Talk Tough, But Bluff

Yesterday federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice told a Calgary audience that "we need to up our game, in terms of both environmental vigilance and in terms of our communication efforts" on the tar sands. Well, those communications efforts are clearly underway, but how about that environmental vigilance?

Not only is the federal government failing to enforce existing federal laws (like the Fisheries Act) to reduce the environmental impacts of the tar sands, but is relying on other provinces to make deeper cuts in global warming pollution to allow tar sands to grow. The government recently weakened its national target for reducing emissions. Yesterday’s official submission to the UN as follow up to the Copenhagen climate summit announced our new target as "17% (below 2005), to be aligned with the final economy-wide emissions target of the United States in enacted legislation." In other words, that may be our target, but we won't really decide or start to act until the US has passed climate legislation.

The new weak federal target, when combined with stronger provincial targets, means that leading provinces like Quebec, Ontario and BC will be cutting emissions by 20% more than the rest of the country. They're taking the burden while tar sands emissions grow.

This new target also makes Canada unique among developed countries: we are the only one to date that has signed up with the UN for an increase over 1990 levels by 2020, putting us out of step with the U.S., Japan, Australia and the European Union.

Gillian Mceachern
Program Manager
Environmental Defence