Montreal Mayor Denise Coderre announced Thursday the city's formal opposition to TransCanada’s proposed Energy East pipeline. The 4,600-kilometer west-to-east oil pipeline project would see 1,600 kilometres of new pipe built along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and in New Brunswick.

"We are against it because it still represents significant environmental threats and too few economic benefits for greater Montreal," Coderre said in a press conference.

Groups opposed to the 1.1 million barrels-a-day project, which is significantly larger than TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, welcomed the announcement.

“Today, 82 municipal counsellors, representing 3.9 million citizens in the greater Montreal region, have issued a resounding ‘no’ to the Energy East project and to TransCanada Corporation,” Steven Guilbeault, Senior Director at Équiterre, said in a media release.

Coderre’s announcement came after 82 municipalities comprising the Communauté Municipale de Montréal (Montreal Metropolitan Community) voted this morning on whether to approve or oppose the project. Energy East’s proposed route would go through the northern municipalities of the greater Montreal-area.

“We’re really happy,” Audrey Yank, spokesperson for Montreal-based citizens-group Coalition Vigilance Oleoducs told DeSmog Canada. “It feels like a another small victory to give us hope.”

“TransCanada is asking us to bear all the risks of Energy East in exchange for very small benefits,” Yank said.

Energy East has faced stiff opposition in Quebec for over a year now. TransCanada’s plan to build an export tanker terminal in Quebec near the calving waters of endangered beluga whales was met by public outcry. Even Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, who is not an Energy East opponent, suggested publicly TransCanada should look some place else for its terminal.

In the face of growing Quebec public opposition to the pipeline, TransCanada scrapped plans for building a terminal anywhere in Quebec last November.

But by canceling plans to build a terminal in Quebec, selling the project to Quebecers on the basis of economic benefits has become difficult. The Montreal Metropolitan Community conducted public consultations on Energy East last fall and the majority of those who participated were against the project.

In a 2015 poll, 57 percent of Quebecers expressed their opposition to Energy East.

Montreal is the first major city to come out against the project to transport oilsands (also called tar sands) bitumen across the country from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick. Winnipeg and Ottawa also sit along Energy East’s purposed route, but neither has shown the same degree of opposition as Montreal as of yet.

Ottawa-resident Mike Fletcher is hoping this will change soon.

“Ottawa has more risk and potentially less benefit than Montreal from this horrible proposal. The pipe through Ottawa is used, as opposed to proposed new pipe in Montreal,” Fletcher told DeSmog Canada.

“But so far Ottawa's reaction has been mixed. We are glad that the City will produce a letter of comment to the National Energy Board, but most of our municipal elected officials need to square up against Energy East,” Fletcher said. The 3,000 kilometres of the proposed pipeline situated west of Quebec is an existing natural gas line TransCanada plans on converting to oil.

Fletcher has played a key role in local group Ecology Ottawa’s campaign against the Energy East pipeline over the last two years. Ecology Ottawa was one of several environmental organizations targeted by a botched TransCanada PR campaign to undermine pipeline opponents in 2014.

Provincial governments in Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick support the project. Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba have all been guarded in their statements about Energy East, neither denouncing nor fully endorsing their provinces acting as a thoroughfare for the pipeline.

Ontario’s energy regulator examined TransCanada’s application for Energy East and concluded the project was not in the best interest of Canada’s most populous province.

Audrey Yank from Coalition Vigilance Oleoducs is concerned that Montreal’s analysis of the Energy East project does not cover the potential impacts the pipeline could have on climate change. 

“It appears the analysis does not address green house gas emissions. Climate change should be part of the analysis, especially after the Paris climate talks,” Yank said.

“We can’t build fossil fuels infrastructure that lasts 40 or 50 years if we need to get to a zero-carbon economy by 2050,” Yank told DeSmog Canada.

Montreal’s announcement comes amongst a flurry of protests and calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep his election promise to initiate new regulatory reviews of Energy East and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline in B.C. that will include climate impacts, and stronger recognition of First Nations’ concerns.

