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Greenhouse-gas emissions from Alberta's oil sands would be allowed to rise dramatically under a draft version of the government's long-anticipated climate-change plan obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The internal documents appear to underestimate significantly future oil-sands development as a way of producing more positive figures, said two environmentalists who analyzed the documents for The Globe.

The draft plan has many similarities with what was proposed in 2005 by the Liberal government and is clearly meant to show an improvement over that plan. While the rules for industry would take effect in 2010 -- two years later than the Liberal plan -- the specific reduction targets for each sector are deeper for most industrial sectors under the draft Conservative plan.

Environment Minister John Baird has promised to unveil regulations before the end of March that will force every sector of Canadian industry to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Mike Van Soelen, the director of communications for Mr. Baird, would not comment in detail on the documents. He noted, however, that the minister is still consulting with industry and that no final decisions have been made.

"A lot of work is going into this," he said. "I do note that the documents are dated Dec. 20 and a lot of work has been done [since then]. We have a new minister in place and we're working toward final decisions."

The Conservative government was criticized harshly last fall when it announced that its targets for at least the next 13 years would not require companies to reduce their overall emissions, but rather reduce their intensity. That means greenhouse-gas emissions from the production of each barrel of oil would decrease, but if a company is selling more barrels of oil each year -- as is widespread in the oil sands -- overall emissions would keep going up.

The leaked government documents, marked secret and dated Dec. 20, 2006, show that the government was still pursuing a plan at that time based on intensity targets until at least 2020.

Former environment commissioner Johanne Gelinas expressed doubt last year the Liberals' plan to regulate greenhouse gases would lead to total reductions, because it too was based on reducing the intensity of emissions by 15 per cent over four years ending in 2012.

The government has been guarding closely its plans for industry and the documents provide a first glimpse as to where they may be headed.

The plan contained in the documents is similar to what a Suncor official described last week as his understanding of the government plan.

They include charts and targets for each sector and compare the draft Conservative plan to the one proposed by Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion in 2005 when he was environment minister.

The leaked government documents were analyzed for The Globe by two environmentalists: Louise Comeau of the Sage Foundation, who provided policy advice to the Liberal government for Mr. Dion's 2005 plan, and Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute, who recently released a proposal that would see oil sands companies comply with Kyoto by adding about $1 to the production cost of each barrel of oil.

"The federal government's proposal for industry regulation on greenhouse gases is a fraud," Ms. Comeau said. "Fabricating numbers so the current government's intensity approach looks better than the last government's intensity approach is no more acceptable today than it was two years ago. Intensity targets are dishonest. The time to regulate real reductions is now."

Rather than intensity-based targets, environmentalists want rules for industry to force their total levels of emissions to go down. Preferably, they would prefer the rules to use the standard of 1990 emission levels, which are used by all Kyoto signatories. Canada, for instance, agreed to reduce its emissions levels to 6 per cent below 1990 levels, but emissions are more than 30 per cent above that target.

Instead of using the 1990 baseline, the Conservative plan in the documents uses 2000 as its base for intensity targets. Separately, it also used 2003, when it said last fall that its long-term target is to reduce emissions between 45 and 65 per cent from 2003 levels by 2050.

Reductions based on intensity mean that emissions are lower than what they would be if there were no mandatory rules, a concept known as "business as usual." But last year's report from the environment commissioner said such an approach carries risks and is "problematic," because it is easy for such projections to become outdated.

The Liberal plan for heavy industry was called the Large Final Emitter System, while the leaked documents indicate it will be renamed the Clean Air Industrial Regulatory Agenda.

The documents suggest the two approaches are fairly similar: The Liberal plan was projected to reduce the intensity of greenhouse-gas emissions from all industry by 15 per cent during the Kyoto period ending in 2012, while the draft Conservative plan calls for intensity reductions of 15 per cent by 2015 and 26 per cent by 2020.

The government has argued that intensity targets in the short term are the best way to move industry in the right direction, so that deep overall cuts can be made in the longer term through new technology.

The Pembina Institute has been tracking project announcements by oil-sands companies and said the documents underestimate the future growth of that sector.

The government documents set a target for the oil sands of reducing the intensity of emissions by 40 per cent by 2020. If all oil sands projects go ahead, Mr. Bramley said, industry could meet that target while allowing total greenhouse-gas emissions to rise 248 per cent higher than 2000 emission levels. The documents also appear to acknowledge this, he said.

Mr. Bramley said he is concerned industry will be able to pay into a fund instead of reducing emissions. "The Conservatives clearly want to show their proposal is better than that of the previous Liberal government," Mr. Bramley said. "But their proposal could actually be weaker."

Project Green

Liberal government's 2005 plan

Reduce the intensity of all industrial emissions by 13 per cent for each unit produced, which would translate to 43 fewer megatonnes of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere than if no climate-change plan was in place (known as business as usual).

The Liberals had described their plan as reducing emissions by 45 megatonnes through a 15-per-cent intensity reduction.

Expected reductions from business as usual per sector, under the Liberal plan:

Electricity: 15.7 megatonnes

Oil and gas: 15.2 megatonnes (2.7 from the oil sands)

Pulp and Paper: 2.3

Steel: 2.1

Chemicals: 2.9

Smelting and refining: 3.8

Mining: 0.7

Cement: 0.3

Lime: 0.1

Dec. 20 draft Conservative plan

First phase: Reduce the intensity of all emissions by 15 per cent below 2000 levels in the years 2010 to 2015, meaning 45 fewer megatonnes of greenhouse gases. Reductions by sector:

Electricity: 20.9 megatonnes

Oil and gas: 16 megatonnes (3.3 from the oil sands)

Pulp and Paper: 1.8

Steel: 1.9

Chemicals: 2.1

Smelting and refining: 1.2

Mining: 0.5

Cement: 0.6

Lime: 0.2

Second phase: Reduce the intensity of all emissions by 26 per cent in the years 2015 to 2020, meaning 80.4 fewer megatonnes of greenhouse gases would be emitted.

Electricity: 36.7 megatonnes

Oil and gas: 27.2 megatonnes (8.9 from the oil sands)

Pulp and Paper: 3.3

Steel: 3.4

Chemicals: 4.5

Smelting and refining: 3.4

Mining: 0.5

Cement: 1.1

Lime: 0.3