By Crystal Clavet
Last week, the Conservative government announced its new “Made-in-Canada” Clean Air Act. But if you were expecting big changes soon, don’t hold your breath. What you can expect are delays – and lots of them.
The idea behind the act seems noble – reduce emissions and improve air quality by imposing regulations – but it fails to provide anything of any substance anytime soon. The act promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 45 and 65 per cent below its 2003 levels by 2050. Don’t start breathing easy yet.First, there will be three years of consultations with industry, provinces and territories to set emission targets. The previous Liberal government, it should be noted, conducted similar consultations with industry in the lead up to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
These new targets have to be approved, regulations have to be written – be prepared for target setting until 2020, when the actual greenhouse gas emission caps will be put in place. Targets don’t have to be met until 2050.
Canada, in the meantime, has given big industry the green light to pollute for the next five, 10, 15 years without repercussion because they are not going to start dealing with emissions until 2020.
The Clean Air Act regulates emissions in units of output. For example, if the oil industry must reduce emissions 5 per cent per barrel of oil, even if production increases, the 5 per cent target won’t change. Targets should keep up with industry growth, or else emissions standards seem for naught.
Where’s Kyoto in all this? It’s all but disappeared from the debate. It wasn’t mentioned in the act, nor in the 2006 federal budget. Prime Minister Harper says his government does not think Kyoto is feasible, but Canada is still legally bound by the agreement, which requires Canada to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions six per cent below 1990 levels before 2012. Canada is currently 27 per cent above that point, according to the environmental group Friends of the Earth.
That’s a legally required, 33-per-cent reduction by 2012. If Canada does not meet these requirements, the automatic penalty is an additional 30 per cent reduction.
Ostensibly, if Canada does not meet its Kyoto obligations, it will be legally required to meet a 67 per cent reduction before the Clean Air Act comes into effect.
More importantly, if Canada waits until 2050 to make emissions cuts, it could take cuts as high as 90 per cent to reach the targets set out by the Clean Air Act – because of the industry allowances in the act.
The main flaw lies in the timeline. Why do we have to wait until 2020 to start? If our government truly cared about reducing emissions and improving air quality, it would accept the industry consultations that have already been done and introduce the legislation to begin reducing emissions now. If action begins today, maybe, just maybe, we can meet and exceed our 65 per cent Clean Air Act target.