I am honored to be the Senate sponsor of Bill C-311 which is designed to compel climate change action from the government. The bill passed several months ago in the House of Commons and has come to the Senate and begun the second stage of the legislative process. Bruce Hyer, an NDP MP from Ontario who sponsored the bill in the House, asked me to sponsor the legislation. I am very concerned about the inaction of the government on climate change and jumped at the chance to be the bill’s sponsor.

Bruce has done a great job in managing C-311 through the House and in building support for it across the country. He received the support of the Liberals and the Bloc to pass it through the House and onto the Senate. The Liberals also presented a motion demanding action by the government.

I wanted to provide some information about the bill in the hope that it might clear up some of the misinformation about its scope and potential economic impact.

The bill calls for the government to establish successive 5 year emission reductions plans. The plans have to build to a mandatory objective of 80% reduction of 1990 levels by 2050. The bill also mentions a non-binding objective of 25% reduction by 2020 of 1990 emission levels. The target plans will be reviewed by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) for the likelihood that they will meet Canada’s emission reduction goals. The bill also requires that the Minister of the Environment to report annually on Canada’s progress in meeting the target plans, and for the NRTEE to publically review the report. Furthermore, the Commissioner of the Environment must also review Canada’s progress every two years.

There is a great urgency to deal with climate change. If there are economic disadvantages in climate action, they will pale by comparison to the consequences of doing nothing or too little. There is much more economic opportunity in climate change action, however, than there is economic risk. The world understands that climate change is occurring and we need to keep up to the economic opportunities that this is creating, avoid the international reputational costs in not keeping up, and fulfill our obligation to future generations.

Here are my arguments about why this bill needs to be passed:

1.  Opponents say the objectives in the bill are too aggressive and would cause economic damage. This is simply not true. The bill states that in making its plans the government is not bound by the 2020 objective at all. It can establish whatever 2020 objective it would like.  

2.  In any event, the long term objective reflects the emission cuts that are necessary to limit the planet’s temperature increase to 2 degrees, which the Prime Minister has endorsed in the Copenhagen Accord.

3.  While the bill calls for review and monitoring of the plans and progress by the Commissioner of the Environment and the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, these organizations are already doing this.

4.  In conclusion, this is not an unreasonable bill at all. It is a bill that would cause the government to focus on this important issue and make some real progress. (Ironically, the government could actually support this bill to great political advantage and end up not being pushed to do much more than it already says it is prepared to do).

The bill is now stalled in the Senate. I spoke to the bill at second reading on June 1, 2010, shortly after we had received it. Senator Banks spoke shortly after as we waited for the Conservative “critic” to speak. The tradition is that at least one member from each party in the Senate, and certainly the critic, speak to each bill before it goes to a committee for further study. Should they have wanted to, the government side in the Senate could have spoken at any time to further debate. For now, the bill is in limbo until the government speaks on it.

Or, to put it another way, how did a Liberal minority on the Finance Committee manage to defeat 4 parts of a government bill?

The Senate Finance Committee has spent several weeks reviewing the government’s budget implementation bill, Bill C-9. All bills that come from the House of Commons have to pass through three readings and committee stage in the Senate. Many senators were very concerned that the bill had serious flaws that required examination. The committee heard from over 100 witnesses and deliberated for over 60 hours. While I am not a regular member of this committee, I have been in the past and I sat on it as a replacement for one of our members for the last two weeks.

Liberal senators felt that the basic problem with the bill is that it is a flagrant abuse of parliamentary process. An omnibus bill at 900 pages, 2200 clauses, and 24 parts, it is longer by far than any budget bill ever before. It contains, moreover, many provisions that have nothing to do with the budget. The contention is that the government has used this bill as a “Trojan horse” for getting through legislation it would be unable to pass in a minority parliament without the “hammer” of non-confidence if defeated.

Budget bills are required to implement those features of a budget that require some form of legislative change to authorize their implementation, but they should be short and limited to budget matters. (Budget implementation bills should not be confused with the many kinds of “supply” bills that authorize the actual money to be spent as a result of a budget.)

