The New Brunswick government is forming a committee to look at the steps it can take to fight climate change at home.
“We want to make sure that we can – number one – protect our environment, but at the same time, we also have to take up the reality that we want economic development, so that’s why we’re forming a committee also,” says New Brunswick Environment Minister Brian Kenny.
For now, Kenny is suggesting the committee’s focus will be wide in scope.
“We want to have members of the legislative assembly representative, to have an open discussion about climate,” says Kenny.
New Brunswick Green Party Leader David Coon says genuine change will demand more than just a policy change here and there.
“We’ve got to change the way we consume and use energy, for heating, for transportation, for industry, electricity generation,” says Coon. “There’s some pretty big decisions that will have to be made.”
Premier Brian Gallant has already put a revenue-neutral carbon tax on the table, which would be offset by a tax cut elsewhere.
The opposition says New Brunswick must do its part to fight climate change, but within reason.
“A tax is a tax is a tax,” says Brian Keirstead, the environment critic for the Progressive Conservatives. “And a lot of this boils down to how much can the population of New Brunswick afford to pay?”
Environmental groups say they want to see more than just a carbon tax debate.
“Preserving wetlands, forests and coastal shoreline, areas that can buffer some of these communities by protecting wetlands and salt marshes, this absorbs a lot of the water,” says Andrew Holland of the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Kenny says he will have more to say about who will be on the committee soon.
As for the committee’s work as a whole, government is not giving a firm timeline on when it will form, or how long it will take for the committee to reach a conclusion.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Nick Moore
