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Plan for Regulating Greenhouse Emissions Won't Kick in Until 2008

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 21:00 CDT

OTTAWA (CP) - Canada's plan for controlling greenhouse emissions from large polluters - a major piece of the national Kyoto implementation plan - won't kick in until 2008, and critics say that's too late.

The plan won't be in place until the beginning of the 2008-2012 compliance period in the Kyoto protocol, when Canada is supposed to be actually achieving cuts of roughly 30 per cent from present emissions levels.

"It means that it has to work perfectly from Day 1," said John Bennett of the Sierra Club. "But we've never done anything like this before.

"The EU has a test system going now, the British have had a test system going for a couple of years, the New Zealanders just put their regulations in place to get going," he said. "We're way behind."

But a spokeswoman for Environment Canada said there's nothing to prevent large emitters from beginning to take action before the mandatory scheme is in place.

Big emitters such as smelters, refineries and power plants account for about half of Canada's emissions. Efforts to cut those emissions through voluntary action have failed, and Canada's total emissions are now 24 per cent above 1990 levels.

The official said the government will announce in the Canada Gazette later this month that it plans to regulate greenhouse gases under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA).

In political terms, that could be taken as notice that Ottawa is irrevocably committed to move beyond appeals for voluntary cuts, and that its policy won't be affected by its minority status in the Commons.

The decision to regulate under that act may come as a surprise to some, given the effort that was expended to revise CEPA in an omnibus budget bill this spring.

There was a furor in the Commons when the government tried to introduce amendments to CEPA to delete the word "toxic" from certain passages of the bill.

Government officials said the amendments were needed to forestall criticism that greenhouse gases can't be regulated under CEPA because they aren't directly toxic.

Opposition critics said the Liberals were trying to introduce a carbon tax through the back door, and the amendments were dropped.

Now, the government has decided the amendments were superfluous anyway.

They note that CEPA allows for the regulation of any substance that is harmful or may be harmful to human health, biodiversity, or "the environment on which life depends."

Carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, is not directly toxic to living things, but it has the property of trapping solar heat - called the greenhouse effect - and is considered a major culprit in climate change.

Most scientists say global warming is harmful to the environment and to human health. For example, deadly heat waves are expected to become more frequent and prolonged in a greenhouse world.

Source: Canadian Press

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