Wednesday, March 14, 2007
A Climate Change Plan for Ontario
Toronto, Canada — The McGuinty government conducted a public consultation process in the fall of 2006, and Greenpeace joined other environmental groups in outlining how the provincial government should deal with climate change.
A Climate Change Plan for Ontario is long overdue. The McGuinty government conducted a public consultation process in the fall of 2006, but these meetings lacked adequate notice and preparation time, and provided no draft proposal or background material.
Despite these limitations to the consultation process, Greenpeace joined other environmental organizations, calling on the government to:
• establish a plan to meet Ontario’s portion of Canada’s Kyoto commitment and achieve further deeper reductions post-2012;
• commit all Ontario government agencies to achieving these targets; and
• adopt substantial measures in the 2007 provincial budget increasing conservation and renewable energy.
In December 2006, Greenpeace made a number of specific suggestions that the province should pursue. This document, Ontario’s Climate Crisis: The Time to Act is Now, is not meant to be a climate plan for the province. Rather, it identifies a number of policies and programs that should be addressed in order to devise a effective plan.
We have had no meaningful response from the McGuinty government, which has moved backwards by delaying its phaseout of coal generation, and by its support of nuclear power (both rebuilding old nuclear plants, as well as building new ones).
Tories need a tough approach to climate change - Greenpeace weighs in on how Canada should address the problem
Ottawa, Canada — Canada's Conservative government has failed to adequately address climate change, proposing a so-called Clean Air Act that was more smog and mirrors than real action on this global threat. Recently, hearings have been held to strengthen the Act. Last week, Greenpeace was in Ottawa to ensure Canada takes needed action to avert dangerous climate change.
We called for a complete overhaul of the Act, stressing that Canada must honour our Kyoto targets, and then further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in the years to come. As the Act is written, the Conservative government has not committed to absolute reductions in greenhouse gas emissions before 2020, and this is a huge mistake. The longer we wait to reduce these emissions, the more intractable the problem becomes.
Canada is already near the bottom of a list of 41 industrialized countries that have signed Kyoto in terms of the increase in our greenhouse gases, and we are on track to do even worse in the future.
From the way reductions in emissions are calculated under the Act, to the introduction of stringent vehicle emissions standards to elimination of tax breaks for the Alberta tar sands, we need to drastically overhaul the Clean Air Act.
The first step is to meet our Kyoto commitments with stringent emissions reductions, and we are waiting on the Harper government to step up to the challenge.
Quebec provincial Elections 2007 - 17 questions to Quebec's main political parties
Greenpeace sent to all Quebec political parties a questionnaire covering environmental topics. Thanks to the answers given, the members of Greenpeace and the citizens of Quebec will be in a better position to judge if the parties are truly sincere in their willingness to implement real political solutions for the environment as soon as they take power.
The parties involved had a few days to complete the Greenpeace questionnaire. Following that, a Greenpeace team gathered their answers, and ascribed a note to each political formation according to their performance in environmental protection. The questions include many topics, click here to view them.
Read the letter sent to parties
Read the questions we asked all parties
Download the questions as a pdf document
Find out more about the grading method
View results by party or by question
View parties' report cards View Greenpeace's comments -->
