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Posts Tagged ‘Stephen Harper’

I’m a little late coming to this, but while reading through some CBC news stories from earlier in the week I came across this.  What a joke.  Environment minister Jim Prentice tells us that Canadian climate change legislation is several years off and that there is no way forward until both a cross border agreement with the US and and international treaty to replace Kyoto are completed.  Of course an international accord is needed.  Of course a deal with our American partners is needed.  None of these is a barrier to Canada moving forward in trying to meet goals that we have already set out.

When I was writing about this issue earlier, I hedged my initial skepticism towards the Prime Ministers comments from overseas.  Harper’s statement that a global coalition is needed to create real progress on the climate change issue, while correct, smelled like a delay tactic to me.  Being that the Conservatives have tabled specific goals (be they correct or not is not for me to speculate on) my view was that the most important step was still to be taken; developing legislation to realize these goals.  It seems like there is no such luck, at least so far.

With the Americans actually moving forward on enacting laws on this front (a bill has passed the House and it’s expected to be taken up by the Senate in the new year) what is the real cause for Canada’s seemingly continued ambivalence?  More likely than not it does stem from something nefarious, but rather apathy.  It’s time to move forward.

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Seeing this news clip* over the weekend got me to wondering about Canada’s current environmental policy.  I was getting ready to slag the governments inaction on this front over the past couple years but I figured on gathering some information first.  I remember that in 2006/07 this was at the forefront of discussion in this country but seemed to fall by the wayside without any resolution occurring on the way to go forward.  The Conservatives put forward a plan that was widely panned as emissions targets were pegged to growth in industry; the end result would be that while relative levels of carbon emissions would go down, it was possible that the overall levels could increase.  Harper then took another kick at the can and released a proposal to reach somewhat more ambitious targets and scrapped the mechanism that would have allowed the scenario I just mentioned.  Since then the issue seems to have fallen by the wayside, both in any developments and in the nations consciousness.

In the linked to video Harper is speaking to reporters about the need for unified action on this issue.  He is right about this.  Canada is a very small emitter relative to others and even combined plans from the developed world (US, Canada, Eurozone) would not be sufficient.  It is imperative that BRIC nations are included in efforts to reduce emissions as well.  For whatever reason though I had a very hard time taking what Harper was saying in good faith.  To my ear, it sounded more like a delaying tactic than a true, practical assertion; necessary players aren’t moving forward (China, India) so there’s no point in us doing so until they are on board.

This suspicion is what prompted me to ask what our environmental policies currently are.  So I fired up my magic connected tubes and headed over to Environment Canada’s webpage on climate change.  It turns out things were much as I remembered them.  Some goals have been set to reduce emissions, 20% by 2020 and 60-70% by 2050.  Reduced 20% from what though? 2006 levels.  This was a sticking point with environmentalists (scientists too?) for not being ambitious enough.  I don’t have any level of expertise to judge this but other targets I’ve seen use 1996 as the baseline year to judge reductions against.  Another goal listed is to have 90% of Canada’s power production come from non carbon emitting sources by 2020.  I believe that it is important that we have goals set to work towards.  The feasibility/merits of those goals are for others to judge.  I am happy that we at least have targets to work towards.  More important though are the underlying policies; what mechanism are we going to use to meet this goals? Cap and Trade or a Carbon Tax? Is there some other tool that I haven’t heard of?  This section would seem to indicate that those policies have not been set

The Government of Canada is taking an aggressive approach to achieve real environmental and economic benefits for Canadians.

Our plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is on track.  We are currently fine-tuning our approach to tackling climate change, and will introduce a full suite of domestic policies addressing all major sources of emissions prior to the UN meetings in Copenhagen this December. The content and timing of the regulations implementing these policies will be driven by Canada’s national interests, while also accounting for the actions of our trading partners, including the U.S.

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Writing in the Jurisprudence column at Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick has an excellent article up regarding the Obama administrations decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal court, while continuing to try others before military tribunals and how that mess intersects with the plight of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr that we discussed below.  Her writing is superb and very enjoyable to read.  I’ll only excerpt briefly as you really should go read the whole thing, but it did prompt me to pose a question.

While discussing the ongoing case before the Supreme Court of Canada whose aim is to decide if the Canadian Government is to be compelled to advocate for Khadr’s release to Canadian authorities, Lithwick wonders:

If today’s oral arguments aren’t enough to convince the Canadian Supreme Court to intercede on Khadr’s behalf, maybe Holder’s announcement will be.

One can only hope that the facts alone are enough for the court to find in Omar’s favour; this is a man who was a 15 year old youth when initially captured.  He has languished in legal limbo for coming up on 8 years now.  We know that he has received serious mistreatment while in captivity and that that mistreatment may well qualify as torture.  I am not a lawyer and am not certain where the breach of this man’s charter rights occur.  Both the Federal Court of Appeals and Justice O’Reilly though have found this to be the case already.  It is now left to the Supreme Court to hopefully concur with their judgement.

In my earlier posting on this subject I was critical of Barack Obama for the two tiered system him and his attorney general have elected to go forward with; some cases moving to federal court, with others staying before the newly minted military tribunals.  Dhalia’s musing above has lead me to wonder if Obama/Holders motive in keeping Khadr before the tribunal is at least partially rooted in hoping to force Canada’s hand into taking Khadr into custody.  Are they intentionally signalling that our man will not receive a fair chance at justice, leaving the Canadian Supreme Court no option but to uphold the lower court decisions?  The US administration can no doubt use any help it can get in getting the detainees out of Gitmo.  Perhaps Obama is scratching his head wondering how much they’ve got to do to this guy before his government will step up to the plate for him.  Not enough so far anyways.  If the lower courts ruling is upheld it will be very interesting to see what the Harper Government’s response is.

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