The federal and Ontario governments will face off today in the province's Court of Appeal over the Canadian climate change act in a confrontation that is, according to experts, both ideological and legal.
The Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford is challenging the federal law that came into effect on April 1. It imposes a tax on gasoline and other fossil fuels and charges to industrial polluters.
The law applies in provinces where there is no carbon pricing regime that meets national standards.
Like Saskatchewan before it, Ontario is asking its Court of Appeal to decide whether the federal law is constitutional.
According to a University of Ottawa law professor, Carissima Mathen, Doug Ford is trying to portray himself as the advocate of Ontarians against a too big central authority.
References are often sought for political as well as legal purposes, says Mathen. This is clearly a case where the province is using its power to go to court so that it can formulate a particular message.
The legal arguments advanced are complex and mysterious. They rely on the interpretation of the Constitution Act, 1867 and the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments.
Ontario essentially argues that the federal government is interfering with provincial jurisdiction by attempting to regulate the almost unlimited range of human activity that produces climate-altering pollution.
The provinces are able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions themselves, says the Ford government in one of its documents presented to the court. There is no need to expand the scope of federal jurisdiction to impose the same federal carbon price for all
.
For its part, the federal government insists that it responds correctly to an issue of national interest, climate change. According to him, the bill is intended to fill the gaps
when provincial measures are not up to the task.
Ottawa says that setting a carbon price is widely recognized as an effective and essential measure
to encourage the behavioral changes needed to reduce emissions from global warming.
Ontario, however, insists that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's strategy is an unconstitutional tax grab, even though Ottawa has the power to fight the 33 pollutants currently covered by the law.
David Estrin, an environmental law specialist at Osgoode Hall Law School, argues that Ford used the court system as a political battlefield. The federal law, he said, only applies in Ontario because the Conservative government has abandoned the provincial carbon strategy put in place by its predecessor.
It's certainly ideological, he says. He has completely flip-flopped since he launched the protest. It is Mr. Ford who does so for purely absurd and illogical reasons that have no economic meaning.