Image Credit: Ville de Montréal via Flickr

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In the lead up to December’s UN climate talks in Paris, most countries are approaching their promised emission reductions with new national regulations. Canada’s Conservative government is taking a different path.

Instead of considering a federal carbon tax, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq has asked premiers to submit their own cuts and how they will achieve them. In a letter submitted to all premiers on Friday afternoon, Minister Aglukkaq notes that Canada is falling far short of its promised 2020 emission cuts and suggests it is up to individual provinces to fill in the gaps.

Those reductions — plus working out the details of the Canadian Energy Strategy — form the agenda for Tuesday’s Premiers' Climate Summit on Climate in Quebec City.

On Saturday afternoon, more than 25,000 people filled the streets of Quebec City asking provincial leaders to take the action the federal government seems obstinately set against. And these marchers are not outliers: a new poll commissioned by Canada’s Climate Action Network revealed 70 per cent of Canadians want the country to become global leaders in protecting the climate.

That’s why this Premiers' Climate Summit is so important — it is their leadership (or not) that could make the difference in Canada finally taking climate action. But who are the premiers leading the way and who could hold back progress yet again? Read on.

Provincial Leadership by the Numbers

British Columbia

• Premier: Christy Clark
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 60.1 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 8.6 per cent  

Much has been written about British Columbia’s progressive and award-winning carbon tax. Since its inception in 2008, B.C. has reduced its annual CO2 emissions by 2.2 gigatonnes, taking strides towards its goal of a 33 per cent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Christy Clark, in the lead up to the summit, challenged other governments to 'meet or beat' the province's carbon tax.

Unfortunately, Clark promised to freeze the carbon tax for five years as part of her 2013 election campaign. At the same time, Clark also pledged to reinvigorate B.C.’s economy by developing a $100 billion industry around the export of liquefied natural gas to Asian markets. Neither of these actions are likely to help B.C. meet or exceed its emission reduction targets.

On the plus side, Clark is lukewarm on two proposed pipeline and tanker projects that would carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to the B.C. coast. She has pledged to deny provincial operating permits to both Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain expansion unless they meet five conditions ranging from safety to profit sharing. After the dismal response to this week’s relatively small spill of toxic bunker fuel in Vancouver’s English Bay, the most important condition — a ‘world class’ oil spill response plan — seems unlikely to be met anytime soon.

Premier Clark will not attend the summit and will be speaking at a World Bank event instead.

Alberta

• Premier: Jim Prentice
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 249.3 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 35.7 per cent  

Alberta is the source of the lion’s share of Canada’s emissions, thanks largely to the Athabasca oilsands. After more than a decade of high global oil prices fueled rapid growth in the industry, the market for oil futures (with the high prices that kept the oilsands profitable) collapsed last fall.

The expansion of Alberta’s oilsands infrastructure is the source of much discussion and contention. Premiers of B.C., Quebec and Ontario have all set conditions before allowing any of the three large pending oil pipeline and tanker projects to proceed through their provinces, and the Obama administration in the U.S. has said it will not allow the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed if it contributes to climate change.

In 2007, the Alberta government implemented a small carbon levy of $15/tonne for large emitters. The tax will expire on June 30, 2015.

Premier Jim Prentice (a former Federal Minister of Environment in the Harper Conservative cabinet) has said he supports the idea of “the provinces [finding] common ground on energy and the environment, and [enforcing] fair, clear, well thought-out rules,” but has yet to reveal any plans.

Premier Prentice is currently running for re-election. His office confirmed he will not attend Tuesday’s summit.

Saskatchewan

• Premier: Brad Wall
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 74.8 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 10.7 per cent

Since becoming Premier in 2007, Brad Wall has said or done little about climate change. He actively supports development of pipeline infrastructure, particularly TransCanada’s Energy East and Keystone XL pipelines. In 2014, he travelled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the approval of the latter.

In a March 2014 roundtable interview with Canadian journalists he floated the idea of a moderate carbon tax as a being a means of encouraging the U.S. government to approve the pipeline. "I think you start slow and see what impact it has on the economy… I don't think you want to kneecap your economy with a carbon tax."

