Ottawa (Platts)--25Feb2008

Canada's minority Conservative government has been told on the eve of its
third budget that phasing in fees for each tonne of greenhouse gas emissions
could generate at least $50 billion/year by 2020 and possibly twice that much.

The new revenue could free the government to cut personal income taxes
and increase support for renewable energy technololgies, according to the
report released Monday on Parliament Hill by environmental activist David
Suzuki through his Vancouver-based Suzuki Foundation.

The report was prepared in collaboration with Mark Jaccard, a professor
of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University in British
Columbia.

Suzuki, in comments here to reporters, said that, "We now know that
taxation is a very powerful incentive to discourage things that we don't want
and relief of taxes can encourage the things we want."

Having analysed a range of options for a federal carbon tax or
market-based carbon pricing, Suzuki and Jaccard described the findings as a
strong case for the government to introduce a carbon price that effectively
would be a fee on emissions.

"With the introduction of a carbon price, even a fairly high one,
Canada's economy would continue to grow rapidly," Jaccard said.