Until today, Environment Minister Jim Prentice had said repeatedly that he would let us average people in on his climate change plan before the Copenhagen talks begin in December - meaning of course that he'd have some kind of plan to show.
Now though he's hiding behind the Americans, saying that we can't have a plan before they do. This is patently absurd given that most of the American plan is already in plain view in Bills in the U.S. House and Senate. Both the general level of ambition and the architecture of a U.S. cap and trade system have been revealed, so there's nothing stopping Prentice from designing a Canadian system to intergrate with a U.S. system, if that indeed is the over-riding goal.
The real reason he's hiding is that he now admits he wants to give special treatment to the tar sands to be able to grow emissions, even as everyone else must dramatically reduce theirs to stem our deteriorating atmosphere. He can only do this by either building loopholes into his plan, which the Americans would call us on due to competitiveness issues, or by requiring that the rest of Canada do even more to cut emissions in order to make room for more tar sands pollution. Just imagine what that would do to his government's political fortunes in Ontario and Quebec.
We can only hope that Minister Prentice will flip flop again: both by letting a light shine into his secret plan before Copenhagen, and by agreeing that any system cannot let tar sands emissions grow, thereby burdening other economic sectors.
Matt Price
Program Manager
Environmental Defence
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Posts
