Northern Ontario businesses question Ford government cap and trade repeal

There are still a lot of questions for northern Ontario businesses following the Ford government's decision to cancel the cap and trade program.

Last month, the PC government repealed the program, with Premier Doug Ford vilifying it as a "rip-off."

Ontario's cap and trade was a market-based system that set a hard cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Companies that came in under the cap could sell "credits" to those who exceeded the limit.

The idea was to create incentives for industry to invest in reducing their carbon footprint.

Richard Eberhardt, the program director at Re-Think Green, a Sudbury group that works with local businesses to find energy efficiencies and apply for the incentives, said those businesses are left to fund major energy-saving projects on their own, or find other funding avenues.

"The possibility that they may still get some of this funding I think is there," Eberhardt said. "There's certainly a good taste for it. It's a government that says that they want to support Ontario business. This is one important way.

Eberhardt said many local businesses had applied for the cap and trade incentives, and were banking on the funding to make expensive changes to their operations.

"If it's a large business it's using a lot of energy," Eberhardt said. "To make a significant impact they need to have a big project, but not all businesses need to have big projects in order to make real differences."

Eberhardt said he expects some projects could still be funded since industries have already paid into the fund for their emissions.

Last week, the Ontario government said it planned to take the position that a federal carbon tax would be unconstitutional, putting into question the approximately $3 billion in credits that companies have already purchased.

They added they will decide on a case-by-case basis whether some initiatives previously funded by the program will be paid.