“I think it’s another sad day for the environment. This government has abdicated its responsibility to Canadians and to the international community,” Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan (Etobicoke North, Ont.) told The Hill Times last week. “I have grave concerns. Climate change is about a moral responsibility, intergenerational responsibility, and under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, they also had legal responsibility. Under the Budget Implementation Bill, they’re going to repeal that.”
Canada’s federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan tabled his spring report May 8. In the first chapter on how the government is implementing the Kyoto Protocol under Bill C-288, Mr. Vaughan said that while the government has provided more details than previous years, “the plan still does not meet the requirements of the act because the measures it describes will not ensure that Canada meets its greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations” under the Kyoto Protocol.
Bill C-288, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which was passed during a minority Parliament, will be repealed under the omnibus Budget Implementation Bill, C-38, which the government introduced on April 26. Bill C-38 is 452 pages and contains a large section that will significantly change the environmental regulatory regime among several other budget and non-budget-related items. The Canadian government gave notice in December 2011 that it would formally withdraw from the International Kyoto Protocol Agreement, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under Bill C-288, the Environment Commissioner was required to track the government’s progress on this front every two years, up to and including 2012.
The Conservative government has always been opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, saying that implementing it would cost thousands of jobs and deal a significant blow to the Canadian economy. It has since introduced several sector-by-sector plans to reduce greenhouse gases by intensity and at lower rates than outlined in the Kyoto Protocol rather than develop a comprehensive plan which puts a price on carbon. When it came to implementing the requirements of Bill C-288, critics said last week that while the government complied with the letter of the law, it did not follow the spirit.
“They have not lived up to the requirements of the act, they’re repealing the act,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.). “There are no costs to staying in Kyoto and under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act which I think this government never took seriously.”
The commissioner’s report noted that the government’s plan outlined in its first report under Bill C-288 was more ambitious in 2007 when it stated that 282 million tonnes of greenhouse gases would be reduced between 2008 and 2012. In its latest plan, that number has been reduced to only 27 million tonnes.
If the government were to implement all of the measures outlined in its plan, there would still need to be 805 million tonnes of greenhouse gases reduced to meet the Kyoto Protocol’s 2012 goal of six per cent below 1990 levels.
Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) said in a statement that he accepts the commissioner’s report. In addition, he said, the government has already given notice that Canada will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol and has fulfilled its reporting duties under Bill C-288.
“It does not provide a global solution to the global problem of climate change. We understand that the commissioner has recognized this, given that no recommendations are provided in the report,” Mr. Kent said. “We have fulfilled our reporting obligations under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, and we will continue to fully and transparently report on progress towards reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions through various reporting mechanisms, including the Canada’s Emissions Trends, the National Inventory Report and the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy.”
In his report, Mr. Vaughan also discusses the government’s plans to reach its own target of reducing greenhouse gases by 17 per cent 2005 levels by 2020.
“Parliament lacks a full picture of the combined costs of reaching the 2020 target,” the report says.
Further, Mr. Vaughan said in his report that the government’s sector-by-sector approach to regulating greenhouse gas emissions “lacks an overall implementation plan to achieve the 2020 target, as well as economic analysis to estimate what the approach will cost the Canadian economy.”
The federal government has not “conducted a comprehensive analysis to estimate the combined cost of the sector-by-sector approach to regulating GHG emissions,” the report states. “Nor has it estimated the impact on or costs to the Canadian economy of aligning its approach with the United States, or examined whether this is the most cost-effective option. These analyses are important in order to establish whether Canada faces proportionally higher costs than the United States in adopting an aligned regulatory approach.”
NDP MP Meagan Leslie (Halifax, N.S.) said it’s hypocritical of the government to announce Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol because of the costs it says will be involved, but fail to provide a cost for its own targets.
“It’s pretty unbelievable for the Conservatives to say they will ditch one plan, say, ‘We’re going to do it sector by sector, we have a plan, the plan is working.’ It’s very clear the plan is not working. They can barely roll out the plan, never mind get it to work,” she said. “We’ve only seen two regulations so far. That’s it and we wait and we wait and we wait.”
Mr. Vaughan’s report noted that, according to the Environment Canada document Canada’s Emissions Trends, greenhouse gases will rise in Canada 7.4 per cent above 2005 levels rather than lowered by the targeted 17 per cent.
“Therefore, according to Environment Canada’s forecasts, the 2020 target will not be met with existing measures,” the report states. “Existing federal regulations are expected to reduce GHG emissions by 11 to 13 million tonnes in 2020. Given that an additional 178 million tonnes in reductions are needed to meet the 2020 target, it is unlikely that enough time is left to develop and establish GHG regulations that together will contribute sufficient GHG reductions to meet the 2020 target.”
Ms. Leslie said this is why it’s imperative to start transitioning to a green economy sooner rather than later. “We’re going to have to get there anyway at some point,” she said. “We will not always have oil, so we need to start thinking now about that transition. If we were leaders in the transition to the green economy, who knows what we could do. The whole world could be looking to us. We’re a country of wind and waves and tides. Why shouldn’t we be the country that everybody looks to and says, ‘Hey, they figured out how to do it right. We have that potential. … Why not be leaders?”
In his statement, Mr. Kent said the government is “making significant progress” already on meeting its 2020 target using its sector-by-sector plan. “In fact, federal measures, combined with actions taken by provinces, have brought us one-quarter of the way towards our 2020 target. Emissions have declined in almost all sectors, including oil and gas, and electricity generation, since 2005. Between 2009 and 2010, our emissions remained virtually steady despite economic growth of 3.2 per cent,” he said, adding that further regulations will be “forthcoming.”
Ms. May said Mr. Kent’s messaging is a “broken record” because there is in fact no plan.
“It’s obvious that if you do a sector by sector regulatory approach, especially when you’re doing one as slowly as this one’s being cranked out, there’s no overall plan,” she said. “They haven’t published a plan to say, ‘Okay these are the targets we’re going to look for for the oil and gas sector, these are the targets for coal powered-electricity, this is what we’re looking for from transportation.’ So there’s no road map.”
The third chapter in Mr. Vaughan’s report discussed federal contaminated sites. The report found that while there has been progress on a third of contaminated sites in the government’s inventory, “many sites remain to be remediated and federal custodians had not begun assessments of about one half of the active sites.”
Because of this, “the full extent of risks that federal contaminated sites present to the environment and human health remains unknown as well as the financial exposure of these sites,” Mr. Vaughan reported. “The government lacked a consolidated plan with clear and measurable expectations for all contaminated sites that identifies what departments with custodial responsibilities for contaminated sites need to accomplish and by when. A performance measurement strategy for the FCSAP program was approved in January 2012 to be implemented over the next few years.”
Ms. Leslie called the report overall “alarming.” She said it was also “striking” that the report is coming out at the same time the government is “ramming” the Budget Implementation Bill, which contains massive changes to the environmental regulatory and assessment regime, through the House of Commons.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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