The following release was issued by Climate Action Network Canada, a coalition of more than 100 organizations working on climate change in Canada, including the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.
OTTAWA – Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in a speech today to the Calgary Petroleum Club laid out his plan to get fossil fuel resources to market using a Medicare model to control Canada’s carbon pollution. The model is good, the argument is flawed.
Trudeau argues that the federal government’s failure to keep its promises to limit greenhouse gas emissions has damaged trust at home and abroad eroding social licence and creating obstacles to pipeline approvals. The result: Canada can’t get its resources to market. The solution: put in place a federalist approach to controlling carbon pollution based on the Medicare model.
“Trudeau needs to understand the implications of climate science”, says Louise Comeau, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada. The only resources Canada can export under any safe climate scenario are clean energy resources. “If we are to stay within safe global warming limits, 75% of Canada’s oil reserves cannot be burned and tar sands development must drop to negligible levels within five years, according to a recent analysis in Nature[1].
Trudeau commits, should he form government after the October 2015 federal election, to ensuring that Canada takes its climate protection responsibilities seriously and to doing our fair share. Climate Action Network Canada comprising over 100 organizations representing environmental, faith, labour, youth and first nation’s organizations welcomes Trudeau’s commitment to meet with provincial and territorial leaders within 90 days of his return from the United Nations Conference of the Parties meeting scheduled for December in Paris.
His aim, he says, would be to develop a pan-Canadian framework that includes a national target “informed by the best economic and scientific analysis”. The objective would be to ensure that all provinces and territories do their share. The Medicare model component would include the federal government establishing national standards in partnership with provinces and territories. Each jurisdiction would have the flexibility to design their policies and achieve their targets, including their own carbon pricing policies. The federal government, in turn, would target federal funding to help provinces and territories achieve their goals through investments in efficiency, conservation, renewable energy and infrastructure.
“Having an adult conversation on climate protection using the Medicare model is a good first step. What we need now is a commitment to legally binding targets and an adult conversation about how we are going to transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a clean energy economy,” says Steven Guilbault, Senior Director, Équiterre.
For more information, contact: Louise Comeau: 506-238-0355; Steven Guilbault: 514-231-2650
[1] McGlade, C & P. Ekins (2015), The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 20C, Nature, vol 517