In addition to our concern that this bill is an abuse of process, we also found some serious substantive weaknesses in it, including:

1. The bill redefines certain financial services as being eligible for GST and then makes that tax retroactive 20 years.

2. It seriously weakens the environmental impact assessment process by allowing the minister to greatly diminish the scope of assessments. When I asked the minister if he would assure us that he would ensure that climate change implications of major projects would be reviewed, he would not make that commitment.

3. The government has carte blanche to sell the Atomic Energy Commission of Canada without any review or any evident conditions. About the time that nuclear energy is becoming increasingly important in the world due to climate change fears, this government is getting us out of it without a clear vision of what is to come.

4. The bill confirms private sector involvement in international mail services which is seen by some as eroding the market monopoly of Canada Post.

Each of these concerns represents a provision that has no reason for being in a budget implementation bill.

So, the particularly significant feature of this process was that we were able to overturn those four sections even though we did not have a majority. Here is how it happened. In fact, on the committee of 12 members, the Conservatives have 7 places and we have 5. Senator Lowell Murray is a Progressive Conservative who is widely respected and the Conservatives had selected him for one of their spaces. He then decided to vote with us because he shared our concern with the nature of this omnibus bill and with some of our substantive concerns.

So, when these four sections were called for vote, the votes were a 6/6 tie. And, under Senate rules, a tie reverts to the status quo and so the sections were defeated.  One amendment advanced by Senator Murray was defeated in the same way, on the same tie.  The rest of the bill passed “on division” meaning there was opposition but not with the intention of defeating the bill.

C-9 is now back in the Senate for third reading. We’ll soon find out whether these amendments will pass in the Chamber, which would send the bill back to the House of Commons for their approval.

Here is a question that I recently asked in the Senate about the government's two-faced approach to renewable energy policy.

Honourable senators, after pretty much gutting the government's support of renewable energy projects in the last budget, the government has now turned around and is putting $240,000 into polling Canadians on how they feel about renewable energy. It is the quintessential putting the cart before the horse.

Can the Leader of the Government in the Senate tell us why it is that, on the one hand, the government is gutting support to the non-renewable energy industry while, on the other hand, it is polling people to find out how they feel about the non-renewable energy industry?

Please click here to read the full text of my question

In this video I speak about Bill C-311 of which I am the sponsor in the Senate.  It provides information about why this legislation is so important.

Recently I met with representatives from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.  They brought "Mr. Stinky," which is a specimen of a 9,000 year-old glass sponge reefs with them to Ottawa from British Columbia. “Mr Stinky” is from the spectacular reefs off the coast of British Columbia, some living 250 metres deep, that cover up to 1,000 square kilometres as far north as Hecate Strait and as far south as B.C.'s Sunshine Coast and the Strait of Georgia, including off Galiano Island.

These representatives were in Ottawa to celebrate Oceans Day and to help bring awareness to this important reef to Parliamentarians.

Check out this brochure to learn more about this fascinating reef.

Here is a question that I asked in the Senate today about the Government's harmonization of Canada's climate change policy with that of the United States:

Honourable senators, several years ago the spin phrase for Conservative environmental policy was "made in Canada." That, of course, has all changed now. We do not hear about "made in Canada" anymore. Instead, the government should say, "made in the United States of America," because that is what the government means when it says it will harmonize with the climate change policy of the United States. Of course, it is not as easy to harmonize as one might think, and I want to know whether the government has thought through some of that harmonization.

Can the Leader of the Government in the Senate tell us how the Government of Canada can even begin to harmonize its climate change policy with the United States when the United States spends 18 times more per capita on green technology and renewable energy technologies?

Please click here to read the full text of my question

Recently, Senator Sharon Carstairs invited me to speak on human rights and the environment at a conference she was hosting. This was a panel discussion that included Senator Carstairs speaking about the tremendous work she is doing as Chair of an international group that works to protect politicians around the world who are being persecuted in their countries. The other participant was Senator Mobina Jaffer who is a world renowned human rights advocate and who spoke on women’s rights.

I was very flattered to speak alongside these Senators who are internationally known for their work on human rights. On the other hand, I am not an expert in this area by any measure and I had never really thought about the link between human rights and the environment or climate change, my particular focus these days. But, when Senator Carstairs asked me to consider speaking on the link between human rights and the environment, I wondered why I hadn’t connected the two before.

