How Justin Trudeau can handle climate change expectations: Analysis

As Paris climate conference begins, federal government is juggling lofty rhetoric and vague promises to do better.

Thestar.com
Nov. 29, 2015
By Joanna Smith

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will perform a delicate dance at the climate change negotiations in Paris this week, where the Canadian delegation will encourage the world to do so much more - while leaving many details of its own efforts for later.

“What’s the new Canada going to do?” Jennifer Morgan, the global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute, asked during a telephone news conference call earlier this month as she previewed negotiations at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) beginning Monday.

That question summed up the incredibly high expectations for the new Liberal government when it comes to Canada taking on a bigger role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, after climate activists and even other world leaders had painted the previous Conservative government as environmental laggards.

“Canada’s back,” Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has said in many speeches and news conferences in the lead-up to COP21, even while acknowledging that both Conservative and Liberal governments of the past have failed to do enough.

While using the lofty rhetoric of regime change on the one hand, though, the Liberals have also been working hard to manage expectations when it comes to what Canada will do at the meeting itself.

After all, the Liberals decided to stick with the carbon emissions reduction target set by the Conservative government of former prime minister Stephen Harper - 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which is the weakest of all the targets submitted by G7 countries - instead of coming to the table with a more ambitious one.

The Liberals are instead promising to meet with the provincial and territorial premiers within 90 days of returning from Paris to negotiate a “pan-Canadian framework” that would include a new national target and individualized plans to meet them, which would likely involve carbon-pricing policies for the provinces that do not already have them.

“To get a new target we need to figure out what actions are required to get there,” McKenna said at a news conference Sunday in Paris.

Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., said he expects most people at COP21 to be understanding of this position.

“I think people are hoping that Prime Minister Trudeau and the Canadian government will come and signal Canada’s back in the game and wants to be a leader, wants to take more ambition both on domestic mitigation and on climate finance and other fronts, but I think there will be some recognition of the need for the new government not only to get its own act together at the federal level but to consult extensively with the provinces, which have been taking leadership on this issue,” Meyer said during a telephone news conference last week.

New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen, critic for the environment and climate change, noted the Liberals knew well ahead of time that COP21 was on the calendar.

“I don’t know how much sympathy they are going to get in the world for asking for a late slip, that they couldn’t get their homework done on time for some reason or another,” said Cullen.

In some ways, the expectations are even higher after Paris, where the Liberals want to lead provinces - albeit allowing them the flexibility of individualized plans - into the low-carbon economy of the future.

The Liberals have promised a $2-billion Low Carbon Economy Trust.

They have also promised to pour $125-billion over the next decade into infrastructure investments, which many believe presents an opportunity for further action on climate change.

“That could result in a major transformation in terms of the Canadian economy and its relationship to climate change,” said Michael Byers, the Canada Research Chair in global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia.

Stewart Elgie, a law professor and director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Ottawa, said one of the biggest challenges will be figuring out who takes on the biggest - and the smallest - burden when it comes to meeting national targets.

“Every jurisdiction is going to have to do its share to meet the national objective. That doesn’t mean they all have to do exactly the same thing,” said Elgie.

“If you are an oil and gas producer providing fossil fuels not just to Canada but the world, you’re not going to be able to achieve the same level of absolute emissions reductions and provinces that are not oil and gas producers,” Elgie said.

Conservative environment critic Ed Fast said his party is going to be challenging the Liberal government to ensure public funds are spent efficiently, especially when it comes to their talk of incentives and disincentives.

“Governments are notoriously bad at picking winners and losers and right now my fear is that the government is going to start arbitrarily picking winners and losers and will again do a very poor job of that. We believe that market-driven initiatives, private-sector initiatives within the appropriate incentivized environment are probably the way to go,” Fast said.