Ontario businesses want to know more about the provincial government's cap-and-trade plan, but they also want to have their say in what it will look like.

In April, the governing Liberals announced that Ontario will see a cap-and-trade system implemented by the provincial government, in a bid to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) released a report, outlining its recommendations for the province to follow in developing such a plan.

Matt Marchand, the president and CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the business community sees the need to limit greenhouse gases, but it also wants to remain competitive.

"I think we all share the goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions and it's a laudable goal, we want to participate in that, but we want to do it in such a way that protects jobs and grows our economy," he said in an interview on Tuesday.

For Windsor and Essex, Marchand said that the local economy has strength in sectors that still need to thrive in the future, even when a cap-and-trade system will be in place.

"We have a large transportation and industrial sector and we want to make sure that we're still in a position to grow that as time goes on," said Marchand.

The OCC report calls on the province to do an economic analysis of its proposed system and then release that information to the public.

While the OCC says that a move to a cap-and-trade system could create opportunities for businesses in Ontario, it sees potential problems in the system, depending on how it is designed.

Marchand said the province must realize that Ontario may be going in a direction that some other jurisdictions have, but that does not mean that the rest of the economy — in Canada and elsewhere — is on this path as of right now.

"If you look at the world economy, particularly the North American economy, a lot of jurisdictions are not in a cap-and-trade system," he said. "So if our competitors are not in a cap-and-trade system and we are, that may put us at a competitive disadvantage."

He said there are questions about what the implementation of a cap-and-trade system would do to the price of power.

"Our view is that everybody should be involved in a cap-and-trade system and hopefully at some point, they will," said Marchand.

"But if not, let's look at how we can design a system that recognizes Ontario's important contribution to the provincial economy and the national economy, so that's what we're looking for."