Canada's patchwork approach to fighting climate change
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

Few global leaders will argue that the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions isn't an immediate international challenge. In Canada, the discussion about whether we should cut emissions has morphed into one of how to go about doing it. And yet, years of discussion have resulted in only one definitive action: National emissions are already 30 percent above our Kyoto commitments of 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Most recently, at the G8 Summit in Japan, the federal government stood firm on its insistence that developing countries like China and India (that are not bound by Kyoto) commit to real targets before Canada will agree to mandatory international targets for reducing emissions.

Currently, federal legislation calls for a 20 percent reduction in Canada's total greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions below 2006 levels by 2020 (equal to about 3 percent higher than 1990 levels or nine percent higher than our Kyoto commitments) using a plan that relies on intensity targets (instead of fixed caps) to get us there.

Early this year, federal Liberal leader Stéphane Dion called for a sliding carbon tax on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal that would be applied to home heating, industry and the production of electricity. The tax is meant to be revenue neutral, offset by tax breaks.

The federal government dismissed this plan as a "tax grab" that was "foolish and unnecessary," arguing that the best was to reduce GHG emissions is through regulating large industrial emitters.

The provincial response
Criticism over the lack of an aggressive federal strategy, international pressure and mounting public concern over the environment has prompted some provinces to take policy matters into their own hands. The result, many experts argue, is a patchwork provincial regulatory environment instead of a national carbon strategy.

"What the federal government is saying at the moment is, 'We're proposing a scheme, and if a province has a scheme that matches it or is tougher, then we won't impose federal regulations in that province,'" says Rodney White, author of Carbon Finance and professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto. "It's growing from the bottom up, which is a very messy way to grow."