Tories to Abandon Clean Air Bill

OTTAWA (CP) – It appears that the Conservative government’s vaunted clean air act is dead.

Environmentalists say Environment Minister John Baird told them in a private meeting that he will abandon the bill because he can’t accept sweeping amendments put forward by the opposition. The clean air act was the centrepiece of the Conservative environmental agenda but the opposition parties drastically changed it during committee study to incorporate the targets of the Kyoto Protocol.

In Friday’s meeting, Baird reportedly described the rewritten legislation as a Liberal bill and said he would never bring it forward, said John Bennett of ClimateforChange.

There was no immediate comment from Baird’s office.

The government is expected to announce legally binding limits on emissions from heavy industry this week, but that can be done using existing legislation