税。您相信仅凭这一点，我们还能达到我们的目标吗？

Chris Ragan: 这是一个很好的问题。我从未听过马克·卡尼支持我们目前的 2030 年目标，我也不知道他是否支持。我认为他会面临很大的困难。他曾声称要加强工业碳定价体系，如果他这么做了，那确实能起到更大的作用。但取消零售碳价格将在我们的政策组合中留下一个显著的缺口，所以它需要被替代。要么用别的来替代——他谈到过用工业碳定价体系筹集资源来为消费者提供激励，但没有细节——要么……我们真的不知道他是什么意思。所以我认为，他要设计一个既能让我们达到 2030 年目标，又是一个成本合理的方案，将会非常具有挑战性。经济学家之所以倡导碳定价，是有原因的，这并非随机选择的减排方式，而是我们所知的成本最低的方式。所以我认为他会很难做到这一点。而且我认为，事实是，他现在的重点在其他事情上。坦率地说，我也不确定这是否不合适。我的意思是，尽管我关心气候变化和好的气候政策，我也关心加拿大的整体经济繁荣、我们进入全球市场的渠道，以及确保我们履行国防承诺等其他事情。所以回到我之前的观点，我认为气候问题在加拿大人的优先事项中已经下降了几个等级，在我们的政府优先事项中也下降了，这不应该太令人惊讶。所以我认为马克·卡尼面前有一系列非常有趣的任务。