Harper now says he will 'respect' Kyoto bill

Harper now says he will 'respect' Kyoto bill
Bill Curry, Globe and Mail, 15-Feb-2007

Harper does it my way
Nigel Hannaford, Calgary Herald, 17-Feb-2007

Dion stripped of his environmental edge
Liberal leader will pay dearly if he wins next election and can't deliver on costly, divisive promises
Chantal Hébert, The Star, Toronto, 16-Feb-2007

Harper seems unwilling to find solutions
Linda McQuaig, The Star, Toronto, 16-Feb-2007

BILL CURRY
Globe and Mail
15-Feb-2007

OTTAWA — The Conservative government said yesterday it would produce a plan to comply with Kyoto if forced to, a dramatic shift from the previous day when it dismissed legislation passed by opposition MPs that would require Canada to meet the protocol's targets for reducing greenhouse gases.

The legislation, introduced by a Liberal MP, calls on the government to present a plan to Parliament within 60 days outlining how Canada will meet its Kyoto targets. It must still be approved by the Liberal-dominated Senate.

"If and when that becomes law, the government would respect it," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the House of Commons. "I would point out that the bill has no plan of action in it. The bill gives the government no authority to spend any money to actually have a plan of action."

The Prime Minister also chastised Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion for supporting the bill without also putting forward a plan to achieve the targets of a 6-per-cent emissions drop from 1990 levels by 2012.

"I guess this is what the Leader of the Liberal Party has come to. He failed so badly on his own plan, he is now asking us to produce one for him," he said.

The Prime Minister's change in tone drew cautious praise from NDP Leader Jack Layton.

"Finally, for the first time today, we got some indication that he might actually be prepared to respect our Kyoto obligations," he said yesterday.

"We've been demanding this since day one and it looks as though perhaps a corner has begun to be turned," Mr. Layton continued.

"We'll have to see in the budget. We'll have to see in the actions that he takes whether he's serious," he said.

The government and opposition have been deadlocked over Kyoto, with the opposition saying the targets are within reach and the government warning it is too late to comply without triggering economic havoc.

But there are signs the government is shifting its position so that Canada would meet its Kyoto targets, but later than the 2012 deadline.

Environment Minister John Baird noted recently that the B.C. government's plan for meeting Kyoto uses 2020 as a target date. He has asked his department to estimate how much it would cost Canada to continue into Kyoto's second, post-2012 phase, having not met the targets in the first phase.

The protocol allows countries to fall short of the targets provided they accept tougher targets than others in the second round. However, talks on a post-2012 phase are stalled.

Mr. Harper has supported calls for an emergency meeting on the issue and has said the Group of Eight is well placed to spur those discussions.

The NDP has been urging the government to consider that scenario and has suggested that may be acceptable if there are clear signs of serious effort toward the Kyoto targets.

The Conservatives will need the support of at least one opposition party to avoid being defeated over next month's budget, which is expected to include several spending announcements dealing with climate change and the environment.

Mr. Dion rejected the Prime Minister's suggestions that his party does not have a plan to meet Kyoto.

"We had a plan in April, 2005, as you know and the cost was there. It was over eight budgets, $10-billion," he said.

"The Prime Minister destroyed the plan of April, 2005. We waste a year. He cuts and he slashed billions of dollars. The only leader of a developed country who did it. So he must now come with a comprehensive plan to honour our international commitment under the Kyoto Protocol."

Former environment commissioner Johanne Gélinas concluded in a report in September that it was "difficult to say" whether Mr. Dion's plan would have been enough for Canada to meet its Kyoto obligations.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said Quebec is now on track to meet Kyoto and the costs for the rest of the country should be borne by industry.

"I think the oil companies, as an example, have enough money to pay for what they are responsible for," he said.

"I think the question is more importantly how much it will cost if we don't face Kyoto. That would be the question."

Greener pastures

Outlined below are the strategies each party has created to address climate change.

The Conservative plan

Total Cost: Will be revealed in next month's budget.

Environment Minister John Baird has said meeting Kyoto's 2012 targets at this point would cause "economic collapse" because the Liberals allowed emissions to rise too high.

Mandatory regulations will soon be announced requiring reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from all industry, including the automotive sector.

