We know taxes slow down economic growth, so if you add a carbon tax you have to also minus other taxes. You can't take more money out of people's pockets. I don't think you can build a consensus in this country about environmental policy if you're going to make people poor.

I have a broad view that we have to try and get to "yes" on projects. On economic projects anybody can say no. My child can say no. But I think the hard thing to do is to figure out how you get to "yes" and you protect the environment.

I think you're never going to get somewhere ambitious if you don't start out with great ambitions. What I would say is: we got a start. That to me is a very significant thing. Here we were, a historic meeting to talk about climate change.

We've excused all houses up to $750,000 from our property-purchase tax. We have more to do. There are other measures we intend to take to try and address housing affordability. There are things we can do. There are limits to it and we can't do it by ourselves.

I would ask that people judge us, judge me, based on our record, based on what we actually did.

hy is it you can impose a new tax and keep your economy growing? Only if you cut other taxes by exactly the same amount. The problem with carbon taxes around the world has been you dump a new tax onto the economy and it's just adding more tax.

It is time for conservatives to do what they do best and insist that a wasteful, inefficient government program gets off the books. Small government and the death penalty don't go together.