OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada's two biggest provinces announced Monday they would work together to cut greenhouse gas emissions, saying Ottawa's plan is too timid and out of step with the EU and soon the United States.
The leaders of Ontario and Quebec provinces kicked off the new partnership by signing a pact to set up a regional carbon cap and exchange system, similar to one launched in Europe, by 2010.
"We believe that working together on behalf of two-thirds of Canadians we can reach higher, we can go faster and we can go further than the options that are present at this time," Ontario Premier McGuinty told a press conference, alluding to the federal government's often-criticized proposals to curb Canada's CO2 emissions.
Some 20 million people or two-thirds of Canada's population live in Ontario and Quebec, the manufacturing heartland of the country, accounting for 60 percent of Canada's gross domestic product.
The two province's leaders said they hope to set up a carbon trading system using absolute targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in contrast to the federal government's intensity-based targets that environmentalists blast for reducing emissions incrementally as industrial output increases.
However, they did not specify targets.
Canada had agreed under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but emissions have instead increased by 35 percent.
Environment Minister John Baird has maintained that the target negotiated by the previous Liberal administration is unattainable.
Last year, he unveiled a plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 150 megatonnes, or 20 percent based on 2006 levels, by 2020. Environmentalists and opposition parties panned the plan as doing too little too late.
"We are concerned that the federal government is implementing a system that is not compatible with what exists in Europe and elsewhere, by choosing intensity-based rather than an absolute reduction in GHGs. They're out of sync with the rest of us," said Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
Charest also predicted a "180 degree turn" in US policy on climate change following the swearing in of a new president in January 2009. "Why wait for the Americans? Why not take the lead now?" he said.
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