If Charity Begins At Home, Can Sanctions Too?

Federal Liberal hopeful and former astronaut Marc Garneau, floated the idea today that Canada should impose trade sanctions on countries that refuse to reduce their greenhouse emissions. This made us wonder, can the sanctions begin with Alberta?

Alberta Election

As the Alberta provincial election unfolds, it will be very interesting to see what happens in Calgary. Traditionally, Calgary is a very conservative city - the two members of the Liberal Party elected in the last provincial election were the first Liberals elected here in decades. The booming job market, coupled with sky-high real estate prices have wreaked havoc with the city's demographics. While areas of Liberal support used to congregate in predictable pockets, it remains to be seen just how diffuse that support has become owning to housing prices. There were quite a few ridings in the last election that went Conservative by their narrowest margins in years. Has the housing market shifted more Liberal support into these areas?

Added to this has been the failure of the Stelmach government to deal with the needs of Edmonton and Calgary. As we mentioned last week, Calgary mayor David Bronconnier portrayed Stelmach as the villain in the city's inability to manage the infrastructure problems associated with a booming population. Now, Liberal leader Kevin Taft is offering more power to the major cities to do just that. Clearly, the Liberals feel that there are seats to be won in this once Conservative stronghold.

Environmental Fallout

According to a recent Decima poll, the Federal Conservatives and Liberals are tied in the court of public opinion. Negative reaction to the Conservatives climate change plan has further distanced their more "liberal" wing, while the once-staunch supporters in Alberta are beginning to question their favourite party. What is more troubling for the ruling federal party is that their support in Quebec, among the most pro-Kyoto of the provinces has fallen to below 20% while the Liberals are cruising at 34%. Given that the Conservatives election success was the result of stealing seats from the Liberals in Quebec, the Conservatives are in real trouble should an election happen soon. The trouble could be especially dire if the Liberals were to steal a seat or two from the Conservatives in the Western provinces.

Elsewhere, the Premiers met to discuss "best practices" regarding climate change, and expressed their own disappointment with the Conservative Climate Change plan. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach was the lone voice to support the "intensity targets", but found himself in good company when he dismissed a potential suggestion for emission trading among the provinces. Stelmach said, "I’m not one that looks forward to issuing licenses allowing to pollute more," he told reporters. "Especially if we’re going to be trading with other countries."

We find the statement curious, given Stelmach's support for intensity targets, a strategy that would allow total emissions to rise. Perhaps Stelmach simply does not like to issue licenses - this would be consistent with his lack of desire to regulate the oil sands. Furthermore, in refering to other countries, perhaps Stelmach feels that it would be too difficult to devise a made-Canada plan that would be compatible with international standards which are often more strict than those suggested by both the Stelmach and Harper governments. Ultimately though, the biggest barrier to foreign trade in emissions is Environmental Minister Baird's own dismissal of the idea.

In a story that really ought to be getting more coverage than it is, the Alberta government is set to considered a motion to use nuclear energy in the oil sands. Currently, natural gas is used to convert three barrels of water to steam needed to produce one barrel of oil. In order to cut down emissions, the government wants to consider replacing the gas with emissions.

We are, quite frankly, aghast that our leaders would consider nuclear waste as a solution to help clean up the oil sands.

A Tale of Two Governments

Both the Canadian Federal Government and the Alberta Provincial government made major announcements yesterday and the results could not have been more different from two Conservative governments.

First, provincial Premier Ed Stelmach announced his inaugural budget which contains $33B in spending. This is perhaps one of the largest public expenditures in Alberta for quite some time and sounds good to a public waiting to hear that the Tories are going to reinvest the provincial surplusses back into the social infrastructure. Granted, a significant amount of the money is simply a restatement of already declared projects, or cost-overrun allocations (themselves problematic and a seperate issue for the government to deal with). But in light of recent movesw to back away from such options as rent controls, releasing nearly half a billion dollars to deal with the housing crunch sounds like the governemnt is interested in solving the problem. What Albertans are looking for is evidence of a vision for the province that is going to reward the sacrifices of the 1990s. Stelmach's budget, while admittedly not containing a lot that is new, nevertheless represents significant spending and an indication that the governemnt is taking a small step in the right direction.