Well, it seems that few people have actually thought about, or at least written about, this topic, certainly as it involves climate change. Academics seem to be in a protracted debate about whether a human rights obligation can exist with someone yet to be born. They would argue that human rights involve reciprocity and you cannot have reciprocal relationships with people who do not exist yet. We have looked at climate change from the natural sciences perspective, and from an economic perspective, but the progression of the issue through academic silos seems to have stopped there.

There seems to be an obvious case to be made, however, for the human rights implications of climate change. Think about the impact of the following on our health and access to food and water:  drought, erosion, changing rain patterns, glacial melt, water shortages, rising seas (due to increased temperatures causing the water to expand), violent storms, and heat.  These impacts could be exacerbated by mass migration due to climate change and climate change wars.

But correlation is often not enough to compel action. Climate change could be “chalked up” simply to “erratic” weather causing the problems. And, in order to qualify as a rights issue, two causal/obligation links must be established: there has to be an obligation between generations even if it involves people not yet alive. And human activity has to be causing climate change in order for a case to be made that rights are being violated.

I think it is problematic that we cannot establish intergenerational reciprocity. If academic thought on this issue cannot keep up in a changing world, it needs to change itself. Second, many of the people whose human rights are being violated by climate change are alive today. Senator Tom Banks put the obligation this way.  The climate change obligation to future generations is like a person having a $50,000 debt imposed upon them, even though it was incurred by their grandparents, and then losing their home when they cannot pay it. It seems straightforward.

The second link that has to be established is that humans are causing climate change. Admittedly, very few people now say climate change is not occurring (is this progress?). Instead they say it is occurring but we are not causing it. My answer to that is that if we are not causing it, then we are in real trouble. Because if we are not causing it, there is no chance of fixing it...unless they think that we can tinker with the sunspots to get  the warming to stop at whatever precise temperature will be liveable. Their comeback is that it is normal cycles that have gone on for millions of years.  But, of course, they do not seem to consider that the world has been uninhabitable for most of these millions of years and, if these cycles are the cause, then it is highly likely that they will not stop at some convenient temperature.

However, all the science tells us that natural cycles do have an effect on climate, but they do not account for a significant amount of the change we are observing.   The proponents of naturally occurring climate change fail to gather sufficient evidence to support it, and then cast doubt on a solid scientific consensus. Their most famous effort involved the stolen, ten year old emails in East Anglia taken out of context. Interestingly, the Guardian and Associated Press have investigated and exonerated the scientists involved.  When we have the kind of certainty about climate change that the deniers want, it will be too late.  In any event, the cases that the deniers promote as evidence of faulty climate change science represent a minuscule portion of the total science. As I like to say to the deniers, if you were to find one sentence in one edition of the National Post to be incorrect would they say every issue of the National Post was without credibility?

I simply believe that it is irrefutable that climate change is occurring and that human activity is causing it.  To deny this evidence is to deny gravity. And, if there is human responsibility for climate change that causes profound violation of those elements that comprise a standard list of human rights, then there is a case that in fact climate change involves human rights.

There are some advantages to the debate on climate change in invoking the human rights argument. First, the standard climate change case has been made largely within the context of the impact on states and economies. The human rights lens brings in the overdue element of the impact on people, individuals and communities and the suffering they are experiencing and will continue to experience. This may help to humanize and personalize the argument that climate change is profoundly serious. Secondly, it raises the idea of a right to information. This in turn suggests that it is the responsibility of government to clarify the confusion that many people feel about climate change science.  This would give government greater political leeway to do what has to be done. Finally, human rights experience establishes a great deal of precedent for the case that we in one country often have an obligation to people in other countries.

In the end, I know that the key element is that humans are causing climate change with the prospect of catastrophic effects, and we have an obligation to our fellow earthbound inhabitants to take care of us all.

Here is a question I asked today about the government's involvement in a Maternal Health Conference being held in Washington:

Honourable senators, in a few short weeks, a major international conference on maternal health, sponsored by the group Women Deliver, will be held in Washington, D.C., which is not too far from Ottawa. Yet, while 3,500 leaders, practitioners and special policy-makers from around the world will attend that conference, it appears that Canada will not send a representative of the Government of Canada. That is odd, honourable senators, since the Government of Canada is making such a big deal out of its maternal health aid program. This makes one wonder if the Conservative view of foreign aid might not simply be foreign aid for domestic consumption.

