The federal government has done little in the past 10 years to prepare Canadians for global warming, the country’s environment commissioner says in a damning new report.
In a report to Parliament released last week, Johanne Gélinas said Ottawa has spent billions of dollars and made many promises but accomplished little.
“Since 1997, the government has announced over $6 billion in funding for initiatives on climate change,” she wrote. “However, it does not yet have an effective government-wide system to track expenditures, performance and results on its climate change programs …. On the whole, the government’s response to climate change is not a good story. At a government-wide level, our audits revealed inadequate leadership, planning and performance.”
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Past efforts to encourage ethanol plant construction by offering more than $100 million in construction incentives were part of the criticism.
Gélinas said the money was announced without clear ethanol production and greenhouse gas reduction targets and with insufficient guarantees that money will be paid back in the future.
Conservatives jumped on the report as proof positive that the Liberal record on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol was more hot air than good policy. Liberals see environmental issues and lukewarm Conservative support for greenhouse gas reduction targets as a major point of weakness for the minority government.
This new report gives the government ammunition to fight off opposition accusations about its environmental plans.
“It is quite clear that this government is going to seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Calgary MP Jason Kenney, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, told Parliament Sept. 28.
“It is a difficult task because we have inherited the Liberals’ record under which greenhouse gas emissions increased by over 30 percent. It is not easy for us to resolve the environmental problems that were created by the Liberals.”
But Gélinas also had a warning for the Conservatives, who are promising to announce their environmental policy this autumn: she will be watching.
She noted that environment minister Rona Ambrose has said Canada cannot meet its Kyoto targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions six percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
“If so, then new targets should take its place,” she wrote. “In this vein, the government must make a concerted effort to slow the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions, ensure that emissions reach their peak as soon as possible and then achieve substantial reductions in absolute levels of emissions.”
Gélinas said the debate about whether global warming is happening is over. It is a reality that will affect all regions.
“The response to weaknesses we identified in the past has been disappointing,” she wrote. “On the basis of this year’s work, I am more troubled than ever by the federal government’s long-standing failure to confront one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
