Yes, it has two impacts. One relates to the compliance regime of the protocol, and of course there's already been a request for the compliance committee to consider Canada's situation. I think it is an international embarrassment that Canada would be the first country to be brought forward for a peer support group, if you will, under the facilitative branch of the compliance regime. I think that is an important aspect of the process. We will have to go through a process of review, and more than rhetoric, we'll need to legitimately show why it is that we simply haven't been able to achieve our objectives when in fact every other country has taken measures similar to what we've been saying for years that we should be taking.
But the more important thing I think is the implication for the post-2012 negotiations. Who will take Canada seriously in its attempt to argue for a weaker target, an intensity-based target, or a voluntary target, or whatever it is we're proposing we're going to do, when countries like China have moved in their areas, as I mentioned? Or take the case of Japan, or the U.K., or the European Union, more broadly. They look at us and say, “Well, hold on. We did regulations. We've done emissions trading. We've used all of the instruments available to us, but Canada has not done that. Why should we give you such a break in the second Kyoto Protocol period?”
I think it's been a bad negotiating tactic on our part. I think our objective is to prove to the world we're serious about this issue, to do everything we can to achieve that target. Then we will be in a better negotiating position for post-2012.