Green Party slams tar sands regulations

VANCOUVER – The Green Party is rejecting Environment Minister John Baird’s new emissions regulations for the tar sands as unacceptable and incapable of meaningfully reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

“Minister Baird’s regulations are designed to deceive the public into believing he is taking action on climate change, but in reality he is avoiding real steps,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “The Harper government’s target of reducing emissions by 20 percent below 2006 levels by 2020 will leave emissions dangerously high. This target is not based on science and the rest of the world uses the year 1990 as a baseline – when Canada’s emissions were 24 percent lower than in 2006.

“The plan also employs intensity targets, a fraudulent measure devised by the Bush administration that will allow absolute emissions to continue to rise. The plan will also permit tar sands growth to continue to spiral out of control and will allow further massive increases in emissions. There is nothing ‘green’ about these regulations.

“If there is one surprise in these regulations, it is that since the initial announcement last spring, Baird has added new loopholes:

• mechanisms for double-counting emissions reductions;
• plants must become carbon capture ready but it is still up to the government to provide infrastructure;
• plants becoming carbon capture ready can meet their entire targets by contributing a 15 dollars per tonne emitted to a technology fund, not by actually reducing emissions;
• about 20 percent of facilities slated for regulation under the original rules will now be exempt as the threshold for regulation increased from one to three kilotonnes;
• entire companies, rather than individual facilities, will assume reduction targets.”

Ms. May added that the regulations do nothing to discourage industry from building new coal fired power plans. In fact, new operations are exempt from any target for six years before they must begin intensity-based reductions.

“I am incredibly dismayed that the Harper government continues this deceitful public relations campaign, attempting to fool Canadians rather than acting to avert the climate crisis and end our dependency on fossil fuels.”