A few months later in November 2014, he approached the idea of CO2 emissions with a more fatalistic view, saying “If you want to get serious about (reducing) GHGs in Canada, we’d all stop driving cars.”

Premier Wall will not attend the summit.  

Manitoba

• Premier: Greg Selinger
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 21.2 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 3.03 per cent  

Since taking office in 2009, Premier Greg Selinger has been outspoken on climate change and Manitoba’s need to adapt and take action. His administration held knowledge-sharing sessions with experts in neighbouring Wisconsin; he’s spoken at sustainability conferences in India and committed to a robust set of climate adaptation goals, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 levels, to about 17.5 megatonnes.

That said, after five years his administration has yet to table any large-scale legislation or programs to make these reductions a reality. A planned cap-and-trade program expected for implementation in 2012 has not materialized. In the meantime, climate change impacts continue to add up. As Scott Forbes wrote in a Winnipeg Free Press op-ed last summer:

“Even the most powerful politicians cannot hold back the rain. But they can plan for a rainy day. With higher spring and summer river levels now the new normal, lowering river levels is going to be harder than ever. So build the walkway higher. Rack up the cost to our changing climate.”

At present it is unclear if Premier Selinger will attend Tuesday’s summit.

Ontario

• Premier: Kathleen Wynne
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 166.9 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 23.9 per cent  

Ontario is the second-largest source of GHG emissions in Canada, and has, in recent years, taken its reduction very seriously. Before leaving office in 2012, Premier Dalton McGuinty passed the Green Energy Act, and pushed forward legislation to end urban sprawl, protect clean drinking water and limit toxic chemicals in manufacturing.

Premier Kathleen Wynne seems poised to take things even further. Her administration has already made Ontario completely free of coal-fired power and pledged seven conditions before new pipeline infrastructure projects such as Energy East will be allowed to go forward.

Together with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, she has led the development of the Canadian Energy Strategy — the framework for the Premier’s Climate Summit.

On Monday, Premier Wynne signed a cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec Premier Couillard in advance of Tuesday’s climate summit.

Quebec

• Premier: Philippe Couillard
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 78.3 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 11.2 per cent  

Couillard is a climate action champion in his own right. He has worked closely with Ontario Premier Wynne on developing the Canadian Energy Strategy and his administration implemented a cap-and-trade scheme in partnership with California starting in January of this year. He opposes the Energy East pipeline plan for a terminal in Quebec (which fortunately for Quebeckers and belugas, has been dropped in TransCanada’s latest plans) and as of December 2014, supports continuing a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the province saying "if there’s no segment of the population that approves of the practice, then I don’t see the interest in developing it."

He’s also repeatedly said that he hopes for Quebec to have an important voice at December’s UN Climate Summit in Paris.

“I will ensure that Quebec is not only present, but also that it has the opportunity to make its voice heard.”  

New Brunswick

• Premier: Brian Gallant
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 16.4 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 2.35 per cent  

Premier Brian Gallant’s leadership on climate and energy is inconsistent. Despite imposing a moratorium on fracking across the province, he is an active and vocal supporter of the Energy East pipeline. This proposed pipeline would carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to a deepwater port on the Bay of Fundy for export to international markets.

Speaking at January news conference, Gallant said:

"There's no doubt as a nation we have to do a better job on climate change…On top of that, we also have to have a conversation about developing our economy throughout the country in a responsible way. We believe the Energy East pipeline is one that will help us grow our economy, create jobs; it's one we that we can do, we believe, in a sustainable way."  

Premier Gallant will attend the summit.

Nova Scotia

• Premier: Stephen McNeil
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 19.0 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 2.7 per cent

After implementing a law in 2010 that required the province to meet 25 per cent of its energy needs from renewable sources, the province is now on track for a second goal: generating 40 per cent of its electricity by 2020.

In fall 2014, the province also imposed a moratorium on onshore fracking, except for research or testing purposes.

