OTTAWA - The Canadian government, under fire for dismissing the Kyoto protocol as unworkable, will next month unveil an environmental package that focuses on improving air quality, but says little about global warming, officials and activists say.
Although Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada has no chance of meeting its Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gases, polls show most Canadians back the treaty.
The government's solution will therefore be to ignore Kyoto while trying to improve air quality and combat criticism that the Conservatives do not care about the environment.
"I think the skeptics will be surprised. There is a lot of meat on this package and it could do some real good," said one official involved in formulating the so-called Green Plan.
It will focus on clean air, especially cutting smog, and on climate change and regulating toxic substances. Other initiatives will follow later, although the Conservatives will not say if they will seek to regulate heavy emitters like the power and energy sectors.
The environment is one of the trickiest challenges facing Harper, who only controls 125 of the 308 seats in Parliament and needs support from opposition parties to govern.
The party's power base is in the oil-rich western province of Alberta, where the concept of regulation is viewed with suspicion. But Harper wants to increase support in the left-leaning province of Quebec, where Kyoto is popular.
Environmental groups were briefed on the package last month, but said they received few firm details. Some expressed alarm at plans to coordinate climate change programs with the United States, which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001.
"Kyoto was not mentioned in any way... From a climate change perspective it was incredibly scary," said Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation.
"They did not address greenhouse gases or climate change to any great extent... When they did talk about it they talked about targets that are in the 2025-2050 range, which is not the kind of timelines we need," he told Reuters.
The Canadian Electricity Association complained last week that "confusing and complicated regulatory processes and uncertainty on climate change continue to be barriers to investment in our sector."
Harper can with some justification make the point that previous Liberal governments -- in power from 1993 to early 2006 -- did little to meet Kyoto targets obliging Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Current emissions are some 35 percent above the target.
Liberal legislator Michael Ignatieff, a front-runner in the race to become new party leader, last month conceded Canada could not meet its Kyoto targets. He said Canada should aim to halve greenhouse gases emissions by 2050 and proposed heavier taxes on dirtier kinds of fuel.
Story by David Ljunggren
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
