If there were any doubt that an NDP government would bring a different approach to energy policy than what we've seen under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government, those doubts were laid to rest on Tuesday in a speech Thomas Mulcair gave to the Economic Club of Canada.  The speech included no fewer than seven significant policy positions, not all of them new.  These positions are a combination of Mr. Mulcair's historic strengths and some red meat for the NDP base.  There's nowhere near enough detail provided to evaluate any of these policies, so hopefully we'll see more of that in the weeks and months to come, but kudos to Mr. Mulcair for putting the first bits on the table.

1. Cap-and-trade carbon

The first major policy statement comes in two parts.  Mr. Mulcair states that an NDP government will, "rise to meet our international climate change obligations by creating a cap-and-trade system that puts a clear market price on carbon." By our international obligations, we have to assume that he's referring to the Harper government's Copenhagen commitment to reduce our emissions to levels 17% below where they were in 2005 by the year 2020.  A recent report from Environment Canada showed that, with current federal and provincial policies in place, our emissions are expected to be less than 1% below our 2005 levels by 2020. If we don't do something, and fast, we'll miss our target by about 3 times today's emissions from the oil sands.

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