ENVIRONMENT: Canada’s Provincial Leaders Hot Over Kyoto

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Aug 8 2002 (IPS) - Led by a northern hunter who spoke of signs of global warming throughout his territory, Canada’s provincial premiers shrugged off tradition at their annual summer meeting and engaged in a public row over whether to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

While oil-rich Alberta province continues to fight the global treaty that Canada signed but is now hesitating to ratify, three smaller provinces are loudly urged Prime Minister Jean Chretien to ratify the accord.

In the end, both sides settled for a typically Canadian compromise: a meeting with the prime minister on a date that has yet to be determined.

Environmental groups say the public wrangling is a good sign that Chretien, who is in the middle of an unofficial leadership fight, will ratify the deal and may even announce his decision by the end of this month at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in South Africa.

Soon after Canada’s neighbour and largest trading partner, the United States, announced last year it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol — which requires industrialised nations to cut emissions an average of five percent from their 1990 levels by 2012 — Chretien hinted that Canada might follow suit.

He has said ratification would put the country’s businesses at a competitive disadvantage with U.S. companies.

Since then, he has suggested that countries renegotiate the deal struck in Japan in 1997 so Canada could obtain credit for exporting “clean” energy — natural gas and hydroelectricity — to the United States.

Chretien thinks those exports should cut Canada’s reduction requirements by 30 percent. So far, the world community, led by the European Union, has said no.

More than 70 nations have already ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

A final decision on so-called clean energy credits is expected at an October meeting in New Delhi of countries that have signed the Protocol.

But a number of leaders of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories say there is no need to wait until then, or for more scientific evidence of global warming, before ratifying the treaty.

The premier of Canada’s newest territory, northern Nunavut, said global warming is already affecting his citizens.

“In Nunavut, we have fishermen who have developed techniques to fish underneath the ice and they rely on the sea ice to be able to exercise commercial fishing. Those seasons have been shortened considerably in the last few years,” said Paul Okalik.

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein complained that Kyoto would ravage his province’s oil and gas industry, impoverishing the local economy so it would no longer be able to send “equalisation” payments to Canada’s poorer areas

But Okalik replied: “Our custom is to pass on our knowledge, our traditional knowledge, to our children and you can’t put a price tag on that. So you can keep your money.”

Devastating forest fires occurring unusually early in summer and a drought on the western prairies that has eastern farmers donating trainloads of hay to their parched cousins are other indications of global warming, say some observers.

“I don’t want to go from raising cattle in Manitoba to raising camels,” said Gary Doer, premier of the territory bordering bone- dry Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces.

Prince Edward Island Premier Pat Binns said he has studies which predict that much of the Atlantic province’s capital, Charlottetown, could be underwater later this century if the effects of climate change are not reversed.

Although the premiers’ public disagreement could delay announcement of assent, it probably will not delay ratification itself, said Steven Guilbeault of the environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

“They’ve been saying for a while that the decision for ratification won’t happen before (the Delhi meeting) because they want to know what’s happening with clean energy credits,” said the activist.

The government had already scheduled more public consultations on the Kyoto Protocol and a joint meeting of energy and environment ministers later this year, he added, so an announcement was not expected soon.

But others are hopeful that Chretien will use the summit in Johannesburg (Aug 26-Sep 4) to announce that Canada will ratify.

“Our expectation is that Canada will tell the global community that ‘we will now ratify the treaty’,” said David Hocking, spokesman for the David Suzuki Foundation, a science-based environmental organisation headquartered in Vancouver.

“It was 10 years ago that we committed to do this, then it was nearly five years ago that we agreed on the principles and targets of Kyoto,” he added.

The European Union ratified the accord in May and Japan in June.

A spokesman for the Sierra Club of Canada told IPS in May that Canada was delaying its assent in a bid for time to persuade other countries to accept clean energy credits.

“I have been convinced all along that the talk of Canada not ratifying Kyoto has just been a gambit to pry concessions from the European Union,” said John Bennett. “And that’s pretty much the consensus in the Canadian environmental community.”

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has said reducing emissions as laid out in the Kyoto accord would cost the economy about 20 billion Canadian dollars, or about 2.5 percent of the country’s projected gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012.