FREDERICTON - The premiers of Canada's provinces and territories say they are feeling the heat from a public increasingly anxious about the effects of climate change as they prepare for their annual meeting this week in New Brunswick.
Each of the 13 provincial and territorial leaders will arrive at the three-day meeting in Moncton, N.B., on Wednesday with an agenda for tackling greenhouse gas emissions, so it's anyone's guess whether a consensus can be achieved.
Representatives of environmental groups will be in New Brunswick for the meeting, lobbying the premiers to step up to the plate on environmental issues and fill the void they say has been created by the federal Conservative government.
"The bottom line is that Canadians really want action on this issue and with federal inaction on climate change thus far, we're really encouraged by what the premiers are doing," Nick Burnaby of the Sierra Club of Canada said in an interview on Tuesday.
"We're really hoping to see the premiers start talking about regulating greenhouse gas emissions within their respective jurisdictions and working together on doing that."
While it's uncertain whether the premiers can reach agreement on green policies, they at least will be acting green during their annual summer get together.
Anxious to minimize the environmental impact of the meeting, the premiers and their entourages will be eating only local food, drinking local water out of reusable bottles and arriving at venues in vehicles that will not be allowed to idle.
In addition, the New Brunswick government says it will plant roughly 900 trees following the conference to help sop up excess carbon emissions generated by the gathering.
"This will be a green conference," promises New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham, who wants tree planting included in the methodology for assessing emission controls.
"We want to show we're not only talking the talk, but we're walking the walk."
Environmental discussions are expected to be the most contentious at the meeting as the premiers present varying points of view on how to slow greenhouse gas emissions, which have risen by 25 per cent in Canada since 1990.
'Don't mess with Alberta'
Premier Ed Stelmach from petroleum-rich Alberta already has warned his colleagues not to gang up on him about hard caps and tight deadlines for emission controls.
"Don't mess with Alberta," Stelmach warns. "Alberta's boom is Canada's boom."
Stelmach also says Alberta is ahead of other provinces in moving on climate change and challenged other premiers to do more than mouth platitudes.
Stelmach says any movement toward a system of hard caps on greenhouse-gas emissions or a cross-Canada trading market for pollution credits likely would cost too much in money and jobs.
But Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he is looking for meaningful agreements from his colleagues on climate change, agreements that include real targets.
"Number one, we want hard targets based on a 1990 baseline," says McGuinty.
"Secondly, we're looking for an emissions trading program. Everybody tells us that the only way you're going to make a real dent in greenhouse gas emissions is to attach a price to greenhouse gases. The best way to do that is through an emissions trading program."
In the past few months, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia have joined Quebec and Manitoba in establishing emission targets to get their emissions below 1990 levels within five to 12 years - a goal the federal government has said is impossible to achieve nationally.
As well, Premier Gordon Campbell of British Columbia and McGuinty have publicly supported establishing a cap-and-trade program among interested provinces, a system also being studied by the Atlantic provinces.
Under a cap-and-trade system, the players set a percentage-based emissions cap that they must meet together. If one of the players produces emissions below the cap, it may sell its "excess" emissions to another player that produces more than the cap allows.
Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert says his priority at the premiers meeting is building a national climate change plan.
"It is so crucial to our future," he says.
"When I think of the environmental benefit, there is so much to win in this and so much to lose if we don't act."
Calvert will be promoting the creation of an E85 highway across Canada as a way to boost the biofuels industry.
E85 is a reference to the blend of gasoline with 85 per cent ethanol. Calvert's plan would see high-grade ethanol-blended fuels made available along existing routes.
Northwest Territories Premier Joe Handley says the main concerns in the western Arctic revolve around energy development and climate change.
He says he plans to press Ottawa to develop tougher climate change measures, saying intensity-based targets don't go far enough.
"You can't just go intensity-based," he says. "You have to have some targets."
Handley says he will argue for measures that will increase national energy efficiency, such as the development of a national east-west energy grid.