The budget is expected to include a host of environmental initiatives. The Prime Minister has already announced a $1.5-billion EcoTrust to finance large projects in the provinces that reduce greenhouse gases.

An EcoEnergy Renewable Initiative, worth $1.5-billion over 10 years, was announced to encourage more renewable power production.

Budget 2006 contained tax credits amounting to two months of free bus passes for citizens who buy passes each month.

The Liberal plan

Stéphane Dion said yesterday he stands by his 2005 Project Green plan for honouring Canada's Kyoto commitments, but will be updating it shortly.

Total Cost: $10-billion

Key elements include the following:

Large Final Emitter System: Regulations would set maximum emission levels for each industrial facility in the country. Companies that are under the target could sell emission credits to companies that are over the target, creating a financial incentive to reduce emissions.

Partnership Fund: Between $2-billion and $3-billion to finance projects jointly with the provinces to reduce greenhouse gases.

Climate Fund: Between $4-billion and $5-billion for technology that reduces greenhouse gases and to buy foreign and domestic emission credits.

Automobile Industry: A voluntary agreement with the auto industry to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5.3 megatonnes.

Renewable Energy: $1.8-billion over 15 years to encourage more wind and renewable power.

The New Democratic plan

Total Cost: $15.1-billion (net cost of $6.7-billion over seven years after cancelling the capital cost allowance for the oil sands)

The plan is divided into five parts:

A greener homes strategy, including energy retrofit projects: $1.3-billion over seven years.

A greener communities strategy, including reductions in landfill emissions and funds for municipal projects: $5.4-billion over seven years.

A greener transportation strategy, including GST rebates on the purchase of low-emission cars: $2.8-billion over seven years.

A greener industry strategy, including caps on industrial emissions and an end to oil-sands subsidies: saving $8.4-billion over seven years.

A greener Canada and the world, including incentives for renewable power and earning Kyoto credits through investments in the developing world that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: $5.6-billion over five years.

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Time for a Conservative reality check here in Cowtown. Maybe Stephen sounds suspiciously green about the oilsands these days, and maybe he's getting ready to re-jig equalization so that when he pulls the handle, all Quebec's oranges line up. (Maybe. We'll find out in the budget).

Or perhaps you hold income trust units.

For any of those reasons, you're really not happy. All those Reform party gatherings in cold church basements, arguing policy and points of order in the hope of fixing Canada's problems, for this sellout?

But, if you're mad with Stephen, would you really rather have Stephane?

No, you wouldn't.

To your immediate concerns, Liberal opposition Leader Stephane Dion favours carbon taxes, so you'd be paying more for gas and Ottawa would collect the revenues.

They'd be no less likely to end up over the Ottawa River, because Dion is trying to rebuild the Liberal brand in Quebec.

As for income trusts, Dion consulted what he called the "big brains," and agreed that yes, income trusts should be taxed. Just not so much.

Happier now?

Meanwhile, you'd be back to the Liberal flavour of government. This is what you didn't like all along, and where Harper is still your friend.

I'm not talking about Liberal graft and their cosy web of dudes on the make. Any government in office long enough attracts people who want to see what their country can do for them, not the other way around.

One day, the Conservatives will have to worry about it, too.

Rather, it's a matter of corporate culture. Zeitgeist. Shared assumptions, doing what comes naturally, the way a liberal turns to government if there's a problem when, for a conservative, it's often government that's the problem.

That's why liberals build bureaucracies with other people's money, and conservatives don't care to.

Liberals believe in doing good to you, even if it means an end-run around Parliament.

That's why they set up a racket called the Court Challenges Program, through which the government paid people to sue it, thereby allowing sympathetic judges to make decisions about society that would never get a majority in the House of Commons. (Feminists and the gay lobby were among the users.)

Sometimes, they rewrote laws to say what they thought they should say -- this school of thought believes law is a "living tree." So it may be, but it is for MPs to prune, not judges who never answer to the people.

This Conservative government dumped the program, and is also looking at who gets to recommend prospective judges.

There is a committee to do this, and the Liberals have had it their way for years.

The result, judges who buy into the agenda. This Conservative government aims to see a different kind of judge appointed -- those more inclined to interpret the law as it is written.

