Environment Committee on Nov. 27th, 2007

[Aldyen Donnelly]

I think you might want to look at annual reports and recent announcements and count up....

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm looking for a rule—a rule that's been applied to the way business is done in the energy sector in Canada—that says, “We're serious about climate change. Here's the rule. You must abide by it.”

I can't find any.

[Aldyen Donnelly]

You understand that I'm not saying this is enough, but the fact is that, however inadequate, the greenhouse gas caps that the Province of Alberta has implemented are more aggressive than the caps that any European nation has put in place in their CO₂ allowance allocation procedure.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We would have a moment of disagreement about that, only—

[Aldyen Donnelly]

No, that's a fact.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

One question, and this is to Mr. Bramley, is about the cost of failure.

Canada has put forward this strange position that unless others lead—countries with GDPs a fraction of ours, far lower education levels, far lower capacity on the international front.... Yet we don't do that on other international engagements—the fight against AIDS, or military engagements in Afghanistan and the rest.

What is the cost of failure of this process—to Canada, specifically, and our national interest?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Bramley, very briefly, please.

[Matthew Bramley]

I think Canadians want us to be at the forefront of solving the problem. The kind of position it seems the Prime Minister took at the Commonwealth summit doesn't look like Canada being at the forefront of solving the problem. We always question the developing countries having different commitments or different levels of ambition than developed countries. You have the Prime Minister's statements in the last few days on the one hand, but Minister Baird actually said something a bit more encouraging. I think this was a quote from an article on November 12th. He said, “Canada is a rich country. We should go further and faster than developing countries, but we need them on board paddling in the same direction.” That's much closer to the kind of arrangement I think we're heading for.

Hopefully Minister Baird will be able to elaborate on that in Bali and tell us more about the difference between the types of commitments he thinks would be acceptable between the two categories of countries.

[John Drexhage]

If I might, just very quickly, I made--

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Drexhage, would you mind waiting for another round? We are at 11 minutes now. Hopefully you will get a chance to comment on that later.

It's over to Mr. Warawa for 10 minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to each of the witnesses for being here.

I did read the Pembina Institute handout, and I didn't see anything surprising there. Thank you for that. It was what I was expecting.

I want to correct one comment made by Mr. Bramley on CDMs. In fact, it is in the regulatory framework. CDMs are part of that.

I want to bring something to the committee's attention, and I'm sure you're all aware of it. Last Thursday we had panellists here from the IPCC. It was one of my colleagues, I believe it was Mr. Watson, who asked if the United States and Canada were to totally shut down, no more greenhouse gases coming from Canada, everything totally stopped, what would happen to greenhouse gas emissions globally; would they stabilize or would they continue to grow? The IPCC panellist said they would continue to grow. That highlighted to me the importance of having all major emitters as part of the solution.

They went on to say that this is why Canada and the United States need to create the technologies that will enable the rest of the world to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. That was encouraging.

Through the strong leadership of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Environment at G-8, at APEC--and I would disagree with my Liberal colleagues who called it a sideshow--we need to find a way of getting all these major polluters involved in the solution. The metaphor the minister uses is that we are all rowing in the same direction.

My question is to Ms. Donnelly. There have been comments about the per capita greenhouse gas emissions. I was in Berlin at the G-8 plus 5. There were numerous countries represented there. We talked about deforestation. There were very complex issues. For example, a parliamentarian from India shared that there are 1,000 villages in India that do not have electricity yet. They're looking for the easiest and quickest way of providing electricity, so they're looking at burning coal in a generating plant. Now you have greenhouse gas emissions that are projected to increase in India, along with a lot of dangerous pollutants. But they need the electricity.

There were a lot of options that were discussed. But the EU was quite proud that they had lowered their greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

Could you and Mr. Drexhage share with us--we'll start with Ms. Donnelly--how Europe reduced their greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

[Aldyen Donnelly]

I try to distinguish between what's happening within national boundaries and what I call a nation's or a people's greenhouse gas footprint. In 1990, if there are still only two countries in the world and they're energy self-sufficient and they have the same jobs and the same consumption patterns, they're the same. Then in 2000, if this nation now imports 50% of its energy and manufactured goods, and that nation exports the goods that this nation imports, then that nation's emissions are much higher than this nation's. But this nation's global greenhouse gas footprint is either the same as it used to be or higher, because goods that used to be made down the road are now being shipped across the world.

Between 1990 and 2005, Europe shifted from being a net fuel exporting region to being a net fuel importer. The U.K. is a net coal importer now, as are other countries. And over that period, EU-wide, with offshore manufacturing, they've had a net 34% loss of manufacturing jobs. If you actually look at the European inventories--European per capita transportation and fuel consumption per capita, greenhouse gases from transportation fuel consumption, per capita electricity consumption, greenhouse gases per unit of electricity consumed, per capita car purchases, per capita car use—on average, all have increased faster than Canada's have. So 100% of the differential between our trend and their trend derives from the fact that they have shifted from being energy self-sufficient and one of the leading manufactured goods exporting nations to being energy not self-sufficient and one of the leading manufactured goods importing regions.

The trouble in this whole context for Canada is, of course, that while Europe lost 34% of its manufacturing employment, Canada gained a net, almost, 17%. We've stabilized recently. Those differentials explain everything.

What's that got to do with anything? The fact is that if each of us as an end-user is consuming more, we haven't improved the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases just by shifting our manufacturing offshore. So if we went back to a Montreal Protocol-type construct, we would be accountable for the full fuel-cycle emissions associated with what we consume, regardless of where we get what we consume from. That's a Montreal Protocol-type structure. In that structure, Canada's per capita emissions would still be high--and absolutely, we need to do a lot of work--but our trend since 1990 would be better than all but three of the 25 EU member states.

