I would say that there are substantive differences, but done well an approach involving targets can achieve many of the same functions that a carbon budget approach takes.
One of the key points is the one that I mentioned in my opening. Carbon budgets have always been established going out a number of years, with carbon budgets covering different periods of time as opposed to one at a time. There are no examples of carbon budgets being used internationally a single budget at a time.
The other thing is that carbon budgets I think are actually better for a jurisdiction like Canada in that they express the emissions over a multi-year period in terms of how much we can emit as opposed to reductions relative to a base year. There's more opportunity for businesses, local government or provincial governments to take ownership over how much they're contributing and to see how that fits within a broader conversation.
I don't agree with the minister that carbon budgets are not well suited for Canada. That being said, if the government has decided to go with a targets-based approach, if it does it well—and currently BillC-12 doesn't do it well—it can certainly achieve many of the same goals.