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Climate change criticism reaches new levelLeaders' comments show international frustration over Canada's position, experts say. Published May 19, 2010  1 Comment |
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon wasted no time during his whistle-stop visit to Ottawa last week in levelling a clear challenge to the Harper government on what many consider its Achilles heel: climate change.
"As a leader of the G8 and as chair of the G20 this year, and as one of the most developed countries in the world, Canada has a special role and a special responsibility to play. That's what I'm going to emphasize here," Mr. Ban told an audience made up of NGOs and diplomats at the Château Laurier on May 12, evoking widespread applause.
"I urge Canada to comply fully with the targets set out by the Kyoto Protocol. You can strengthen your mitigation target for the future, and you can join the other industrialized countries in cultivating new funding in keeping with your long-standing tradition of global solidarity."
Mr. Ban's direct and clear call to Canada to act on the climate change front came only days after the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, criticized Canada's repeated rhetoric of waiting for other major countries to come on board before fully tackling climate change.
During an interview with Canadian journalists in Brussels ahead of the Canada-European Union Summit, Mr. Barosso said: "What we want is for everybody to move. What we don't want to see, frankly speaking, is that someone does not move because the others, they don't move."
Although environmental groups and NGOs have long been extremely critical about Canada's environmental policies, experts say the comments from two major world leaders take things to a new level. In fact, they say Mr. Ban's and Mr. Barroso's level of outspokenness reflects strong and widespread international frustration with this country's stance on climate change.
"Those people who are progressive on climate change think that we are regressive on climate change and they are not happy with it because they think it's an important issue," said former Canadian ambassador to the UN Paul Heinbecker, referring to the fact that the topic does not figure prominently on the G8 summit agenda. "They think we are dragging our feet and we are not taking our responsibility seriously."
Mr. Heinbecker noted that Mr. Ban's climate change comments were at the top of his speech—not just an aftermath. The UN secretary-general also repeated them in an interview with CBC that aired the same night.
Mr. Ban made his comments ahead of the G8 and G20 summits, and it is Canada's chairmanship that attracted his visit, Mr. Heinbecker said. But Mr. Barroso would have probably expressed his criticism nonetheless, because he was having a planned bilateral meeting with Stephen Harper, he added.
Since there is a sense the world missed a good opportunity to tackle major environmental issues at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009, Mr. Heinbecker said, the leaders' comments do "reflect a frustration in the international community with the position Canada takes on climate change."
The incentive to publicly criticize Canada's climate change position is greater now as the country is hosting two important summits in about a month, said Brian Bow, an expert in diplomatic norms and practices at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University.
The level of frustration is high, but lower-level officials have been criticizing Canada's position behind the scenes for a long time, Mr. Bow said.
"The level has increased," he said. "This is the first time we were called out by the people at the top."
Mr. Ban and Mr. Barroso afforded to make those comments because Canada's strategic relationship with the two international organizations has diminished in the last few years, said Jeremy Kinsman, who served as the Canadian ambassador to the EU from 2002 to 2006.
Canada used to be a committed multilateralist, and it also used to have a strategic partnership with the EU in dealing with global human security issues, Mr. Kinsman explained.
"In those circumstances, the president of the European Commission or the secretary general of the UN would not have criticized Canada politically because they were conscious of the importance that Canada attached [to the relationship]," he said. "But if those things dropped, then they are not so influenced by those considerations as they would have been in the past."
Today, leaders are wondering where Canada's contribution is in a post-Kyoto world, he added.
During his ambassadorial posting in Brussels, Mr. Kinsman said he remembers Romano Prodi (at the time the president of the European Commission) telling him that Canada's 2002 decision to ratify the Kyoto Agreement was "enormously important."
"Having a North American country endorse this philosophically...was very important," Mr. Kinsman said. "Today, the opposite is true. Having a country that at least used to have an international reputation as important and as credible as Canada be a real foot-dragger on climate change is symbolically important in a negative way. It's not exactly denial of the human impact of climate change, it's a denial of the responsibility internationally. That's what people see."
The Canadian government will stand out positively as the summits' host on financial issues, but our policies are not in tune with the 21st century on other issues, such as climate change and maternal and child health, said Carleton University Peter Andrée, an expert on Canadian environmental policies.
"We are starting to be perceived as a backward country, a country that is putting its heels on the ground based on old values, and I think in some ways we are being left behind," he said, referring to the lack of proper green energy policies and the ongoing abortion debate.
Mr. Andrée said the Harper government should not be solely blamed for Canada's international reputation in dealing with climate change. The former Liberal governments of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin also failed to move the climate change action agenda forward, he said.
Today, the tar sands have become a big source of criticism, he explained.
"I think it's because we have one big policy that seems to be so misguided that Canada becomes an easier target," Mr. Andrée said. "If it was because there was no other way to heat our homes...that would have been one thing, but oil that we are pulling out to sell to other countries, vastly increasing our greenhouse gas emissions...creates a tangible target that has made Canada more vulnerable to criticism."
His thoughts were echoed by Mr. Bow, who said the two leaders were trying to appeal to the Canadian public to influence the government's environmental policies, but were also trying to portray the global political struggle over climate change to the rest of the world.
"By picking the 'good guy country' and the 'bad guy country,' you can make that struggle easier to understand for people in other parts of the world," Mr. Bow said.
However, Canada is far from meeting its Kyoto obligations, so "to ride the Kyoto horse is a bit disingenuous," Mr. Andrée said, referring to the UN secretary-general's comments.
Nevertheless, he said the international pressure might be successful in placing climate change higher on the summits' agenda, especially since there is a growing grassroots feeling among Canadians that the environment should be an important topic for the government.
Mr. Bow, however, felt the international focus and pressure on Canada won't last because it's the US's priorities that need to be changed the most.
"Once the summits have gone by and the reason to put pressure on Canada has gone away, [leaders] will start focusing their attention back on the US, where it really belongs."
agurzu@embassymag.ca
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