Canadian Conservative Foggy Vision for Fighting Climate Change

CTV/Canada
Jun 06, 2006

A long, summer has been predicted for Canadians this year. And when it's over, perhaps they'll have a clearer idea of what the Conservative government plans to do about climate change.

The Tories, who plan to announce a policy this fall, would like to move away from the Kyoto Accord signed by the Liberals, but no one should be surprised by that.

Harper campaigned against it as Conservative leader in 2004.

The 2006 Tory platform document said that a Conservative government would fight greenhouse gas emissions with "a made-in-Canada plan, emphasising (sic) new technologies, developed in concert with the provinces and in coordination with other major industrial countries."

Conservatives of all stripes, especially from coal-and-oil-rich Alberta, have always opposed Kyoto. Twenty-eight Conservative MPs represent Alberta, the only solid-blue province in the country.

Before Kyoto's ratification by the Liberal government of the day in late 2002, Alberta's Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein worried doing so could trigger Western separatism. According to a Decima poll released June 4, Albertans prefer an alternative to Kyoto by a 50-41 margin, although 59 per cent of Canadians say Kyoto is important for the nation and Canada should not withdraw.

Opposition isn't limited to Canadian conservatives who live in the oil patch.

U.S. President George W. Bush, a conservative and one-time oilman, pulled his country out of Kyoto in 2001. The Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard, also a conservative, never ratified Kyoto.

The Bush administration thought it was unfair that India and China were excluded from emissions limits. Those two countries will have to start following emission reduction targets in 2012.

What did Bush propose instead? Voluntary emissions controls and "new technologies."

Australia said it wouldn't join unless the U.S. did and developing countries got fully involved.

Howard told Australia's Parliament: "For us to ratify the protocol would cost us jobs and damage our industry" -- also an American excuse.

Although then-Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien signed on to Kyoto, Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson wrote on May 24 that "stupidly, the Chretien government let the inflated and phony Gore commitment dictate Canada's policy, since the prime minister instructed Canada's negotiators to stick close to the U.S. position purely for domestic political optics."

Simpson was referring to former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore, who agreed to cut U.S. emissions seven per cent below 1990 levels. Canada agreed to a six per cent cut. The overall average for the 35 developed countries affected is five per cent.

The new Conservative government said Canadian emissions have risen 35 per cent above its agreed target; according to UN figures cited by the Globe, the figure is closer to 24 per cent above 1990 levels.

No matter, the Conservative government has said there is no way it can meet its Kyoto target by 2012. Environmentalists disagree.

The Bonn talks

By happenstance, the UN Convention on Climate Change held negotiations in Bonn, Germany between May 15-26. Last year in Montreal, former Liberal environment minister Stephane Dion chaired the meeting. He got broad consensus for talks on a second round of reductions. The Bonn talks are following through on that.

So what was Canada's strategy in Bonn?

In a memo obtained by The Globe and Mail, the government instructed negotiators in Bonn to oppose tougher targets and ask for more lenient ones for Canada.

More ominously to the environmental community, the instructions suggested Ottawa wanted the Kyoto Protocol to disappear.

"Canada does not support a continuation of the status quo beyond 2012, and has no preconceived view on how a new commitment period might be structured."

In addition, any new agreement "must include the USA and all major developing country emitters and allow for different types of commitments based on national circumstances. Canada would ideally like to see the two tracks related to the future converge into a single inclusive and effective approach and believes the Convention Dialogue has more potential for this."

The Liberals called for the return of the Canadian delegation.

During a May 21 appearance on CTV's Question Period, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose said Harper was willing to take on "new commitments" with respects to fighting climate change - but didn't really define what those commitments might be.

"If an international consensus emerges, that might be a new agreement, that might be something outside of the Kyoto Protocol, inside the Kyoto Protocol, but if it includes all of our international partners, Canada will be at the table," she said.

To interpret that statement, remember that Howard addressed Canada's Parliament on May 18, saying his country and Canada have "common interests" in the area of climate change - although he claimed his country will meet its Kyoto target.

While not a Kyoto fan, Howard has another approach in mind: The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. And he extended an invitation to Harper for Canada to join.

The pact sets voluntary targets and encourages the private sector to pursue green technologies. Australia, the United States, China, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea are the current members.

"The Asia Pacific partnership been mainly been a deceptive tactic by the Bush administration and Australia to defect attention that they have not signed up to Kyoto and haven't taken on any commitments to address climate change," Ian Bruce, climate change campaigner with the David Suzuki Foundation, told CTV.ca.

Ambrose said the former Liberal government set unrealistic emissions targets, then did nothing to meet those goals.

"It didn't come as a priority to the government to put in place a plan to reduce emissions," Bruce said, although the former Liberal government did finally present its $10-billion, eight-year climate change plan in April 2005.

The process was complicated by the fact that the feds had to negotiate with the provinces.

The Tories attacked the Liberal plan for proposing to buy and sell international emissions credits. For example, if you're a few megatonnes of carbon emissions over for a given year, buy some credits from another country that's more than a few megatonnes under.

So far the Conservatives haven't presented a comprehensive plan, although they announced a plan on May 23 to boost the ethanol content of gasoline - something that was criticized as not really having a substantial impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

In other developments:

* On May 23, Quebec Premier Jean Charest said his province is prepared to go it alone in meeting its Kyoto targets if the federal reneged on the deal;
* In a May 25 interview with The Canadian Press, Ambrose's press secretary said the government doesn't feel bound to honour memorandums of understanding with five provinces to provide funding for Kyoto-related programs;
* On May 26, Ottawa signed on to continue talking about further reductions through the Kyoto process;
* On May 28, The Canadian Press reported that an as-yet unpublished C.D. Howe Institute report found the Liberals' Kyoto plan would have been a dud;
* On May 30, Manitoba's Premier Gary Doer said during a news conference at the close of the western premiers meeting that all the western provinces were working on climate change strategies. "We believe climate change strategies are important ... and available and predictable energy sources are important for our economy." He never used the word "Kyoto;"
* In a May 30 interview with The Globe and Mail, Ambrose mused about ... buying and selling credits on the European carbon market!
* On June 4, the Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois, along with the environmental group Greenpeace, announced the Save Kyoto coalition.
* A Newfoundland official said on May 30 that it is prepared to follow its own climate change plan, one that is heavily influenced by Kyoto.

"The test for the Conservatives will be to deliver a climate change action plan as soon as possible - literally, it should have been yesterday - on reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Bruce said.

John Bennett, a senior policy adviser on energy for the Sierra Club of Canada, told CTV.ca the Tory government to this point has talked about how Kyoto targets are unachievable - without noting other countries say they can meet theirs - and how the Liberals screwed up.

"Some of that's true, some of that's exaggerated, but the real point is what is this about? This isn't about making a target for some esoteric thing the United Nations dreamed up. This is about an attempt to bring the climate crisis under control.

"We have a government that's not acknowledging the problem."

Gore, who on a tour to promote An Inconvenient Truth, his new film on climate change, told CTV Vancouver on June 2: "If somebody would have told me there was going to be a third nation to go into the dunce box with the U.S. and Australia, and say, 'Guess which nation is going to walk out on its international obligations,' Canada would be the last country I would guess."