Canadians will still have a lengthy wait before Ottawa rolls out its climate change plan, despite a tentative political accord at the Copenhagen summit.
The delays will make it more difficult, and potentially more costly, for Canada to meet its target to reduce emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020. Companies are continuing to invest – particularly in the emissions-intensive oil sands sector – without knowing what emissions limits they will face. If regulations are put in place in 2010, the country will have to reduce emissions by 17.3 megatonnes a year to meet the target; by delaying until 2012, the annual effort increases to 21.6 megatonnes.
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen meeting, the world's eyes will turn to Washington, where U.S. President Barack Obama is attempting to get climate legislation through Congress.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday night that Canada will have to watch from the sidelines while the U.S. political battles are thrashed out. He added that a defeat for Mr. Obama's climate agenda would dramatically undermine Canada's ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.
The tepid deal reached in the Danish capital will likely make it harder for the President and his allies in the Democratic leadership to win votes from skeptical senators, who worry that tough U.S. emissions regulations will shift investment and employment to China.
The Harper government – which has long delayed the release of Canadian regulations – made it a frequent refrain this week that Ottawa will follow the American lead in setting climate rules.
“What will be most critical for Canada in terms of filling out the details of our regulatory framework will be the regulatory framework of the United States,” Mr. Harper said after the agreement was announced. “If the Americans don't act, it will severely limit our ability to act. But if the Americans do act, it is essential that we act in concert with them.”
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff rejected the Tory policy of linking Canada's climate-change plan with the U.S. plan. “We cannot allow Canadian environmental policy to be entirely dependent on American politics,” he said in a statement Friday. “We need an aggressive, made in Canada climate-change plan now. And we're willing to work with Mr. Harper on this if his government brings forward a serious plan that treats our provinces fairly and includes pollution reductions for all sectors.”
The Conservative government first announced its targets in 2007 and vowed to have regulations in place by 2010. That start-up date was pushed back to 2012 when Ottawa pledged earlier this year to release its plan before the Copenhagen meeting. “It will be next to impossible for the government to meet even its modest targets without a clear plan,” said Gerald Butts, president of World Wildlife Fund Canada. “The longer we wait for others to move before we act, the harder it will be.”
A key goal for the Americans at Copenhagen was persuading Beijing and other major developing countries to accept international oversight for their own emissions plans, which, in China's case, would cut the carbon-intensity of its economy by 45 per cent by 2020.
A Canadian official said Mr. Harper focused Friday on getting tougher language from the developing nations on their international commitments. He held bilateral discussions with leaders from India, Singapore, Australia and Trinidad, and had a brief conversation with Mr. Obama at the leaders' luncheon.
U.S. observers said the failure to “internationalize” the climate commitments of major developing countries would make it harder to get a bill through Congress.
Mr. Harper has also insisted that developing countries submit their emissions-reduction plans to international monitoring and verification. And despite the absence of such a commitment in the Copenhagen accord, the Prime Minister repeated that demand in a statement last night, raising the possibility that there will be further pressure on China and other developing countries for more concessions on the issue as negotiators work toward a final text.
Mr. Harper insisted that he and the Canadian delegation played a constructive role in the talks, despite his absence from key negotiating sessions among leading G20 countries.
He said Canada's interests were being looked after by “strategic allies” and that each country could not demand to be at every meeting in a conference of 192 nations.
Critics of the government say Canada's effectiveness as a negotiator was undermined by its poor record of compliance with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and by its unambitious emissions targets.
