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R 162232Z NOV 06
FM AMEMBASSY OTTAWA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 4449
INFO RUCNCAN/ALL CANADIAN POSTS COLLECTIVE
RUEHSS/OECD POSTS COLLECTIVE
RHEHAAA/WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON DC
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHDC
RUEAEPA/HQ EPA WASHDC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 003423 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR OES, EB, AND WHA 
WHITE HOUSE FOR CEQ 
EAP FOR OFFICE OF THE ADMINISTRATOR AND INTERNATIONAL 
AFFAIRS 
DOE FOR POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SENV ENRG ECON CA
SUBJECT: CANADA'S CLEAN AIR ACT FACES TOUGH SLEDDING 
 
REF: OTTAWA 3182 
 
This message is sensitive but unclassified.  Please protect 
accordingly.  Not for internet distribution. 
 
¶1. (U) Summary: Less than two weeks after its introduction in 
the House of Commons the Tories' highly anticipated 
"made-in-Canada" environmental plan, the Clean Air Act, has 
been derailed from the standard parliamentary pathway.  The 
bill will likely be subject to a massive redraft in an ad hoc 
"Legislative Committee" where opposition MPs will outnumber 
Conservatives seven to five.  The shape of the committee 
debate to come may have been foreshadowed during a November 
14 press conference at the Nairobi UNFCC meeting when federal 
Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs characterized the Conservative 
approach to climate change as "scandalous" and "idiotic." 
The Liberals and New Democratic Party already have their own 
"climate change" bills before the House of Commons; and 
Quebec insists it has a viable plan to "meet its Kyoto 
obligations." (Quebec, as a province, technically has no 
Kyoto obligations.)  Ironically, senior government 
bureaucrats have told Embassy they find the Conservative's 
policy on clean air and climate change an effective and 
targeted approach they are quite pleased with.  End summary. 
 
¶2. (U) On October 19, Canadian Minister of the Environment 
Rona Ambrose introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-30, 
the government's long-anticipated legislation to address air 
pollution and climate change. The Bill, known as Canada's 
Clean Air Act, has three main goals: 1) to change Canada's 
Environmental Protection Act to enable the federal government 
to regulate air pollutants and green-house gases; 2) to 
clarify federal regulatory power to set standards in Canada's 
Vehicle Fuel Consumption Act; and 3) to amend the Energy 
Efficiency Act to allow the GoC to address manufactured goods 
as part of a national energy efficiency strategy (reftel). 
 
¶3. (U) While the broader business community signaled its 
approval of the Tory approach, environmental NGOs and 
opposition parties who have been attacking the Conservatives 
on climate change since the Spring, seized on the 
introduction of the legislation to move their discontent into 
high gear. 
 
Government to Send Bill to "Legislative Committee" 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
¶4. (U) In the last days of October, NDP leader Jack Layton 
leveraged a meeting with Prime Minister Harper by threatening 
to bring down the Conservative minority government on a 
confidence vote unless Harper agreed to meet with him to 
discuss the Clean Air Act.  After the Harper-Layton meeting 
on October 31 the government surprised many observers by 
agreeing to Layton's proposal to send its draft legislation 
(C-30) directly to a "legislative committee" rather than 
subject the bill to the standard legislative pathway of 
debate, floor votes, and referral to the House Standing 
Committee on the Environment and Sustainability for review. 
 
¶5. (SBU) According to Rob Taylor, Director of Parliamentary 
Affairs for the Conservative House Leader in the Commons, the 
four parties' House leaders have agreed in principle to 
establish the ad hoc legislative committee and are now 
negotiating the details of its mandate, structure and 
composition.  The committee will, Taylor explained, have a 
broad mandate to study the legislation and make changes that 
Qbroad mandate to study the legislation and make changes that 
could fundamentally alter its scope.  The committee will be 
comprised of 13 MPs: 5 Conservatives; 4 Liberals, 2 Bloc 
Quebecois (BQ), and 1 New Democratic Party (NDP) MP, along 
with a chairman appointed by the Speaker of the House who 
will exercise a vote only in instances of ties.  Taylor 
thinks it is a "crap shoot" on how the draft legislation will 
evolve (hard GHG targets vs. soft; short timelines vs. long) 
and whether the legislation's pollution control aspects will 
get lost in the posturing and redrafting of the climate 
change portion.  He remarked too, that the choice of Liberal 
Party leader in December will be key to how the Liberal 
members contribute within the committee.  Front runner 
Michael Ignatieff is no Kyoto fan, whereas second-place Bob 
Rae is more supportive.  Taylor continued that the 
Conservatives still hold some cards.  If the legislation that 
comes back from committee is unacceptable, the government can 
choose to not submit it for second reading and consequently 
 
OTTAWA 00003423  002 OF 003 
 
 
kill it.  Ironically, senior government bureaucrats have told 
Embassy they find the Conservatives' policy on clean air and 
climate change an effective and targeted approach they are 
quite comfortable with, and at least some officials profess 
to being less skeptical as to the bill's fate in the 
legislative committee. 
 
