Canada Stumbles on Reaching Global Warming Plan
Copyright 1999 Reuters
March 28, 2000
VANCOUVER, March 28 (Reuters) - Canada stumbled in its fight against global warming on Tuesday, with Quebec walking out of negotiations on how the provinces and the federal government should share the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Canada has agreed to cut emissions under the 1997 Kyoto accord, but a national plan to meet that commitment remained illusive after two days of talks by environment and energy ministers from the provinces and federal government.
The ministers, without Quebec, agreed to meet again later in the year, but the country's federal environmental minister acknowledged Canada risked going into the next high-level international meeting on global warming without a plan.
"We are on schedule, but I would not be the first to say that we're on a very tight schedule," David Anderson told reporters in Vancouver, where the ministers met behind closed doors.
An international conference on climate change is scheduled for November in The Hague, Netherlands.
The debate within Canada on sharing the burden for reducing pollution mirrors arguments on the international stage with industrial provinces, Ontario in particular, pitted against provinces with lower emissions.
Quebec wants the other provinces to give it credit for producing almost all its electricity from hydro-electric dams, and use an emissions credit trading system similar to that under consideration by European nations.
"We think that it's not for one province to do all the work," Quebec Environment Minister Paul Begin told reporters, after leaving the meeting nearly two hours before the other ministers emerged.
Anderson said Ottawa is more interested in having any trading of emission credits done among polluting and nonpolluting industrial sectors rather than being based on political boundaries.
Environmentalists said Canada, which prides itself as a leader in the world environmental debate, risked losing credibility in international talks on global warming by failing to enact a national plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
"What it says to (other countries) is we're not very serious," said Robert Hornung of the Alberta-based Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development, which does studies on climate change issues.
Environmentalists at the meeting said they did not necessarily agree with Quebec's proposal on who should get emissions credits, but praised it for pushing Canada to get a national plan quickly.
Canada agreed in the Kyoto accord to cut its greenhouse emissions in the period between 2008 and 2012 to 6 percent below its 1990 level. Because its emissions have continued to grow since the pact was signed, Canada will actually have to cut them by more than 25 percent to meet that target.
Anderson said the Vancouver meeting had never been expected to produce a final plan, and the provinces would meet again in the fall and produce a "business strategy" that could be used to form a national plan.
((Reuters Vancouver Bureau 604-664-7314, fax 604-681-0491))