It is likely to be a long haul. Harper has made about 50 judicial appointments, almost all of which were a product of a process that began when the Liberals were in power. (So much for Liberal accusations that he's stacking the bench).

For those of you who support the military, Harper showed where he stood with his visit to Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

His government has also made some big-budget buys for the air force.

He's also doing what he can on Senate reform. The Liberals have agreed to term limits, for instance. Now, it's just a matter of what the limit will be.

On national security, do you want the Dion approach -- which would allow two contentious but useful provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act to expire after five years, as scheduled -- just so that he can have a different position than Harper?

The politics of this country have been shaped for decades by a few simple facts: 1) The votes are in central Canada; you can have all the West, and all the East, but you still need Ontario or Quebec to make a majority.

And, 2) like it or not, the party of government needs support from Quebec.

Harper does what he has to do to hang on.

And, when he does it too much, he needs western Tories to yell, and hand him an excuse to give the eastern left for coming back to what he really thinks.

So go ahead, yell. But, don't kid yourself.

This is a Conservative government, that does conservative things.

And official Ottawa is in shock.

nhannaford@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2007

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Chantal Hébert
February 16, 2007
The Star, Toronto

Over a period of little less than three months, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has turned his green armour into a straitjacket.

Now that he has led the opposition parties into passing a bill forcing the Conservatives to implement the Kyoto Protocol, the worst thing that could happen to him would be to win a snap election this spring and then be forced to live by the terms of Bill C-288.

A Liberal government would face two stark choices:

- Preside over a major federal-provincial crisis that would make the occasional Ottawa-Quebec blowouts sound like Chinese New Year firecrackers.

- Own up to the fact that the bill the party sponsored is a legislative sham, on par with the 1993 Liberal promises to eliminate the GST and renegotiate NAFTA.

It is one thing to want, as do a majority of Canadians, the federal government to act in the spirit of Kyoto; it is another to pretend that any regime can live up to the letter of the accord without making some highly divisive and costly choices.

There is a widespread consensus – stretching way beyond Conservative ranks – that Canada cannot even come close to meeting its Kyoto greenhouse emission reduction objectives in time for the 2012 deadline without launching a major offensive against the energy industries of provinces such as Alberta, and/or inflicting a crippling hit to the already flagging auto industry in Ontario, and/or diverting a debilitating amount of federal resources to a single cause.

And that, in turn, means the other parties have Dion exactly where they want him, stripped of his environmental edge in the lead-up to a possible election.

Nothing now distinguishes the Liberal bottom line on climate change from that of the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Green party.

Dion is as saddled to the moribund Kyoto battlehorse as Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Elizabeth May. More so than any of them though, he could be crushed under its weight in the next election.

Among the opposition leaders, only Dion, who sat for a decade in government, stands to be called to account for how far behind Canada has fallen on the road to Kyoto.

Bill C-288 ensures that the lacklustre Liberal performance on Kyoto will be as much a part of the picture of the next campaign as the Conservatives' belated conversion to a greener agenda.

Because Dion alone among the opposition leaders can realistically aspire to become prime minister, it is also on him that the onus of squaring what has now become a less than virtuous circle will fall in the next campaign.

That will be particularly hard in some sections of Western Canada and it won't be easy anywhere else.

Liberal economic and social promises will have to be tailored to Dion's professed commitment on Kyoto or else risk failing the test of fiscal responsibility.

The Liberal climate-change agenda will also be measured against the green makeover of the government.

By backing Kyoto to the hilt, Dion may have tilted the balance of credibility to Harper's advantage. The Conservatives could be one environmental package away from wrestling the upper hand from the Liberals. Such a package is expected to come at the end of March.

Last fall, the government's first green plan failed to meet the minimal test of expectations.

Back then, the government left its flank wide open on climate change.

This time, Harper knows that anything less than a substantial step in the right direction will not pass muster.

The government's upcoming environmental package is part of a set of blocks the Conservatives are putting in place with an eye to an election.

The re-election of federalist Quebec Premier Jean Charest next month is another big piece of their puzzle.

Conservative numbers are improving in Ontario; satisfaction with the government is up in Quebec.

If all his blocks fall in place, Harper could emerge from next month's budget with enough momentum to win another election.