NDP and Liberals have their own Clean Air bills 
--------------------------------------------- -- 
¶6. (U) There are, in any case, competing climate change bills 
already before parliament.  Just hours before meeting PM 
Harper on October 31, NDP leader Jack Layton introduced a 
private member's bill (C-377) called the Clean Air 
Accountability Act.  The seven-page bill calls for reducing 
greenhouse gas emissions to a level 80 percent below 1990 
levels by 2050 (with interim targets for 2015-2045).  Shannon 
Haggarty, Senior Advisor to Environment Minister Ambrose, 
told Embassy that Layton's bill is "not (too far) out in left 
field" and in fact has significant similarities to the Clean 
Air Act's measures on reducing emissions, and on targets and 
timelines.  Given that its first target is not until 2015, 
the Layton bill does not address the Kyoto commitment period, 
leading the Liberals and Bloc Qubcois to accuse the NDP too 
of abandoning Kyoto.  Layton insists he has not abandoned 
Kyoto's targets and continues to support another private 
member's bill (C-288) tabled by Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez 
that calls on Canada to meet its Kyoto commitments on 
schedule. 
 
¶7. (U) The Rodriguez bill, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation 
Act, proposes a compressed timetable that would "ensure 
Canada takes effective and timely action to meet its 
obligations under the Kyoto Protocol."  The bill would allow 
the government to make, amend or repeal regulations to enable 
Canada to reduce by 2012 its total GHG emissions to a level 6 
percent below 1990 GHG emissions, including by establishing 
emissions caps, restricting permits to emit GHGs, allowing 
trading and so on.  Both the Layton and Rodriguez bills 
propose establishing offences and penalties so that violators 
would be subject to indictment or summary conviction and 
liable to fines or imprisonment. 
 
¶8. (U) The Rodriguez (Liberal) bill was introduced in May, 
has passed its second vote in the House, and is currently 
before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment 
and Sustainability.  The Layton (NDP) bill has been placed 
high on the "Order of Precedence" and can expect second 
reading at some point in the coming months. 
 
Domestic Critics Assail Conservatives at UNFCCC Conference 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
¶9. (U) During a November 14 press conference at the Nairobi 
UN Climate Change meetings, Federal Liberal MP John Godfrey, 
Bloc Quebecois MP Bernard Bigras, Quebec's Environment 
Minister Claude Bechard, and Canadian environmentalists 
openly mocked Ambrose and derided the government's climate 
change stance as "scandalous," "idiotic," and "ridiculous." 
Bechard, whose comments were less vitriolic, said he hoped 
Ambrose would acknowledge Quebec's Kyoto plan at the 
Conference this week.  "We can't say that Kyoto is impossible 
in Canada when one of the provinces, Quebec, has a plan to 
meet Kyoto with minimum participation from the federal 
government," he said.  Bechard also announced that Quebec 
Qgovernment," he said.  Bechard also announced that Quebec 
plans to host a high-level meeting next February that will 
bring together environment and energy ministers from Canadian 
provinces and U.S. states that support more aggressive action 
on climate change.  (Quebec is not, of course, party to the 
Kyoto Protocol and has no separate Kyoto commitment.  But it 
does have a plan, announced in June, to reduce emissions by 6 
percent, matching Canada's Kyoto target.  The province is 
demanding C$328 million from federal coffers )- promised to 
it by the previous Liberal government -- to help implement 
the plan.) 
 
Kyoto Commitment Still Alive? 
----------------------------- 
¶10. (U) During her own address to the UN Climate Change 
Conference on November 15 and subsequent press questioning, 
Environment Minister Ambrose stressed Canada's commitment to 
the UN process on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, and 
did not entirely rule out the possibility Canada could meet 
its Kyoto emissions reduction goals.  (Five months earlier, 
 
OTTAWA 00003423  003 OF 003 
 
 
in May, Ambrose had declared the targets unachievable.)  In 
Nairobi Ambrose said experts "tell me that it will be very, 
very difficult for Canada to reach the Kyoto target," 
nevertheless "we're moving forward very aggressively to put a 
plan in place to make progress on our Kyoto targets.  Canada 
remains strongly committed to Kyoto."  Possibly in direct 
reaction to the harsh opposition and NGO criticism leveled at 
the Clean Air Act -) and her personally -- in preceding 
days, Ambrose repeated her charge that the previous Liberal 
government is to blame for leaving the country so far behind 
schedule that it effectively has no real prospect of meeting 
the Kyoto targets.  Ambrose also charged the opposition with 
using Kyoto to try to divide the Canadian electorate (which 
may face national elections in the spring of 2007) and vowed 
the Conservative government would ensure that individuals, 
industry, and all levels of political subdivisions worked 
together toward the Kyoto targets. 
 
¶11. (U) Ambrose's Nairobi statement enumerated specific 
measures contained in the Clean Air Act, such as targets for 
renewables and mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards. 
She promised industry would have short-term emissions targets 
by early next year and did not rule out Canada buying carbon 
credits to aid progress toward the target.  She stressed the 
crucial role of technology in addressing climate change, and 
put federal government commitments for new actions on climate 
change this year at C$2 billion. 
 
Comment 
------- 
¶12. (SBU) The heated present domestic debate on Kyoto, and on 
the Harper government's strategy and timetable to reduce 
emissions, falls squarely in the category of political 
theater (and feeds on pre-election posturing at the federal 
and provincial levels), with provinces, opposition parties, 
and environmental NGOs seemingly bent on outdoing one another 
in charging the government with abandoning Canada's 
obligation as an environmental steward.  In fact, the speed 
with which the opposition targeted the Clean Air Act's 
climate change provisions derailed the government's initial 
strategy for rolling out the Act and its overall 
environmental strategy.  Perhaps sensing climate change was 
too much of a lightning rod, officials at the political and 
bureaucratic levels had told Embassy the government's 
strategy during the rollout would be to play to the Act's 
expected health benefits (i.e., its air pollution control 
measures) rather than climate change.  But being on the 
defensive from the day the bill was introduced, they just 
never had the chance. 
 
Visit Canada's Classified Web Site at 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/ottawa 
 
WILKINS