Canada has no real plan to meet its stated 2020 GHG emissions goals, and has no idea how much its hodgepodge of sector specific regulations will cost.
In his latest report, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan says Canada would need to reduce emissions by 178 million tonnes over the next eight years in order to meet the set targets — an unlikely feat.
“In comparison, the 2011 Climate Change Plan for the Purposes of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act reported actual reductions totalling six million tonnes for 2008 and 2009,” his report states…
Ottawa has not done a proper analysis of the costs associated with meeting the emissions goal. That’s ironic, he suggested, because the Conservatives justified the decision to leave Kyoto by saying it was too expensive — estimated at $14 billion in December of last year.
The other issue highlighted by the report is the price the Canadian taxpayers will have to pay to clean up toxic sites across the country:
The estimated cost of cleaning up those sites is $7.7 billion, but the government has only set aside a fraction of that, Vaughan said. His audit found a $500-million shortfall to deal with the sites that have been assessed so far.
Most of the contaminated sites, including abandoned mines and industrial fields, date back to between 1940 and 1970, before strict environmental regulations were put in place.
“This is a cautionary note not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Canadians won’t put up with it and we can’t afford it,” Vaughan told Power Play.
This last bit tells an especially important story, because the government of Canada is busy gutting environmental regulations.
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