The Federal Government meanwhile, announced it's vision for the environment, or rather failed to do so, instead appeared content to offer a nightmarish interpretation of someone else's. Environment Minister Baird's comment's that Kyoto was a "risky" and "reckless" proposition that threatened 275,000 jobs jeapordizing the Canadian economy with recession. Several critics have pointed out some flaws with the underlying assumptions of the government's report, but at The Daily Wenzel we also noticed the difference between this report and the one the UK releases at the end of summer that attempted to calculate the relative costs of not doing anything regarding climate change. Admittedly this is a much harder task, but even conservative economic estimates would mitigate some of the costs projected by the government. For example, should provincial governments go through with tentative proposals to ban incadescent light bulbs, then certain jobs and revenues would be lost to the economy, however the increase in sales and demand for compact flourescent bulbs would lessen, if not surpass those numbers - certainly this is a very simplistic example, but recognizing the potential economic spin-offs of pro-Kyoto technologies and developments ought to have been incorporated, a feature not reported so far. Also, any projected costs associated with meeting or not meeting Kyoto measures woudl have to include estimations of the economic impact that changing conditions would have on crops and livestock patterns, it could very well be, as the UK report suggested, that the costs of not meeting Kyoto targets or some other significant cliamte change attempt, well outweigh the costs of doing nothing, or very little.

Waiting somewhere in limbo is the government's own Clean Air Bill, which is supposedly in the process of beign revised based on the earlier criticisms. Many Canadians support moves to deal with climate change effectively, and it is widely thought to be one of the leadding, if not the leading issue for the next election. Quebec, as a province, is pro-Kyoto, and yesterday's announcement is unlikely to earn the Conservatives more support in a provine that they need to either expand or maintain support in. Similarly, the disaffected Liberals who voted for the Conservatives in the last election are unlikely to be comforted either, this move simply yet another reminder of the ideological differences between the two parties.

Can we carry the burden of Climate Change?

Speaking in Belgium on proposed European plans for climate change, an EU official talked about challenging developed nations to tackle climate change in meaningful and significant ways. Not only has the EU proposed some large scale ideas, but is also actively pursuing smaller ventures aimed at encouraging the average citizen to take control of climate change initiatives. Recent moves have included tax measures to favour energy efficient appliances (a similar program in Canada was cut by the Harper government), increased use of biofuel mixtures (recently announced by Harper), and the banning of incandescent light bulbs (being considered in Nova Scotia, already underway in Australia, and Venezuela while Cuba accomplished this two years ago).

In Alberta, the big news is Ed Stelmach's decision to reduce "emission intensity" per barrel of oil from the oil sands, while allowing the overall number of barrels produced to expand. The other major announcement was a clever play on the idea of carbon capture and storage. According to British journalist George Monbiot, in his book Heat: How to stop the world from burning, the burial of carbon dioxide is an effective measure for the removal of the gas from the atmosphere, but it is also very useful for squeezing the last bits of oil out of abandoned oil reservoirs, Monbiot confides that this would be his nightmare scenario. Guess what the Alberta plan calls for?

Unfit to Lead

There's been quite a bit of political news focusing on environmental issues over the past ten days or so, and most of it has been quite embarrassing. Despite promises that they were constructing a "greener" perspective, the Federal Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, continue to talk about"reducing the intensity of emissions". Thus under current proposals, the Alberta Oil Sands projects, which is perhaps the single greatest engineering feat and environmental catastrophe of our time as Canadians, would be allowed to increasing the amount of emissions it generates. Granted, each barrel of oil would produce less pollutants, but the overall number of barrels allowed to be produced in the region is set to expand dramatically.

When asked about the plans, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach expressed his concern that the science behind climate change is not certain enough to risk jeopardizing the Albertan economy.

This in turn led to our favourite moment of the week, as David Suzuki, visiting Calgary on his "If I were Prime Minister" tour, called the Premier out publicly, saying he was unfit to lead.

Jam-packed environmental action

sEven in this tech heavy era, it seems like we can't stay as informed as we would like, as fast as we would like. With all of the enviro-debates occurring this week we almost wish we could have several direct video feeds set-up to monitor everything. For starters, there seems to be some talk of a post-Kyoto protocol in the works amongst the G8 nations, but whether this turns out to be a Kyoto II, or some kind of watered down Kyoto, or even anything at all, although given recent political developments in Britain it seems likely that something positive will result.

The Canadian federal government meanwhile is gearing up to debate a private members' bill calling on the Harper government to hold itself to the Canada's commitments under the Kyoto Accord. While some view the bill as mostly meaningless, since it lacks any effective measures to hold the government accountable, it gives the political parties another chance to posture on their environmental platforms in advance of a general election.

A little closer to home, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is arguing for greater Clean Air funding for Alberta. Although this is most likely a political attempt to take advantage of federal money since a common complaint among Alberta premiers is the inequality among transfer payments, however there is an element of truth to Stelmach's position. Currently, federal funding is being released on a per capita basis, where Alberta would be entitled to roughly a tenth of the funds, but as the province is home to the pil and gas industry, it is responsible for a third of all the country's emissions and air borne pollutants.