Conservative environment critic Bob Mills says farmers would be major beneficiaries of climate change policy that a new Conservative government would implement.
The Red Deer candidate and incumbent MP said the Liberal approach of embracing the international Kyoto Protocol agreement, but then taking few concrete measures, has been an embarrassment. Greenhouse gas emissions have escalated since Canada signed Kyoto more than half a decade ago.
Mills said a Conservative government would support domestic plans for greenhouse gas reductions.
“It is obvious we have to reduce our CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions and there are ways to do that. Clean coal technology and carbon sequestration are among them,” he said in a telephone interview from Ontario where he was promoting Conservative environmental policies. “Farmers are obviously a major part of that solution.”
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Mills promised there would be a system to compensate farmers for their efforts to improve the ability of their lands to act as carbon sinks, although there is no detailed plan yet.
The Liberals also have promised hundreds of millions of dollars for carbon sink compensation but the details have not been worked out.
“It really is talk. They really don’t know what they are doing,” he said.
Mills said the Kyoto process, which does not include many of the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters, is not working and article 26 of the protocol allows countries to give one year’s notice and then opt out after three years.
“There is a way out and we have not taken a decision on whether to trigger that but I’m saying that we should just get on with developing and supporting Canadian technologies and processes that actually make a difference in emissions and keep the money that will be spent here in Canada rather than sending it overseas to buy hot air credits,” he said.
The environment is an issue that Liberals have been using to try to paint the Conservatives as a retrogressive party.
Prime minister Paul Martin said last week one of the things that clearly divides him from Conservative leader Stephen Harper is their attitudes to environmental protection.
“Mr. Harper clearly doesn’t care about the environment,” said Martin.
Mills dismissed that allegation: “We believe in environmental policies that actually improve the environment and not just sound good.”
The Red Deer MP also said a Conservative government would overhaul the Pest Management Regulatory Agency to make sure more environmentally friendly pest control products get to the market faster.
“The way that bureaucracy works now, it sometimes appears to work against introduction of new and better products,” he said. “Hopefully we could streamline that whole process to make it work better.”
Mills said the party continues to support voluntary labelling rules, rather than mandatory labelling, for food products containing genetically modified material.
The New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois favour mandatory labelling and the issue could become controversial if the Jan. 23 election results in a new volatile minority Parliament.
