Harper must respect the law, says Green Party

OTTAWA – The Green Party today demanded that Prime Minister Stephen Harper stop breaking the law – namely the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act which requires the federal government to take action on global warming.

"Mr. Harper may be Prime Minister but that doesn't mean he gets to pick and choose which laws he will obey," said Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Parliament passed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act in June, requiring the federal government to produce a plan to meet Canada's greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the legally binding Kyoto Protocol within 60 days. The Harper government responded in August with a plan that makes no attempt to meet the Kyoto targets.

"Rather than comply with the law, Environment Minister John Baird dusted off the now familiar economic scare tactics in an attempt to convince Canadians that we shouldn't even try," said Ms. May.

Today, the environmental group Friends of the Earth Canada filed an Application for Judicial Review with the Federal Court seeking to force the government to comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.

"Canadians deserve better than this," said Ms. May. "Environmental groups should not have to take the government to court to get it to honour a legally binding international treaty and a domestic law.

"For a Prime Minister whose stock-in-trade rhetoric calls for 'law and order', breaking the law because he doesn't like it sets a new low for parliamentary accountability. The Prime Minister is not entitled to honour some laws while breaking others with impunity."