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For release: July 17, 2008

Provincial leaders need to speak-up and laggards need to smarten-up:

Environmental organizations want action on climate change from Canada's Premiers


(Quebec City) Environmental organizations are calling on fence-sitting provinces to join Canada's provincial leaders and commit to putting hard caps on industrial greenhouse gas pollution. The organizations also argue that Alberta's weak policies are preventing Canada from doing its fair share and driving the federal government's ineffective approach to fighting climate change.

“Quebec, B.C., and Ontario have all rejected the federal government's intensity-based regulation of industrial greenhouse gas polluters in favour of hard caps,” said Arthur Sandborn of Greenpeace. “Now its time for other provinces to get off the fence and support this approach.”

Alberta and the federal government have proposed weak emission reduction targets and an “intensity based” approach to regulating greenhouse gases. In contrast, B.C., Quebec and Ontario, representing almost 80 percent of the population of Canada, have committed themselves to adopting hard caps on industrial pollution.

“Alberta is falling far behind the other provinces when it comes to climate change action and capitalizing on opportunities in the clean energy economy,” said Ian Bruce, a climate change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation. “Provincial leaders on climate change may have to use their economic clout to require Alberta to act responsibly if it refuses to do so on its own,” added Bruce.

“Alberta can't spend its way out of the doghouse,” said Graham Saul of Climate Action Network Canada. “A two billion dollar subsidy to oil companies to implement carbon capture and storage will do very little in the absence of aggressive targets and regulations that force industry to invest in solutions.”

“Alberta's targets are embarrassingly weak when compared with other jurisdictions and with climate science,” said Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute. “The federal government needs to stop letting Alberta define its approach to industrial greenhouse gas pollution and start taking its cues from provinces that are more serious about this issue.”

Members of the Climate Action Network are supporting the KYOTOplus campaign and calling for Canada to reduce greenhouse gas pollution by at least 25 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. No province has yet agreed to meet this target. The Premiers have been asked to sign a pledge and to push Ottawa to meet the KYOTOplus targets. All three federal opposition leaders have already signed the KYOTOplus pledge. Prime Minister Harper refused to sign.

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