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The article presents the author's opinion on the issue of carbon emission, carbon trading and pricing for Canada. He considers that in the step of the European Union, Canada should not concentrate on carbon trading and instead should face up to what reducing emissions would cost. Further he asserts that it should be the government, rather than traders that should be allowed to set the prices of carbon. The main reason on his opposing a cost setting, is the uncertainty of price, both in the carbon-tax and cap-and-trade system. He further warns about the alternative means of carbon pricing in Canada, that have emerged due to confusion over objectives, which resultantly hampers a clear assessment of policy designs.

This article focuses on the efforts of Canada to develop a trading platform for greenhouse-gas emission credits. Steve Teller is a man whose job is on hold. He's project manager of the Canadian Climate Exchange, a company that the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange formed two years ago to develop a trading platform for greenhouse-gas emissions credits, which corporations will be able to buy and sell in order to meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. There is a small swarm of brokers, consultants, fledgling exchanges and other entrepreneurial companies expecting that Canada's Kyoto commitments--to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012--will spawn a new industry around the trading of emission credits. A trading system gives businesses that face pollution restrictions the choice of paying the government for credits, subsidizing emission reduction projects elsewhere, or paying for internal measures that reduce emissions, whichever is cheaper. These are companies in the electricity generation, oil and gas, mining and heavy manufacturing industries, which together are expected to produce about half of Canada's total greenhouse-gas emissions by 2010. The Kyoto Protocol went into effect on Feb. 16, and yet Canada's plan to meet its steep--some say impossible--emission reduction obligations is still not fully known.