Good morning, and thank you for virtually welcoming me to your committee. I'm going to address the committee in French. However, I can answer any questions in English.
Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Claude Villeneuve, and I am a professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. I've been interested in climate change since 1979. My first research interest was fish, but as acid rain destroyed the fish, I developed an interest in the causes of acid rain and, from the causes of acid rain, in air pollution in general and climate change in particular.
I published my first book in 1990, in which I adopted a skeptical position. In 2001, I published a second, in which I concluded that it was necessary to adapt to climate change because we were already living with it, as the first speaker showed. In 2005, I published a third, to which I'll refer a number of times in support of my remarks.
So I've been asked to discuss Kyoto, the urgency to act. The first reason why it is urgent that we act is the scope of the challenge. The challenge was very well illustrated at Exeter in February 2005: on a global scale, we must reduce global emissions by 25 billion tonnes a year, relative to the reference scenario, until 2054 in order to limit global temperature increases to two degrees in the twenty-first century. With all the uncertainty associated with that and with the thermal system, to which the previous speakers referred, this is an immense challenge, particularly in a situation in which the global population at that time will be approximately nine billion inhabitants. So we still have three billion new greenhouse gas producers to welcome to the world.
Kyoto is a small part of the challenge. In fact, it's a part that represents so little that, even if we manage to achieve the Kyoto objective in full, with the participation of the countries that have ratified the protocol, we won't affect the rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions. It represents a reduction of 5.2 percent of 35 percent of global emissions.
Canada, as everyone knows, is a poor player in this new part, under global governance, with, according to the latest figures, 270 million tonnes a year to recover relative to its objective and likely 300 million tonnes in 2008, since it was the 2004 figures that were released a little earlier this year. So from 2008 to 2012, we in Canada will have to find a minimum of between 1.35 billion and 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2, assuming we can level off our emissions immediately.
The plan that the government published two or three weeks ago contains no short-term measures that would suggest to us that we can achieve this objective. It's clear that Kyoto 2 is the first of a very long series that won't necessarily be spread over five-year reference periods, but by the 2050 horizon, we would have to do at least 30 times Kyoto in order to be able to meet the challenge. So that's my first observation: the scope of the challenge is very great.
The second reason why Kyoto is urgent is Canada's inability to meet its commitments between 2008 and 2012. I mentioned the extent of the challenge of 1.5 billion tonnes. How are we equipped? Very poorly.
The report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Johanne Gélinas, which was tabled in the House of Commons this fall, provides a list of policies that have failed since 1997 in an effort by the Canadian government to put in place an effective system of measures and greenhouse gas reductions.
Paragraph 1.10 states that the six percent reduction objective was set without a preliminary study — you could say it was set “one evening at a party” — to limit the objectives of the United States and Europe. For example, that same evening, Australia was a little wiser and set its objective at 10 percent. It must be understood that the government had no obligation to set a reduction objective at that time. If it had conducted serious studies, it would have set a much more realistic objective.
Second, government intervention since 1998 has been characterized by procrastination. The plans that were published in 2002 and 2005 were hastily put together, and that's quite clear in the report of the Commissioner of Sustainable Development. The government refused to take effective action for political reasons. Reference was made to pan-Canadian policies. For example, it wanted to apply the same rules to Quebec on electricity reduction, whereas electricity in Quebec produces very little greenhouse gas, and those investments were therefore ineffective. The government should have been much more flexible much sooner. I remind you that Quebec already had a strategy in 1998 to which the Canadian government could have contributed, which would definitely have yielded more interesting results.
The government indulged in a lot of wishful thinking, in saying in Mr. Dion's last plan, for example, that Canadians would provide significant quantities of emissions reductions to the Climate Fund Agency. The current objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 tonnes a year for every Canadian, if we want to achieve the Kyoto objectives. However, that's a mathematical impossibility.
The Kyoto Protocol must not be viewed as a goal in itself. Kyoto is a training session for the real game. Earlier I referred to global governance for horizon 2050. Kyoto is the reference period for putting tools in place and showing that they can be usable and effective. We have to think that a thermal power station built today, like the Bécancour plant which was built in Quebec last year, will still be emitting one million tonnes a year in 2050. If we don't show any good will today in implementing greenhouse gas reduction measures, it will be impossible for us to be credible to the international community in negotiating a better position in the subsequent stages.
By the horizon of 2050, the federal government's last plan stated that Canada would have to reduce its emissions by 65 percent. That's extremely hard to believe, if we consider that Canada is an exporter country and that it is considered an empty country. If we use the Radanne classification, which was used and explained in my book, Canada has much too small a domestic market for its citizens to offset the greenhouse gases caused by its exports, whether it be exports of aluminum, metals, paper or oil.
The fourth reason why it's extremely important to act immediately is adaptation issues.
Mr. Kovacs mentioned adaptation before disasters occur. We have populations at risk. It is necessary to rebuild and repair infrastructures. Erosion problems, flooding problems which are already very much present, freeze-thaw cycles, low water levels and drinking water problems anticipated in the next 10 years call for major investments.
The question of energy production is also extremely important.
There are research problems. I sit on the scientific committee of Ouranos Consortium. Last week, we had a symposium of the status of research on adaptation to climate change. I invite committee members to take a look at that work. There is an enormous amount of work to do in this area, and there are very major issues.
One subject that is more similar to my work is biodiversity across Canada, which is changing and which will undergo very great change along with climate change.
The fact that we have not yet seriously addressed the Kyoto issues has made us miss absolutely important opportunities. Some businesses and industrial sectors have been very proactive, as the chemical sector has shown us. Unfortunately, we are not equipped to recognize the progress achieved in that area.
Some companies are conducting research and development on CO2 sequestration, enzymatic capture of CO2 and development of more efficient engines, and do not receive research grants, despite the fact they are experiencing financial difficulties and have trouble being globally competitive.
We're working on the development of methodologies to offset greenhouse gases, and, without a defined framework, those methodologies must be recognized internationally because we in Canada are unable to have those methodologies recognized.
For example, we have doubly offset the emissions from the Conference of the Parties last year, and Environment Canada wasn't equipped to validate what we did.