Speaking to delegates at a conference, Premier McNeil said, "Nova Scotia is a small province with a big future in sustainable energy. We're addressing climate change and the need for a lower carbon future by embracing change through innovation that focuses on one of our greatest advantages — our proximity to the ocean and its tides."

Premier McNeil will not attend the summit; he's sending Environment Minister Randy Delorey instead.

Prince Edward Island

• Premier: Wade MacLauchlan
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 1.9 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 0.27 per cent  

Wade McLauchlan took the Premier’s oath of office less than 50 days ago. In his speech accepting the title of premier designate, Mclauchlan called P.E.I. a world leader in renewable energy, but said we can do more as “an important first step as we turn our attention to climate change.”

At press time, it is unclear whether Premier MacLauchlan will attend Tuesday’s summit.

Newfoundland & Labrador

• Premier: Paul Davis
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 8.7 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 1.2 per cent  

Elected premier by a narrow margin in fall 2014, Paul Davis won his seat by pledging to protect the province’s offshore oil and gas extraction industry and ensure the billions of dollars it generates in royalties are better shared around the province.

On Friday April 10, Premier Davis announced his plan to attend the climate summit, citing an opportunity “to discuss best practices and future solutions in the fight against climate change and strengthen intergovernmental cooperation.”

Yukon Territory

• Premier: Darrell Pasloski
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 0.4 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 0.06 per cent  

Despite promising to do so back in 2009, the Yukon has yet to set targets for territory-wide emission reductions.

In 2012, Premier Darrell Pasloski’s government announced that it would be impossible to predict future industrial and economic growth, and recommended the following action instead: “Rather than commit to an arbitrary target based on estimated projections of Yukon’s economic growth, the government is working with key players in the electricity, building and energy efficiency, industrial, and transportation sectors to identify actions that will lead to realistic and measurable outcomes to minimize growth in Yukon’s overall GHG emissions.”

Instead, the government has committed to a reduction in emissions for its own internal operations — 20 per cent lower than 2010 levels by 2015.

Pasloski does not support mandatory carbon pricing and just last week announced plans to explore fracking in the territory’s Liard basin, provided it had the support of First Nations in the region.

Premier Pasloski will attend the summit.

Northwest Territories & Nunavut

• Premier (NWT): Bob McLeod
• Premier (Nunavut): Peter Taptuna
• Annual GHG emissions (2012): 1.7 Mt CO2
• Percentage of Canadian total emissions (2012): 0.24 per cent  

Belying their huge size, both the Northwest Territories and Nunavut release approximately the same amount of GHG emissions as tiny Prince Edward Island. Despite this, their residents are disproportionately affected by rising seas and melting permafrost compared to Canadians in other provinces.

In 2014, the Premiers of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut met in Iqaluit to develop a strategy document for northern Canada, entitled ‘A Northern Vision.’ In it they agree that “clean, reliable, affordable energy is the backbone of a sustainable economy, is essential for the well-being of northerners, and fosters investment and economic growth in the North.”

At present it is not clear if either Premier McLeod or Premier Taptuna will attend the summit.

Image Credit: All images via Canada's Premiers

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Ontario will not look at greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands industry in deciding whether to support TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline project. The province will only consider emissions in Ontario from the proposed pipeline according to an announcement by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on Wednesday.

“Ontario’s review of the Energy East pipeline will not have credibility unless emissions in Alberta are taken into account,” Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager with Environmental Defence Canada, told DeSmog Canada.

Wynne’s announcement in Toronto comes during a visit from Alberta Premier Jim Prentice to discuss Quebec and Ontario’s seven conditions for the 1.1 million barrel-per-day proposed pipeline. Ontario and Quebec have stated in their conditions “the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions” from Energy East must be taken into account.

But on Wednesday Wynne echoed the comments of Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard on Tuesday, when he clarified the greenhouse gas emissions the province will consider are those produced by the pipeline within the province, not those created from extraction the oilsands or those produced by the end use of the oilsands bitumen.

“Climate leadership means admitting that we can’t continue with business as usual," Scott said. "Massive fossil fuel infrastructure like Energy East will allow the oil industry to increase its climate pollution, undermining important efforts in Ontario and Quebec to cut back."

