(This column originally appeared on the Toronto Sun)
Saskatchewan farmer Levi Wood and Agriculture Canada bureaucrats agree on two things: 1) Canadian farmers are producing more food while reducing emissions; and, 2) hitting farmers with a carbon tax won’t reduce emissions faster.
“The agricultural sector is producing more without increasing its GHG emissions,” wrote the Ottawa bureaucrats in an internal memo entitled Potential Impacts of Carbon Pricing on the Primary Agricultural Sector. The memo came to light through access-to-information requests filed by investigative journalists at Blacklock’s Reporter and goes on to say the federal government’s proposed carbon tax would be unlikely to incent change because it’s “too low.”