Can the Leader of the Government in the Senate tell us why Canada has no official or ministerial representation at this extremely important conference? This conference is significant to Canada, since the government seems to have little, if any, understanding of the standard accepted protocols for maternal health aid in the world.

Please click here to read the full text of the my question

The government of BC has established that its public sector will be carbon neutral this year. To do this they will need to use carbon offsets. They have set up a crown corporation to work with the private sector to generate enough offsets to meet their zero footprint needs, which is about 1,000,000 per year.

By the way, there is a difference between a carbon credit and a carbon offset. If an emitter is under a cap and trade system and it gets its emissions below its cap (imposed on it by the government) then it can sell the amount of “extra” emission reductions to a company that could not get down to its cap. This is called a credit. If a company, however , is not subject to the cap system, let’s say because it is a wind power generator, then the company that fails to make its cap can buy a emission reductions offset created by this wind power company. So, the two are pretty much the same thing; the difference is a matter of whether the entity producing the carbon reduction is in or out of the cap system. It is possible to have a carbon market without a cap system. Then, it would be a voluntary market and everything in it would be an offset.

Carbon allocations are how carbon credits are created.  When a cap and trade system starts, the authorities issue or allocations to each now regulated emitter to allow them to continue to emit to a determined level. They can issue them for free or auction them. Then each subsequent year they reduce the number of allocation that each regulated emitter will keep, thereby ratcheting down emissions. They are tradable like carbon credits.

There are several important reasons for carbon markets.

Credits and offsets mean that companies and others can buy the cheapest carbon reductions. Why should they spend more money than necessary when others might have cheaper ways to reduce carbon emissions? Companies (like all of us) hire others to do work that we do not do as well. Carbon offsets and credits can be viewed as just another service or good.

Carbon markets also allow a market to set the price for carbon rather than an arbitrary bureaucratic process.

Now, the sceptics have tried to discredit offsets with all kinds of weak arguments. I would like to answer them here and add several arguments for why carbon markets are fundamentally a good idea:

Sceptics’ Argument: Credits are an excuse for big companies to avoid reducing their pollution.

If companies can reduce more carbon emissions by paying someone else to do it than they can by reducing their own emissions, then why would we not want to get more reductions for the same amount of money? And, at the same time allow emitters a period of transition until cheap credits and offsets are used up which will increase demand, raise prices and make reductions of their own emissions more compelling.

Sceptics’ Argument (this is a variation of the first one): The rich will use credits and offsets to buy their way out of changing their lifestyle to reduce their emissions.

The rich generally pay higher taxes than most and therefore pay disproportionately for all kinds of things for society.

Sceptics’ Argument: Credits/offsets markets will be scammed by unscrupulous dealers.

The industrialized world has been trading stocks and bond for decades.  Many North American investors invest in stocks on European and Asian markets without concern for the integrity of the markets. We invest in the stocks of say, banks, here in Canada everyday in great numbers and it would be to say the least very difficult for most investors to really understand how a bank works.  So, how do we do all of this? We have faith in these markets and in the system of developing and verifying stocks (and bonds) because there is a great infrastructure that verifies the integrity of stocks and in turn the markets they trade on. This structure involves market regulations, information transparency, and generally accepted accounting principles. There are already international agencies that verify carbon credits. And there are functioning markets. In BC, the government has set up its own group to verify carbon credits and to help develop them. This can be done effectively.

Sceptics’ Argument:  The European experience with a carbon market has not worked because too many carbon allocations were given away n the first place.

If we expect every initiative in dealing with climate change to be perfect right out of the gate, then we would never get going. We hardly expect every other government initiative or business initiative to work perfectly immediately. We would never have had oil sands oil if the process of extracting it had to be economic right away. It took years for it to be economic. It took some time for Europe to get it right but we can now benefit from that experience.

At the Globe conference in Vancouver, Senator Tommy Banks and Senator Grant Mitchell discuss what the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources is studying.