This redefinition of which greenhous gas emissions will be examined by the two central Canadian provinces may undermine the public consultations on Energy East underway in Ontario and Quebec. In both provinces, independent provincial agencies have been tasked with hearing public concerns about the 4,600-kilometre pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick.

Ontarians and Quebecers have been invited to submit comments about greenhouse gases from Energy East and the pipeline's impacts on climate change (among other issues) to the provincial agencies. But it is difficult to see what weight these concerns will carry now that the provincial governments have decided to take a limited view of the project’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

“Wynne’s refusal to consider how the pipeline will spur more climate pollution in the tar sands is more than disappointing, it is wrong,” Andrea Harden-Donahue, energy and climate justice campaigner with the Council of Canadians, said.

Image Credit: Kathleen Wynne via Twitter

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Alberta Premier Jim Prentice begins an Energy East lobby tour today in Quebec City to try to woo the premiers of Quebec and Ontario into supporting TransCanada's 1.1 million barrel-per-day oil pipeline proposal.

“It is a sign the project is in danger,” Patrick Bonin, a Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner based in Montreal, told DeSmog Canada. “Over 70 per cent of Quebecers don’t want Energy East to be built.”

Ontario and Quebec announced last month that Energy East would have to meet seven conditions to gain the provinces' approval of the 4,600-kilometer pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick. Included in these conditions is a demand for a full environmental assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the pipeline.

An analysis conducted earlier this year by the Pembina Institute, an energy think tank, found the greenhouse gas emissions from extracting the oilsands bitumen to fill the Energy East pipeline would erase all reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by Ontario’s phase out of coal-fired power plants. The analysis did not include emissions from combustion, which would make Energy East’s carbon footprint even higher.

“If Ontario and Quebec are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change then the Energy East tar sands pipeline project is dead already,” Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager with Environmental Defence, told DeSmog Canada.

Prentice meets with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard Tuesday and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in Toronto on Wednesday.

Ontario and Quebec's conditions exceed B.C.’s heavy oil conditions

This is not the first time an Alberta premier has travelled to another province on behalf of a pipeline project. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark famously inflamed relations with Alberta with her five conditions for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which resulted in some icy meetings with then Alberta premier Alison Redford.

Clark's demand to receive a greater share of the fiscal benefits from Northern Gateway was a contentious issue between the two western provinces, but she did not go as far as Wynne and Couillard in insisting the pipeline's greenhouse gas emissions be properly assessed.

The National Energy Board's reviews of pipeline projects aren't taking climate change into account, which has left a leadership vacuum that the provinces are stepping in to fill. New pipelines facilitate expansion of oilsands production, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions.

The seven conditions on the Government of Ontario's website.

Bad news for Energy East continues

Prentice’s visit comes during a turbulent public relations spell for Energy East.

Documents leaked to Greenpeace last month revealed TransCanada had hired global PR firm Edelman to work on an aggressive strategy of undermining Energy East opponents through tactics that included creating phony grassroots groups to give the impression of genuine support of the pipeline. The revelations caused TransCanada and Edelman to publicly part ways.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, former Maple Spring student activist and author, announced on Radio-Canada just days after the leak that he was donating his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to an anti-pipeline coalition and encouraged the public to do match it. Donations have reached $400,000 now. 

Yesterday the Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada announced the belugas whales of the St. Lawrence Estuary — where TransCanada has plans for an Energy East marine oil tanker terminal — are at greater risk of extinction than a decade ago, forcing TransCanada to halt work on the terminal.   

“It’s good news and bad news,” Bonin says. “TransCanada’s marine terminal at Cacouna probably won’t be built now, but it is sad to find out the beluga population is not recovering."

Image Credit: Jim Prentice via Twitter, WWF Canada

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Steven Guilbeault is co-founder and president of Equiterre, a Quebec-based social and environmental solutions non-profit supporting communities opposed to the expansion of the oilsands and construction of the Energy East pipeline.

