Statement made on 02 February 2011 by Senator Grant Mitchell
Hon. Grant Mitchell:
Honourable senators, it is becoming increasingly apparent that many business groups, from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, are now urging Ottawa to implement a carbon-pricing mechanism, a market mechanism to deal with climate change, rather than using a heavy-handed regulatory approach.
Ironically, in spite of that input from these powerful business groups that, one would think, would know about the markets, the government's new rookie Minister of the Environment has just announced that he is going to regulate. Of course, he is not the real Minister of the Environment; Mr. Harper is the real Minister of the Environment, making this all the more paradoxical.
Could the Leader of the Government in the Senate tell us why we should not be absolutely shocked that this hard-nosed, market-worshipping, business-friendly Conservative government is turning around and imposing the regulatory, big-government, command-and-control government approach over and above the market-driven mechanism that business wants?
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