It should be noted that we have the third-cleanest electricity grid in the world, and per unit of output, we are home to among the most efficient chemical and manufactured goods product manufacturers in the world.

So our challenge is to figure out how to do something that Europe simply has not achieved, which is to cut emissions and increase jobs.

There are people who have to be in this room, like Canada's labour pension funds.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

How much time do I have?

I have three minutes.

I'm going to move to Mr. Drexhage, and instead of having you answer that question, I'm going to ask a new one.

Both of you talked about the Montreal Protocol and about using that as a model. What we're looking at is post-2012 and finding out what did not work with Kyoto. What I've heard on a regular basis is that Kyoto, as it's presently structured, is focusing on 30% and that 70% of the emitters are not part of the Kyoto Protocol.

What you're proposing, through the Montreal Protocol model, is that everybody would be involved. Is that correct? Maybe we'll start with Mr. Drexhage.

[John Drexhage]

That certainly is one of the real, significant achievements. I would, respectfully, not share all the same conclusions as to why the Montreal Protocol was a success.

I think the consumption part was more effectively addressed in the Montreal Protocol, but that's far and away not the only reason why it was a success. And with respect to the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, if you think you're going to now change around the entire regime for inventory and accounting of greenhouse gas emissions, you're really dreaming in la-la land. That's not going to happen. But should it be taken into account when Canada is deciding what sorts of reductions it should be looking at in the future? Yes, that's something that should be taken into account.

If I might, I really do have to respond to some of the European stuff, because Aldyen is making it sound as if Europe is some kind of dreary, dreadful place where there's no expanding economy. Plus, we have an incredibly poor currency going on there as well. Well, in fact, we know that the very opposite is happening, and it's made it a heck of a lot more competitive. The reason they did so had a lot to do with the energy crisis in the 1970s, and they smartened up. We haven't been pressed to smarten up in the same way, and we're going to pay the price for it, both in terms of the adjustments we have to make in adjusting to climate change and in terms of just growing up as an economy.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Drexhage, how long do you think China, India, Brazil, and Korea should be given a free ride? I think the Liberals said they're building their country on the back of the atmosphere, so how long should they be given a free ride? How quickly should they be part of the solution?

[John Drexhage]

It really depends on where the government and Canadians want us to be. If they want us to be at two degrees Celsius, we really have to talk about their getting engaged with serious commitments within the next 10 to 20 years.

If we're talking about something a bit longer-term where it's going to be a 3.5 degrees Celsius change, whereby we're putting 40% to 70% of the species at risk, they can wait a little longer, but we are definitely talking about within the next decade, absolutely.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Warawa and Mr. Drexhage.

Now we're moving to the five-minute round. Our next questions are coming from Mr. Godfrey.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you very much. Welcome back, in many cases.

I have a couple of simple questions for the panel. Do any of you know, as of this hour, actually what the Canadian position will be at Bali? A simple yes or no.

[Matthew Bramley]

The statements have been made in some speeches. Essentially, Canada's position to date, as far as we know it, is that we want a new international agreement that cuts global emissions in half by 2050. That was in the throne speech. It has binding targets that apply to all major emitters, including Canada, the U.S., and China. That was in the throne speech and one of the Prime Minister's speeches. Canada will do everything in its power to help develop an effective all-inclusive international framework that recognizes national circumstances.

Also, Canada did agree at the EU summit in June on the principle of launching negotiations in Bali, but that's all I know. There's nothing about what we would expect to see in the Bali mandate. There's nothing about the numbers on the scale of reductions that need to come from this or that kind of country, nothing on the kinds of commitments that different kinds of countries should take on. I haven't seen the kind of level of detail that we need to be into discussing in Bali.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Drexhage, you've been to a lot of these COP meetings. In your experience, is it unusual for the Government of Canada at this stage of the game not to have its position a little better known in advance?

[John Drexhage]

To be absolutely honest, I'd have to say no, it's not, unfortunately. It's been a problem we've had to grapple with, I have to say, for an awfully long time, and it still doesn't seem to get adequately addressed. I have to be honest about this.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Let me ask you this. In the absence of positions laid out beforehand, one has to assume that what the Prime Minister said the other day in Kampala is part of the Canadian position. It must be a foreshadowing of what's going to be said.

Again, Mr. Drexhage, in your experience of negotiations, do you think that this hard line, this insistence that we all have to sign up at the same time, is actually going to be very helpful either to the folks in Bali or in Canada establishing a leadership role? That's a question. Or is this part of the negotiating game, as some columnists have suggested, or part of being a bridge or part of some other damned thing?

[John Drexhage]

Far be it from me to try to read the mind or the motivation of the Prime Minister. There certainly is an aspect to this that is not unlike trade negotiations, in which you certainly cannot show all of your cards at one time, or in which you might in fact try to weigh your cards in one direction at the beginning of a set of negotiations in order to try to influence the outcome in another direction.

I would also want to make the point that I discussed with some people beforehand, which is that at the same time and notwithstanding the role of such things in a negotiation, in some respects this is something very different. This is not trade. This is not a simple economic commodity we're talking about here.

At the same time, I do recognize that many other countries aren't treating it in that way either, and are being very cynical and have been very cynical about the game being played out in the negotiations for quite some time.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Bramley, do you find the Prime Minister's stance helpful in any way in advancing the cause of Bali and getting beyond Kyoto?

[Matthew Bramley]

No, the statements made about the targets or commitments that the Prime Minister wants to see for developing countries seems to indicate a very rigid position without acknowledging the nuance that there are these vast disparities between different kinds of countries. I can't imagine that's a helpful way to begin the Bali negotiations.