I recently attended a luncheon at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and the speaker was none other than Sophie Brochu, President and CEO of Gaz Métro.

According to Ms. Brochu and contrary to what TransCanada is trying to sell us, the Energy East project, far from being beneficial to Quebec, will have serious economic impacts on top of its enviornmental effects.

Why? Mainly because TransCanada would have to convert one of its lines carrying natural gas from the west to begin transporting oil from the oilsands. TransCanada has propositioned natural gas distributors in Quebec and Ontario to build them a new gas line, but that would cost $2.2 billion in addition to a reduction in the gas transport capacity from western Canada.

This TransCanada decision would have several spin-off effects:

–        Price increases for Gaz Métro customers in Quebec would total $100 million per year, an increase of 155 per cent;

–        As gas in the east will become more limited and expensive, some Gaz Métro customers will likely turn to heavy fuel oil, an extremely hazardous by-product of oil refining;

–        The potential increase in the use of oil would increase greenhouse gases in Quebec by 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, increasing local air pollution.

TransCanada has so antagonized Quebec representatives that Michel Leblanc, President and CEO of the Quebec Chamber of Commerce, publicly questioned whether the Energy East project is in the economic interests of Quebec at the conference in front of hundreds of dinner guests.

An environmental group denouncing an Energy East project is nothing new, but I cannot remember the last time a commerce CEO did so.

Ms. Brochu, as the head of Gaz Métro, deserves commendation for bringing the effects Energy East will have on gas consumers to light. But at the same time, it’s worth asking why these considerations weren’t made public by the government of Quebec.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard recently said, "we have to participate in the Canadian economy.” But surely he didn’t mean the Quebec must sacrifice its economic health for provinces like Alberta, or oil and gas companies. Right?

Image Credit: Ecology Ottawa

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Canada’s premiers have agreed to expand the nation’s developing energy strategy to address climate change and green energy while acknowledging the Alberta oilsands are still an important part of Canada’s economic future.

Endorsing the proposed Canadian Energy Strategy when they met last week at an annual conference on Prince Edward Island, the premiers said in an accompanying document that the plan “will express a renewed vision that describes the kind of energy future that provinces and territories aspire to achieve.”

The premiers added visions and principals included in the plan will allow “provinces and territories to work together, in respect of their own jurisdiction, on energy issues and grow the economy, protect the environment, mitigate climate change, create new opportunities for individuals, organizations and businesses, and enhance the quality of life for all Canadians.”

In a section called “Climate Change and Social and Environmental Responsibility,” the plan included a strategy to address global warming and move towards a lower carbon economy.

The strategy would recognize the importance of environmentally and socially responsible energy development, transportation systems, and enabling technologies to support conservation, efficiency, and effectiveness in the use of energy resources.

And it would allow the nation to “transition to a lower-carbon economy through appropriate initiatives, such as carbon pricing, carbon capture and storage and other technological innovations, while meeting current and future energy needs.”

A related article in The Globe and Mail said the recently-elected premiers of Ontario and Quebec — Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard — suggested they were the driving force behind the strategy’s climate change considerations.

Despite the agreement, Wynne said there will be tensions between provinces that want to achieve progress on climate change, and others eager to boost oil exports.

“I think that is a tension that will continue to exist but the reason it is important to have a Canadian energy strategy is that we’ve got to manage that tension – it exists and we’ve got to deal with the realities of the oil sands, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of transporting that fuel, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of climate change,” she told the Globe and Mail.

The premiers agreed to finalize the strategy before their 2015 summer meeting.

While the proposed energy strategy does not include firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada, under the Copenhagen Accord, has committed to reducing domestic carbon emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, a level many analysts say will not be met. A recent report from Environment Canada shows that without stronger emissions reductions Canada will not meet that target.

By way of comparison, the European Union has set three key targets for 2020. These include a 20 per cent reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; raising the share of the region’s energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20 per cent; and a 20 per cent improvement in Europe’s energy efficiency.

EU projections indicate the region will comfortably meet its 20 per cent emissions-reduction target by 2020.

Image Credit: Premier of Ontario via Flickr.

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