The most recent extensive economic study was published by the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy. The focus of the study was to evaluate what the costs to Canada would be if it implemented carbon pricing and if the U.S. didn't.
What they found was that if Canada implemented a $30 a tonne carbon charge and the U.S. didn't then the economic effect should still be small.
http://www.climateprosperity.ca/eng/...report-eng.pdf
Specifically, if you look at page 120 of that report, it shows what the costs per province would be. In the business as usual scenario (no carbon pricing) Alberta's growth was 2.1%. If Canada adopted a $30 per tonne charge and the U.S. didn't then the growth was 2.0%. A .1% change.
Now these costs are likely underestimated. The model they used assumes that economic shifting to less carbon intensive sectors is an imperfect substitute for Canadian industrial and manufacturing demand. Less technical, this means that as we all adjust to move to less fossil fuel intensive energy use, new products and output to satisfy that new demand will come from at least half of domestic production. This is too optimistic but I understand why the modellers did it this way, because they don't have a global energy-economy model to look at specific sector's trade flows. What I'm saying is that the costs are likely to be higher because production would be outsourced outside of Canada in some sectors.
But even then, the impact isn't likely to be that severe. There are many solid arguments that the Oil Sands sector is significantly over-invested in. Right now in a world with impending climate change policies we might be making a serious strategic miscalculation in putting all of our eggs in the unconventional oil extraction basket. That's not to say that no unconventional should be happening but that we should get the right economic signals to diversify the economy more. That may initially hurt people in oil and gas, but if we believe that oil is getting scarcer and because oil is subject to international markets we're simply delaying extraction rates that will happen anyway into the future.
Furthermore, to address transplant's concern you can design a carbon pricing system that recycles the revenues from charging carbon proportinately back to the province's that pay them so that there are no net transfers to any one province. The CD Howe institute (hardly left wing) is recommending this:
http://www.climateprosperity.ca/eng/...report-eng.pdf
What they find is that the inter-provincial effects are essentially minimized under this type of policy.
Finally, I'm getting really tired of the jobs/environment debate because, in my mind the environment trumps. The environment is the natural capital that allows us to have all of these jobs, especially in the resource extracting country that is Canada. We complain that carbon pricing will kill jobs, well guess what, so will climate change! Imagine if summertime flows of the Athabasca were reduced another 50% over the next 20 years and how that would affect oil extracting? Because it's a possibility.
It's this no more than the end of our nose thinking, from one day to the next with only concern for myself that is really going to be out downfall. We need to move on to a cleaner energy system that's the bottom line. Either we do it sooner, learn the lessons and make for more economic opportunity down the line or we are dragged there with potentially huge costs and consequences.