Evidence of meeting #38 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was targets.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
That's fine, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.
Thank you, of course, to our witnesses for appearing here today.
Mr. Brinkmann, I believe in your opening statement you used this terminology: “Science tells us that [developed countries] should reduce their collective emissions by 25% to 40% by 2020” from 1990 levels. Did I catch that correctly?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
Yes.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I'm not going to ask you to comment on the specific testimony of Canadian scientists before this panel a few weeks ago, but the basis for differentiation of targets between developed and developing countries is the application of, if I understand it correctly, an equity interpretation. I did question Canadian scientists as to whether that's a standard scientific term, and they unanimously said it was not. So I just take issue.... Science may inform us in a certain direction, but there are other non-scientific applications applied to that particular decision.
You did also mention that the European Union has lowered its target. For the record and for Canadians who are watching, of course, and want to know, from what level in what baseline year to what level and what baseline year did you lower the European target?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
As we said before, we took 1990 as the baseline because that was the basis of Kyoto. We stick to that. We always do our percentages on the basis of 1990.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
We did not lower any target. We set the targets that I have explained to you.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I thought the comment you made at the table was that the EU has lowered its target. What did I misunderstand in that?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary
The EU has set a target of a 20% reduction on 1990 by 2020, but it said that in the context of an international agreement, it would aim to be more ambitious and to achieve a 30% target.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
All right. I must have misheard you, then, Mr. Brinkmann. My apologies. I will defer the remaining time to Mr. Braid.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Ambassador and Mr. High Commissioner, for being here today.
Mr. High Commissioner, if I could start with you, please, in the plan that you provided us today, the “UK Climate Change Policy”, you indicate that by 2020, for example, you have a goal of creating 1.2 million green jobs.
I presume that some of those jobs have been created already on our way to 2020. Could you describe what those green jobs are and where they've been created? What is the nature of those jobs?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary
As I said, there are about 800,000 such jobs. Some of those are in the technologies being developed for renewable energy. Many of them are going to be service jobs.
We already have people who are, for example, helping people to adapt their houses to lower their emissions, selling them cleaner boilers, selling them insulation, helping them to audit, putting in the metering that's going to be needed in people's houses so they know how much energy they're using, and advising people on how best to manage the transition.
There are a lot of service jobs as well as manufacturing jobs.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Very good.
If I understood you correctly earlier, I believe that, using 1990 as the base year, the U.K. has already reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 25%. Is that correct?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary
We're on target for 25% by 2012. I think at the moment we're at about 22%.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
How have you done that? From what sectors of the economy have those reductions come?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Anthony Joyce Cary
We've done it partly--and I don't claim any great virtue for this--because we were managing a transition anyway. We had been a very heavily coal-dependent economy and we were moving towards using more gas as a fuel because we were getting gas from the North Sea. We were able to convert to gas. We've also had some reduction in our manufacturing sector, so to some extent we have exported our problem with emissions to countries from which we're now importing goods.
So partly it has been happening anyway as a result of structural change in our economy, but I would say that it has also been driven because government policy has tried to move further and faster through the sorts of mechanisms I've described.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Mr. Ambassador, could you quickly remind us who the non-member EU states are?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
Non-member EU states?
12:55 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
The rest of Europe. You have Ukraine, the Balkan countries, parts of Switzerland and Norway--
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Very good.
How do you reconcile their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how do they participate in the overall consolidated European framework? How do you make sure they're doing their part?
1 p.m.
His Excellency Matthias Brinkmann
They're not members of the European Union; they're sovereign countries, so they participate in the Copenhagen process and they'll have to bring their input there. They're not part of what I described as the EU position.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you very much, Mr. Braid.
I want to thank both Your Excellencies for coming. It's not often we have the heads of missions testify before committees. I do appreciate that all committee members treated you with courtesy and respect. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for appearing.
With that, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.
The meeting is adjourned.