Environment committee  Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity to provide an overview of the recent outcomes of the Nairobi climate negotiations. I am the director of the Sage Climate Project at the Sage Centre. Sage is an operating charity carrying out a number of projects that are focused on co

Environment committee  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 broug

Environment committee  Absolutely. In fact if you look at the demonstrable progress report that the UN published, in fact if you go through it carefully and not just cite certain aspects of it in terms of where countries are today with respect to their targets, every single country in their national co

Environment committee  Could I just add to that?

Environment committee  Well, I'm not afraid to take it on. It's difficult, when you've been working on this issue so long, to hear the same things that we've been saying for 15 years. How much capital stock turnover do you think we've had in the last 15 years? It's always portrayed as the future, the

Environment committee  Yes, we can.

Environment committee  You set your target, you establish a proper economy-wide cap-and-trade system, and you allow the private sector, through its domestic and international opportunities, to meet its objectives. Yes, you can.

Environment committee  All environment groups.

Environment committee  I'll just speak to the importance of setting stretched targets and the reason why Kyoto is so valuable. John said on several occasions that we need realistic targets, as has the government. I spent seven years working with communities across Canada and set up the Green Municipal

Environment committee  Obviously the scientific consensus is strong, so I'm not going to get into that debate, but I would comment on the need to challenge this perspective or rhetoric that somehow Canada should not be participating in international negotiations. It comes back to our security. It com

Environment committee  No, actually, and I can explain that very easily. Kathryn did interview me, and she has corrected her paper. Sage is funded by foundations, just as a number of environment groups are in Canada. I was funded to develop a climate plan for Canada, which I did do. It has nothing to

Environment committee  Hold on, I'm not finished. I published my paper, with the IISD in fact, and that paper went into--

Environment committee  Well, do you want the answer?

Environment committee  I provided a paper that went into the system, and I was consulted on some of the measures that were in there, as were other groups, such as Pembina and so on. Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada developed Project Green. That is a government plan and not anything to do

Environment committee  I had proposed the clean energy trust, which was similar to what I'd created with the green municipal fund. Samy Watson, the deputy minister at Environment Canada, created the climate fund, which does not in fact represent the proposal I made. I was proposing a carbon bank for Ca