OTTAWA: Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Timothy Lane got one thing right in his speech about climate change to a Montreal finance and sustainability conference Thursday. That was when he said of the Bank of Canada: “We are not experts on climate science.” Unfortunately, he then proceeded with a speech bizarrely entitled “Thermometer Rising — Climate Change and Canada’s Economic Future”.
It was long on climate alarmism and short on useful commentary about the financial implications for Canadians of carbon pricing, which one would think the Bank of Canada would be concerned about. What, for example, are Lane’s views on Canada imposing a national carbon price in the absence of one in the United States, our largest trading partner? We don’t know, since Lane said both that, “carbon pricing is more effective if the same price is in place everywhere in the world” and that, “even if there were no global agreement, it would be in the interest of … Canada to set a meaningful carbon price.”