Does that mean a spring federal vote is inevitable? Not necessarily.

It is still far from clear that an election over the first half of this year would yield the majority Harper is striving for.

Part of the current Conservative election sabre-rattling is undoubtedly designed to force the opposition to think twice about bringing down the government.

The Bloc Québécois, for one, may do just that if its Parti Québécois ally goes down to defeat in Quebec next month.

Chantal Hébert's national affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

chebert@thestar.ca

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A government reveals a lot about itself by what it says it can't do. The Harper government, for instance, insists that Canada can't possibly meet its Kyoto targets on greenhouse gas emissions.

Interestingly, there's no such defeatism on the Conservative benches over Afghanistan.

Indeed, when it comes to the Afghan war, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is full of bravado and fighting spirit, despite the most dismal prospects for victory in that war – as a report by a Canadian Senate committee spelled out this week.

No matter how hopeless the situation in Afghanistan, Harper vows that Canada will be there, as a "country that leads, not that just follows."

Yet in the battle against climate change – a far more important battle, by any reasonable measure – Canada, under the Conservatives, doesn't lead or follow. It doesn't even bother to show up.

This week, it voted against an opposition bill requiring Ottawa to meet our obligations under Kyoto, which we ratified in 2002.

The dispirited approach to Kyoto reveals the shallowness of Harper's recent conversion to the environmental cause in the wake of the sudden emergence of the issue as the top concern of Canadians.

Of course, we all know that Harper spent years in the trenches of the global warming battle – fighting on the wrong side, along with oil companies and a tiny gang of academic climate-change deniers.

But there's been surprisingly little chortling recently as the Prime Minister, somehow managing a straight face, now insists that "the science is clear that these changes are occurring, they're serious and we must act."

Such a late acceptance of what the scientific world has been loudly trumpeting for more than a decade would still be welcome, if it seemed genuine. Personally, I'd be more inclined to buy a used car from this Prime Minister than to trust his commitment to saving the planet.

So far, the government has been frantically reinstating Liberal programs cancelled earlier this year.

But even these would have only limited impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to Stephen Hazell, executive director of Sierra Club of Canada.

Harper likes to imply that actually meeting Kyoto targets would require unbearable sacrifices by Canadians.

He recently suggested we'd have to live in unheated homes all winter.

He seems to be trying to keep the focus away from reasonable and promising solutions, like clamping down on large industrial emitters, an approach called for in the opposition bill rejected by the Conservatives.

Above all, Harper seems keen to avoid clamping down on the oil sands.

Indeed, Harper's weak embrace of the environmental cause is perhaps best revealed by his refusal to end a special federal subsidy enjoyed by oil sands developers, a constituency that Harper has long been close to.

Under the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance, oil-sands developers are allowed to deduct 100 per cent of their capital costs immediately – a tax perk that far exceeds the generosity of the 25 per cent deduction available to companies investing in conventional oil projects.

The allowance, introduced in 1996, was justified as a way to stimulate investment in the oil sands at a time when the potential of the resource hadn't yet been proven, and low world oil prices made development costs seem prohibitive.

There was also less awareness of climate change back then; Kyoto wasn't even signed until the following year.

But what may have seemed reasonable 11 years ago is downright perverse today, with oil-sands development overstimulated and now the fastest-growing source of our greenhouse gases.

The special tax treatment certainly flies in the face of any notion that the government is serious about reducing Canada's emissions.

It would be equivalent to Ottawa offering subsidies to the Taliban while vowing it is committed to victory in Afghanistan.

To make things more perverse, the companies benefiting from the special tax incentive are among the most profitable in Canada, including Husky, Imperial, Shell and Suncor.

In 2005, the oil and gas industry achieved operating profits of $30 billion – a 50 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Alberta-based Pembina Institute.

It's hardly a sector that needs extra help from Canadian taxpayers.

In fact, oil-sands producers could easily afford to pay the additional $1 on each barrel of oil which the Pembina Institute estimates would cover the cost of serious emission reduction.

No wonder Harper is convinced we can't meet our Kyoto targets: He's planning to keep on giving special incentives to our biggest emitters.

Linda McQuaig is a Toronto-based author and commentator. lmcquaig@sympatico.ca.